Introduction and Host Passion for This Topic

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host, John Dehlin. It is October 26, 2021 and I am very, very excited for today's episode, as I always am. Today we are going to be covering Rod or Rodney Meldrum's Book of Mormon heartland model. And we are super excited to have back with us on the program Dr. Simon Southerton and of course my frequent co host and dear friend, Gerardo Sumano. Hey gentlemen, welcome to the podcast. And Simon, it's so great to have you back.

Simon Southerton [00:00:39] Thanks, John. It's good to be back. How are you?

John Dehlin [00:00:41] Great. And what time is it there in Australia, Simon?

Simon Southerton [00:00:45] Just after 9 o'. Clock, quarter past nine. On a sunny spring day in the morning, right? Yep.

John Dehlin [00:00:52] All right. And Gerardo, thanks for setting this up. It's so awesome when you bring to me an awesome episode. Episode.

Gerardo Sumano [00:00:58] Yeah, yeah, Simon is awesome. So we are super glad to have him back and I'm super excited.

John Dehlin [00:01:04] Harana, really quick, I have noticed a particular passion of yours for this episode and so I just thought it would be interesting to just have you begin and maybe talk about why you care so much about this issue. And also if there's anything about, you know, your origins, you know, being born and raised in Mexico that makes you feel passionately about this topic.

Gerardo Sumano [00:01:28] Yeah. So as some may know, I was raised Mormon in Mexico and I grew up learning or being taught that I had Lamanite blood and that I was descendant from, from the Lamanites and growing up in the church, like we always heard about how the Mayan ruins. Because I, I'm from the Yucatan Peninsula actually where Michael Coe did most or a lot of his research on Mayan culture. And you've had Michael Cohen on Mormon stories talking about Book of Mormon evidence, correct?

John Dehlin [00:02:11] Twice, yeah. That's one of my proudest interviews. He's a Yale Mesoamerican archaeologist and he's a legend. And he just passed away. Him and Robert Rittner both passed away within the past year, which is a huge loss.

Gerardo Sumano [00:02:26] Yes, for sure. For sure. And well, the reason. Well, I brought him up because I grew up right there, right at the heart of all this cultures and where all this. Where you know, like a lot of a great population of Mormons believe that the Book of Mormon events happened right there or around that area in Central America and what's now Latin America.

John Dehlin [00:02:58] I served my mission in Guatemala and I remember people coming to Guatemala all the time to do these kind of Book of Mormon archeological tours where they would go to Tikal, you know, in pay 10 and you know, places in Southerton Mexico and the Yucatan Peninsula. Because all these BYU professors were kind of making money off of making Mormons feel or believe that they were, you know, viewing actual Nephite and Lamanite ruins.

Simon Southerton [00:03:29] Right? Yeah yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [00:03:31] And this is still happening. This is still happening. If you go today to Tulum, which is this archaeological, archaeological site by Cancun, which is pretty close to my home there, there's this family, I'm not sure if they ever got degrees, but they have license to, to be, to do tours in, in the archaeological site. And they will give what they call Mormon tours for Mormons where they will guide you through the site and they will show you like the ruins and, and they will explain how, how they correlate or they're related to, to the Book of Mormon. So, so this is like this, this is pretty strong belief by, by members there. And I as probably, well most of our listeners will know like members here in the US Also believe that the events of the Book of Mormon maybe like probably happen in that area. Like you said, BYU professors and, and most apologists of the church will all or believe that that's the area where the Book of Mormon took place. So. And also growing up, I heard like I always heard from my dad and from other leaders that in the U.S. there was this big group of people who believe that actually the Book of Mormon took place in North America or the United, what is now the United States. And, and we always saw them as kind of like, kind of like this weird people. Like we didn't understand why, why do they even believe that? Because, you know, like at one point, even if, if I'm correct, like in the 40s or 50s, the, the church used to print on the Book of Mormon just pictures of Mayan ruins and just like archaeological, like what they called like some archaeological evidence of the Book of Mormon. So we knew that kind of like the Brethren in some way they kind of like you used to or, or may still lean towards the Central America theory or, or area for Book of Mormon events having taken place in. And so yeah, we always saw them as kind of like just like kind of weird, you know, like that there was, there were people believing that. And so when Simon made a post on Facebook on our Mormon Stories Community Facebook group about his research on Rot Meldrum and his recent event that he held, which actually our other co host Car Abarella attended, I, I was like, oh, we, we, we need to bring Simon on Mormon Stories to talk to us about all this stuff. And, and why are these people, and, like, people like Rod Meldrum claiming that the Book of Mormon events took place in. In what's now the United States?

