Mormonism's Lost Tribes

Sunday 25 March 2007 3:45PM

The Book of Mormon spells out the origins of Mormonism, based on the belief that the Lost Tribes of Israel sailed to the American continent and became identified by European explorers as the American Indians. Using the latest DNA findings Simon Southerton questions this belief.


Rachael Kohn: The story of the Lost Tribes of Israel has some truth to it, but where it ends is anybody's guess.

Hello, welcome to The Ark on ABC Radio National.

In the 8th century BC the Assyrians drove the ten Jewish tribes out of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Jews and Christians have often pondered what happened to them. But in the 19th century, Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormons, also known as the Latter Day Saints, or LDS, promoted a belief that this and even an earlier dispersion from ancient Israel, went to America. This was the origin of both the Indians and the Mormons. Simon Southerton, a scientist with the CSIRO, rejects that view, but he was once a devout believer.

Simon Southerton: The Book of Mormon claims to be a history of three groups of Israelites, or Middle Eastern groups that sailed to the Americas between about 2000BC and about 600BC, and these groups all sailed to the Americas and at some stage were in contact with each other while they were there. So the Book of Mormon is certainly the origin of these beliefs.

Rachael Kohn: Well then who was the founding father of the Mormon lineages that ended up on the American continents?

Simon Southerton: Well as I mentioned, there were three groups that sailed to the Americas. The first one was the Jaredites, in about 2200BC, but they are essentially invisible now because they were annihilated in a series of battles. The Book of Mormon is primarily focused on a man named Lehi, and his family who lived in Jerusalem in about 600BC, and they then made a voyage, Lehi and his family, in particular his two oldest sons, Laman and Nephi, who then became the leaders of two great civilisations in the Americas after their arrival. Those groups were called the Nephites and the Lamanites, so the Book of Mormon is preoccupied with an account of their dealings, the civilisations that they led.

The name 'Mormon' comes from one of the last prophets in the Book of Mormon called Mormon, and he compiled the records into the gold plates which was then deposited in the Americas and then recovered in the early part of the 19th century by Joseph Smith.

Rachael Kohn: Well these Nephites and Lamanites, they're not actually mentioned in the Bible, are they?

Simon Southerton: No, that's correct. I think Mormons have identified scriptures here and there in the Bible that could be interpreted to support these travels, but it's very obtuse and it would be understandable, that no-one would have seen these, or interpreted that the same way as the Mormons do.

Rachael Kohn: Now Mormons do hold the Bible in some kind of reverence, don't they? I mean is the Book of Mormon the only scripture?

Simon Southerton: No, the Mormons have four canons of scripture. The Bible is certainly one of those. It's pretty much right up there with the Book of Mormon. They believe that the Book of Mormon is more correctly translated than the Bible. They believe that they are Christians, although there are a lot of Christian groups that don't agree with that. But there are two other scriptures that the Mormons hold and that's the Doctrine and Covenants which is a series of revelations Joseph Smith recorded, and then the Book of Abraham which is a translation by Joseph Smith of some papyrus that came into his hands in the early 19th century. So they're the four major scriptures that Mormons adhere to.

Rachael Kohn: Now the Book of Mormon actually recounts many battles which occur in the New World, and the two tribes that really are central are the Nephites and Lamanites as you've mentioned. But the Lamanites are cursed with black skin. Was Joseph Smith trying to sort of justify the racist views of the time?

Simon Southerton: It's difficult to say. I think really, considering what the Book of Mormon is attempting to do in giving a narrative for the people in the Americas, and then trying to explain why these people have a darker skin, I think all he was really doing was reflecting the very common opinions that were held in that time in the Americas. If he had written the Book of Mormon claiming that native Americans had come from Asia, that would have been amazing, because the time Joseph Smith lived, the prevailing opinion in the Americas was that native Americans were descended from Israelites, that they were a degenerate race, and Joseph Smith I guess went just a little bit further, in claiming that the dark skin that they have was a sign of a curse from God.

