Evidence · Case 11 · Mormonism
The church’s DNA essay and the anachronisms
One exhibit from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
The Gospel Topics essay Book of Mormon and DNA Studies grants that DNA has not confirmed a Near Eastern origin for Native Americans and argues the samples and models cannot settle the matter. Separately, the text mentions horses, cattle, wheat, steel, and chariots in pre-Columbian America, none of which the archaeological record supports for that era.
Sources
- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “Book of Mormon and DNA Studies,” Gospel Topics Essays. (opens in a new tab)
The church’s own statement on the genetic evidence.
Objections & responses
- Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and a limited-geography model can fit the text into a small region archaeology has not fully dug. Why treat silence as disproof?
Silence alone would not be decisive, and the limited-geography model is the serious reply. Two things keep the question live. The positive anachronisms, horses and steel and wheat where the record shows none, are not silence but mismatch. And the text itself describes populations and warfare on a scale that should leave traces. The limited model answers the geography by shrinking the story well below what the text seems to claim. It is a real response, and it comes at the cost of the plain reading.