John Dehlin [00:06:44] Okay, thank you, Gerardo, for giving us kind of that background. And I, I can. You know, knowing that, that Mormon church leaders would come to Central America and South America and even the Pacific Islands and, and tell all of the members there that they literally are, you know, descendants of Lamanites, makes it very personal, because when you tell somebody their identity, you know, who their ancestry are, and we've talked about this with Simon in previous episodes, that's a really serious thing to be doing. And so, you know, I can see why that's something very personal to you, Simon. I, I haven't. I didn't tell you ahead of time I'd be doing this, but I think it would be super helpful if we could just spend maybe five minutes just talking about kind of what we understand, Joseph Smith's understanding to have been about where the Hill Cumorah was and where the Book of Mormon sort of took place, then talk about why there was a need to move it to Central America and for the emergence of the two Hill Cumorahs theory, because then that sets up. And the consensus that emerged over time with the Brethren and past prophetseers and revelators about where the Book of Mormon took place, because then that sets up why there would even need to be an emergence of Rodney Meldrum and his Heartland Theory. Do you think we can do that in just a few minutes? And is that okay if we cover that, Simon?

Simon Southerton [00:08:17] We're going to cover that. I think some. Partly through the talk. But, yeah, I think originally, I don't think Joseph Smith sort of said, okay, that hill there, that's Camorra, partly because it was just so obvious. I mean, I don't. It's like, I don't point over there and say, that's Canberra to everyone that I meet. Right. Lives in Canberra, because it's just, you know, it's just so obvious. But I. It's quite clear that the God the was talking to Joseph Smith, as recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants, viewed the American Indians living in North America as Lamanites. There's absolutely no denying it. It's quite clear in the Doctrine and Covenants that the Indians, as they refer to them at the Western frontiers were Lamanites. And so I think everyone, as a consequence at the time, would have viewed Lamanites, Native Americans, as exactly the same thing. But really, the last two centuries, science has just shed Incredible light on the origin of Native Americans and it doesn't sit well with the beliefs of the church. And so the, there's been a fairly significant retreat away from this sort of hemispheric view. And now as you were discussing earlier, Harado, it's basically centered on, on the Mayan civilization in Central America.

John Dehlin [00:09:55] And Simon, for those who don't know at all, I mean it maybe Joseph didn't like specifically point to the hill and say this is Cumorah, but, but he also didn't say there's two hills and that somehow Moroni buried the plates in one hill somewhere and that they magically reappeared in another. Like if there's not a lot of specific association to the hill Cumorah. And the church itself calls it the Hill Cumorah pageant at the Hill Cumorah. So I mean there's pretty much no doubt that the Mormon Church acknowledges the hill, you know, in Palmyra, you know, near Joseph Smith's home, it's pretty clear the church says that is Hill Cumorah. And yet somehow everything moved to Mesoamerica at some point. What was the reasoning that things got moved to Mesoamerica and why this two Cumorah theory emerged?

Simon Southerton [00:10:53] Well, there's sort of three main reasons. The first one is that they, the people of the Book of Mormon had a written language and the only civilization in the Americas that had a written language was the Maya civilization. In fact, that's the main reason. But also the Mayan civilization was existed at roughly the right time or you know, before and after the Book of Mormon time period. And it was very large, quite a large civilization. So it had cities and a written language. And so that's why they've shifted to the Mayan civilization in Central America. But it's just been a general contraction to Mesoamerica, the, then to the Maya. And as I'll show later on in the slide, the science has been particularly unkind because the Mayan population has been studied quite closely at the molecular level. So both mitochondrial DNA and genomic DNA is clearly showing what their ancestry is. And there's no sign of pre Columbian Israelite DNA in the Mayan population.