Rachael Kohn: Was that a kind of imitation of the idea of the Curse of Cain?

Simon Southerton: The curse on the Lamanites in LDS doctrine, actually arose before the Curse of Cain, this curse, in the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon arose before the Book of Abraham, which is where this dark skin curse on the black race, the negroid race, is sort of based on that scripture.

Rachael Kohn: I understood that the Mormons had actually retranslated Genesis so that the Curse of Cain actually was the Black Curse of Cain.

Simon Southerton: They have made retranslations of the Book of Genesis but the scriptural basis for that dark skin curse of Cain is from the Book of Abraham, which part of that is very, very similar to the Genesis account.

Rachael Kohn: But written by Joseph Smith?

Simon Southerton: Yes. Well it was claimed to be a direct translation from some papyrus that he came across, but it's since been found that those papyrus are very common funeral texts included alongside many mummies. That seems to me quite obvious that he's made that up.

Rachael Kohn: Now the Lamanites were dark-skinned and the Nephites were white-skinned, but over the years it seems Mormons have been able to adjust the way Lamanites are presented. Did their skin kind of miraculously lighten?

Simon Southerton: I think with time, and as society has moved on, Mormons have gradually - their beliefs and the way they view Lamanites - have gradually evolved. It's certainly true that Mormons believe that the Lamanite skin, through accepting the gospel, becoming Mormons, that their skin colour would whiten, and there are some interesting reports of leaders of the church commenting on how their skin is whitening. But it would be true to say that most Mormons today have very fond feelings towards the Lamanites.

It's a beautiful story, in fact the original belief only concerned native Americans, but it's taken on a whole new meaning because the Polynesians have been adopted into the Lamanite family, because it's widely believed amongst Latter Day Saints that Polynesia was colonised from the New World, so most Polynesian members of the church regard themselves as a descendent of Lehi, either a Lamanite or a Nephite, descendant of Lehi.

Rachael Kohn: And did that arise because Mormons went out to the Pacific Islands to be missionaries and needed a way of understanding who these people were?

Simon Southerton: Yes, the Latter Day Saint missionaries in Polynesia were among the most successful. The doctrine that they taught and the things that they presented to the Polynesians were very satisfying to them and they adopted Mormonism very readily, much more readily than the white Europeans living in Polynesia. And so I suspect that somebody just sort of twigged to them one day, 'Well gee, they lot a lot like native Americans, they must be descended from native Americans', and so the belief blossomed from there. Joseph Smith never made any mention at all of the Polynesians being Lamanites or connected to Lehi. Many countries in Polynesia have very large Mormon populations, for example Tonga. I think it's something like 40% or maybe even higher, that are members of the church.

Rachael Kohn: Simon, as a senior scientist in the CSIRO, when did you first have doubts about the veracity of the genealogical beliefs of the Mormons?

Simon Southerton: I was a very devout Latter Day Saint for near on 30 years, but it was in 1998 I was going through an article in a church magazine that claimed that the Flood was a universal event, and wiped out most of the plants and animals on the earth and yet if you were a Mormon and didn't believe that, that you were less than faithful. So as a scientist, this got me just a little bit irritated, because I saw lots of evidence that contradicted that claim, and in trying to find answers to this and to find other Mormons that shared my concerns, I stumbled across DNA evidence on native Americans, and Polynesians, which clearly indicated that their DNA was most closely related to Asians and not Israelites.

So when I encountered that, I struggled for two weeks, literally having conflicting beliefs in my brain. I just couldn't resolve it, and then I went to bed one night and woke up the next morning, the whole thing was resolved. It was just the most remarkable epiphany. I never made a conscious decision, No, the Book of Mormon must be wrong, I cannot reject this science, I just woke up one morning and it was just - I just had no way of sort of stemming the tide, if you like, I just suddenly realised that the Book of Mormon can't be true because the science is just undeniable.