John Dehlin [00:12:15] It is. Is it true, is it true, Simon, that if you, if you study the Book of Mormon and like, you know, distances that were traveled over with matching the description of a certain number of days, if the Book of Mormon was happening over a, you know, when they say like there were cities or populations that covered the entire area, if you know, the, the, the descriptions about volume of People and of distances in. If they were talking about the entire North, Central and South America, it would have just taken too long from people to go from tip to tip or point to point. And so they, so that's one reason they needed to shrink the area. And then if you need advanced civilizations, again, that's like you said, that's in Central America. And for those types of reasons. Are those also some of the reasons why they needed to put it in Central America? Because if you just kind of take parts of Guatemala and southern Mexico and the Yucatan, that fits like the, the types of distances or geographical square mileage that would match the length of time it took Book of Mormon characters to travel from point to point. Is that.

Simon Southerton [00:13:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:13:37] Is that kind of right?

Simon Southerton [00:13:39] It's probably also true to say that the distances that the heartland model has now, by focusing on, you know, the Midwest, the heartland of North America, the distances probably fit reasonably well there. And so, I mean, the hemispheric view, which is clearly false, as they all are in my view, but doesn't sort of make sense, I guess that Joseph Smith wasn't a particularly good geographer. The distance problem is resolved quite happily for the heartland folk. And in fact, I think, yeah, there's a lot of their arguments center around how well it aligns with the, the sort of traditional view and the things that Joseph Smith said. You know, when you've got Doctrine and Covenant scripture backing up your claim that Lamanites are everywhere around the folk in North America, you can't get much better than that.

John Dehlin [00:14:50] Right.

Overview of the Heartland Model and Its Critics

Simon Southerton [00:14:51] So, okay. And so there's a very lengthy takedowns of Rodney Meldrum by fear and, and farms apologists. To be, you know, to be honest, I think he's got a pretty, you know, quite a strong evidence base there when it comes to looking at LDS history and the Scriptures.

John Dehlin [00:15:17] And we'll, and we'll jump into that. So, so here there are two things that I think we can establish that Joseph Smith made it pretty clear that he felt like the Hill Cumorah was in upstate New York and that the Book of Mormon dealt with pretty much all Native Americans, North, Central and South, but that at some point the Institutional Mormon Church obtained pretty much a solid consensus, including prophet seers, revelators, and traditional Mormon apologists like Hugh Nibley, like John Sorensen, that it needed to kind of happen in Central America, kind of southern Mexico and Guatemala, and that that's what prophets, seers, revelators and mainstream members and apologists kind of have, have felt and believed for a long time. Even though the Church has wanted to avoid making an official declaration, the general understanding, including BYU's own apologists, shifted at some point to where it happened in Central America. Is that all? Okay. Ground?

Simon Southerton [00:16:16] I think, just to clarify, I think it. It shifted. The scholars shifted to Mesoamerica way before the earlier the church leaders. In fact, I think you would find that there would be quite a few of the senior leaders now that still believe it's hemispheric.

John Dehlin [00:16:34] Interesting, interesting.

Simon Southerton [00:16:36] I mean, Spencer W. Kimball, he referred to being 60 million Lamanites scattered across the Americas and into Polynesia. So I would say virtually every one of the apostles would have, for most of their lives believed that it was hemispheric and that all American Indians were Lamanites. And I think they've just gradually shifted back from. I don't know. Well, I don't know. They've publicly. Not many have publicly endorsed, I think, the Mesoamerican model, limited geography. I think the problem for the church is that all of this Mesoamerican limited geography apologetics that's been going on for decades was mostly restricted to academic journals, and hardly anyone in the church saw it. Well, now the Internet's come along and everyone who has even a mild interest in looking at the historicity of the Book of Mormon is now being exposed to this very restricted model in, in Mesoamerica. And that, I think, is what sparked the emergence of Rodney Meldrum's Heartland model is, is not. Not just the DNA, it's the shock. And we'll talk about this later in the. On, I'm sure at length. But yeah, that's. I think that's what sparked not just DNA. It was the shock of seeing how much LDS scholars at BYU had conceded to science. Okay, what's happened? There hasn't been any revelation to tell them that's Mesoamerica.

John Dehlin [00:18:26] Okay.

Simon Southerton [00:18:27] The direction from above, this is coming from scholars who, who have faced the science and science is dictating where this could possibly be. And the DNA is obviously making it even more challenging to defend it.

John Dehlin [00:18:44] Okay, so maybe, maybe. Let me try and restate it this way. So Joseph Smith and almost all subsequent prophet seers and revelators took the here hemispheric model, which is that all Native Americans, North Central and South America and Pacific Islanders, they were all descendants of the Lamanites, and that the Book of Mormon happened throughout all of it. Then once faithful scholars started really studying the science, they started realizing that that didn't make sense. And so we have emerging into you know, into farms and eventually byu, Maxwell Institute and fair, this limited geography theory that tries to put it in Central America so that there's at least some hope for scientific credibility with the Book of Mormon happening in real space and time. That's kind of what emerged as the consensus for people who call themselves scholarly Mormon apologists. And from that consensus, then the Rodney Meldrum, his heartland theory has emerged as a reaction to that. Is that a fair summary?

Simon Southerton [00:19:56] Yeah, I think that's fair to say.

John Dehlin [00:19:57] All right, so I think we're ready. Gerardo, go ahead.

Gerardo Sumano [00:20:00] Yeah, I added a slide. So if you go just to the second slide after just with a quote by Joseph Smith, and this is a quote that Mike Jo Heimer, he is the author of LDS Discussions. Discussions. Yeah, he gave it to me yesterday. And it's just a quote from a letter that Joseph smith wrote in 1833 where he says, I'm gonna read it. He says the Book of Mormon is a record of the forefathers of our Western tribes of Indians. So he makes it clear that it's the Western tribes of Indians, he says, having been found through the ministerial of an holy angel, translated into our own language by the gift and power of God, after having been hit up in the earth for the last 1400 years, containing the words of God which was delivered unto them by it. We learned that our Western tribes of Indians are descendants from that Joseph that was sold in Egypt, and that the land of America is a promised land unto them. And that's another point that, I mean, we'll talk about, I think, eventually, is that Rob Meldrum makes, is that the Book of Mormon promises that the. That. That the land of where the Book of Mormon events took place was going to become fruitful and just, like, successful in some way, because he was gonna be the promised land for the gentiles that were going to come. And he says that that only fits in the United States.

Simon Southerton [00:21:34] Pretty much.

John Dehlin [00:21:35] Yeah. That's pretty clear that Joseph Smith, I mean, when he's talking about Western tribes. Yeah, that's gotta mean the. The, you know, they're settling the Northeast, and so that means the tribes directly west of New York. Right?

Simon Southerton [00:21:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:21:49] So. So I'm already starting to see where this is going.

Gerardo Sumano [00:21:52] And they use a phrase that. It's called Joseph New. Yeah, we'll see on the. On the clip that you're gonna play.

John Dehlin [00:21:59] Yeah. Okay. So we kind of know where Joseph stood. We've got. We've tried to give a brief overview of the history. Should we. Is there anything else Simon, you want to say before we jump into the video?

Simon Southerton [00:22:12] No, let's just jump.

John Dehlin [00:22:13] What is this video? Just so our, our viewers and listeners know what this video is. Herodo, do you want to just tell us?

Gerardo Sumano [00:22:20] Yes, sorry. So this is a trailer. So in 2008, Rob Meldrum made this video of several hours long, just explaining Book of Mormon evidences regarding the. This heartland model. One of the main evidences is what we're going to be talking about today is the, the genetic evidence that, that Rob Meldrum had found. He brought several scientists on this video who we're going to talk about later too. But this is pretty much an introduction of the heartland model, and this was the trailer for that.

Watching Meldrum's Heartland Presentation

John Dehlin [00:22:57] All right, let's roll the tape. Let's roll the tape.

▶ Video Clip 1

Video Clip 1 [00:23:02] Which is greater faith or knowledge? And your faith is dormant. This because you know, where in the world did the Book of Mormon actually occur?