Rachael Kohn: Haven't Mormons come up with alternative histories in which there were Lamanites and Nephites but then there were a lot of other peoples who also made it to America? Isn't there some tweaking in the face of this kind of evidence?

Simon Southerton: Yes, I think tweaking is probably an understatement if ever there was one. The Book of Mormon is silent about the existence of any other group in the Americas other than the Lamanites and Nephites, and the Jaredites. It makes no mention of any other groups outside their civilisations. But certainly the LDS scholars and apologists have been extremely busy reinterpreting the Book of Mormon, and putting I guess their slant on the story, and they are claiming that there are references in there to other groups.

If there is a common belief amongst the apologists, they often conflict with each other, but the most predominant belief that Lehi and his group were a small group that entered the native populations that were already there, and then they built their civilisations and incorporated the native groups around them. For me personally, I find that deeply unsatisfying. The Book of Mormon to me is just quite clear. It mentions that the continent was preserved for the Lehites, kept from the knowledge of other nations so that they could establish themselves there. But it certainly is a very hot issue at the moment.

Rachael Kohn: Has the Mormon church tried to censor you?

Simon Southerton: Well they certainly excommunicated me. That was quite an interesting experience actually, because if you publicly - and I had publicly challenged the Book of Mormon for a number of years. In the earliest church, public open apostasy is the most serious offence that you can commit, and they had very many opportunities where they could have excommunicated me from the church for committing apostasy, but they chose not to. But then just over a year ago I was excommunicated for having an inappropriate relationship with a woman.

Rachael Kohn: Why were they unwilling to cross you on your argument about the Lost Tribes?

Simon Southerton: When they hold an excommunication hearing, you're entitled to defend yourself to try and defend your reputation, so I would have had an opportunity to raise some very troubling issues with the 15 or 16 men that would have been in attendance at that meeting. I'm pretty sure that's why they didn't want to hold the meeting on the issue of apostasy. In fact they made it quite clear to me that they would have shut down the excommunication hearing if I had made any mention of my apostasy, because that wasn't to be the issue of the excommunication hearing. So it's quite interesting, they were certainly very determined not to have the issues I was concerned about raised.

Rachael Kohn: Are Mormons permitted to read your book, Losing a Lost Tribe?

Simon Southerton: They would claim that they're permitted to read anything they like. But generally Mormons don't read books that the LDS scholars and LDS apologists have been critical of. It's almost a taboo in the Mormon church to read things that are critical of the church.

Rachael Kohn: I want to ask you finally whether there's been a backlash by indigenous people themselves, native Americans, who say that this genealogy, this past, has been thrust upon them.

Rachael Kohn: There certainly are native Americans in Utah who have felt the sting of racism and persecution at the hands of Mormons. I'm not saying that that's what Mormons are like generally, but a lot of Utah native Americans have certainly felt very hurt by the way some Mormons treat them. The amount of evidence now against the Book of Mormon is not just DNA evidence, there is just nothing in the Americas to support the existence of Israelite civilisations, and abundant evidence that native Americans came from Asia many thousands of years ago. So it's just unrealistic I think for the church to expect that people can just turn their nose up at all this evidence.

Rachael Kohn: Simon Southerton is a senior scientist with the CSIRO and is author of Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA and the Mormon Church. Go to our website for alternative views.


Simon Southerton
is a research scientist with the CSIRO in Australia.


Simon Southerton
Signature Books

Further Information

DNA and the Book of Mormon
From the official website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a general summary about DNA and the Book of Mormon. Contains many links to an array of articles on the subject.
Addressing Questions Surrounding the Book of Mormon and DNA Research
An article addressing questions surrounding the applicability of DNA studies to the peoples whose story is told in the Book of Mormon. From the website of Brigham Young University.


Dr Rachael Kohn
Geoff Wood / Dr Rachael Kohn