Video Clip 1 [00:23:14] It has to be a land of liberty and freedom. His choice, above all other lands, has to be in the United States, because there's Nothing like the US of A. Any place on earth.

Video Clip 1 [00:23:23] We found 36 very specific prophecies and promises in the text of the Book of Mormon. Prophecies and promises about the land and the people or the Gentiles who will be led to this promised land in the latter days. Joseph Smith, claiming to have received Revelation, wrote it down and put his name to it in regard to the geography of the Book of Mormon, found this definite link between people in the Americas and the Middle East. They needed to find out whether or not it was ancient. How did X2 get from the Mediterranean area into the Americas? These Mayan ruins have become the icon for or the Book of Mormon. Which one of those were God's people? Hebrews. Which one of them built grand structures? Egyptians, the Romans and the Jews who built grand structures. Why would it even be assumed that the Nephites would have built majestic ruins? Should the proposed method use the geographical passages over the spiritual passages? Doesn't make sense. We should use the spiritual passages over the geographical passages. And I and Nephi did build a temple and I did construct it after the manner of the Temple of Solomon. That dimension is bigger than the Pyramid of Giza, Chichen Itza and the Pyramid of the Sun. This was a monumental earthwork. Most people don't even realize that it's right here in North America. He has to determine which type of evidence is stronger or more robust evidence than other types of evidence. This is a review of some of the evidence indicates a North American setting for the Book of Mormon. What did Joseph Smith know about the geography of the Book of Mormon? Joseph Smith went up on this mound with the 12 brethren, discovered that the person whose skeleton was before us was a white Lamanite. His name was Zelph. He was a warrior in chief. Behold, I say unto you that you shall go unto the Lamanites and preach my gospel. First missionaries who were sent unto the Lamanites went to tribes which today harbor haplogroup X DNA. How did Joseph Smith know that? If this geography is correct, the Book of Mormon history is literally on the same sacred grounds as church history. We will find additional evidence strengthening the claims of the Book of Mormon because it is true.

John Dehlin [00:25:46] Man, I'm sold. I'm sold. Because it's got that really cool Peruvian kind of flute music. And that, that, that persuadeth me. How can you argue with Peruvian flute music? Right, sorry.

Simon Southerton [00:26:02] South American flute music.

Gerardo Sumano [00:26:04] Well, this was the introduction, Blood. But he starts mentioning some of this stuff, right, that we have been talking about, about Joseph Smith going and saying that we should go and preach the Lamanites. And he was meeting the Indians over there.

John Dehlin [00:26:22] And so clearly the Indians or Native Americans on the frontier of Ohio and Illinois, clearly Joseph Smith identifies them as Lamanites. Clearly, when he identifies Zelf, he. He sees some bones somewhere in the Midwest and he says, hey, that's self, the white Lamanite. So clearly Joseph Smith believed, you know, in. In at least a hemispheric model, if not a heartland model. And then he's quoting DNA, which I'm sure piques your interest, Simon Southerton.

Simon Southerton [00:26:56] Well, let's see. It's the major claim that Rodney Meldrum makes.

John Dehlin [00:27:00] Yeah.

Simon Southerton [00:27:01] In my view, it's. It's the foundational claim, and he's not backed away from it in 15 years or more. And it, yeah, it's. And everything else is built on that. I would agree with Rodney Meldrum in that he has got abundant what he refers to as spiritual evidence or basically stuff written down in Scripture. Stuff written down, stuff said by Joseph Smith. There's abundant literature to back up the. His heartland claims. But, yeah, the. The X DNA is not linked to the Middle East. A recent migration.

Speaker D [00:27:46] Right.

John Dehlin [00:27:47] Well, should we jump to the. To the slide deck?

Simon Southerton [00:27:51] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:27:52] All right, Professor. I'll call you Professor. Professor Southerton, take it away.

Simon Southerton [00:27:58] Well, yeah, the. I've. I've actually watched the emergence of the heartland theory and Rodney Meldrum's ideas from pretty much Day Dot. Okay. So far, too long. It's another one of my hobby horses, but it really does. We'll talk a little bit about what goes on before DNA came along because I think Rodney's views were formed, his very fundamentalist views were formed many years before the DNA issue arose. But just after the turn of the century is when the DNA problem surfaced. I resigned as a Bishop in 1998. It took me a couple of years to build up the courage to publish my ex Mormon story. And then that, that, I guess from then on the DNA issue became quite, quite prominent. And then we had a number of publications from Thomas Murphy and myself and then Brent Midcalf that really raised the pro, you know, how serious this issue was. And then there was just an absolute avalanche of apologetics from farms primarily and then fair in the years afterwards. So, Rodney.

John Dehlin [00:29:28] Hey, Simon, if I can just, if I can just ask you. Like, I remember, I was working at Microsoft at the time. I remember learning about Thomas Murphy, being surprised that he lived in the state I was living in. And then seeing that there was going to be a disciplinary council to excommunicate him for the crime of just studying the DNA and publishing information that just basically said, we're not finding Hebrew or Lamanite DNA. We're not finding Hebrew DNA amongst the Native Americans. And that must have lit a fire at church headquarters. And I think it led to the changing of the title page of the Book of Mormon. Because if, if, if 99.9% of the DNA for the descendants of the Native Americans go to, you know, come from Asia and we'll be talking about this, then that's a problem. And that's. Is, is that why so many researchers started putting it in Mesoamerica? You know, let's just say BYU apologists started putting it in Mesoamerica because they needed to shrink the target to the smallest population possible because otherwise the DNA evidence was too overwhelming. Is that, is that why

Simon Southerton [00:30:41] the limited geography theory is largely a response to all of the other evidence apart from the genetic evidence? I mean, there was some genetic evidence prior to DNA being published, but the lack of evidence of an Israelite influence in the Americas caused them to sort of shrink their claims. And so it was. It. I think it was largely because of the, the lack. They needed a written language and the civilizations are about the right time and quite large. So that's, I think, the major driver. But when Rodney Meldrum came along, that really shocked him, I think, I mean, he was shocked by the DNA that they, you know, the. But also by the response of the apologists. They were arguing, well, that's not really a problem because we've limited. We have a limited geography. The Lanais aren't everywhere. They're in a very restricted part of Mesoamerica. And because, you know, the Internet exposed him to all of the apologetic arguments that had come along. And so he was desperate to find something to hang on to. There must be some scientific evidence that he could latch onto. And that's when he latched onto the X lineage. Now, the X lineage is interesting because it was a very rare lineage. It's a very rare lineage in the Americas. It's only found in North America, and it only occurs at about 1% over the entire continent. So it's a rare lineage to begin with. It was probably even more rare in Asia. And to date, they have not found the ancestral X2A lineage in Asia. Okay, so the most ancient X2A lineage that they found is Kennewick man, which is what we'll talk about a bit later on. But Rodney created this story, which wasn't true, that scientists were confused by the X lineage and almost hid the fact that it was also found in the Middle east as almost like a cover up. And this is a common theme that I've observed with Rodney Meldrum. He believes that scientists are being dishonest frequently and hiding evidence. And so he created this idea amongst people that scientists were unsure about the X lineage. And it really only stems from the fact that it was a very rare lineage in Asia. And it's. So it's. The ancestral lineage has not been found or related ancestral lineage has not been found in Asian populations. But my guess is that if they sequenced or sampled anywhere near the number of people that they've tested in the Americas, in sort of the right area in Asia, they would probably find an ancestral X2A lineage. But even if they don't, it's very quite possible for a very rare lineage to just go extinct in the original place. I mean, it's possible that the x2a lineage arose and everyone that carried it migrated across to the Americas. We just don't know. So, but he's latched on to the X lineage. And I was in contact with Rodney within probably months or a few years of him making the claims that he was making because he was starting to do little small cottage meetings and conferences and pointed out the fact that the X lineage was ancient. It's been in the Americas for just as long as the others. But from that he's then hooked up with lots of other people and they're sort of really built based on the X lineage claim, this idea that it was centered in the Book of Mormon, events were took place in North America and that Lehi sailed from Arabia around Africa. Okay. It's very, very perilous voyage, I can assure you, around the, the tip of Africa and then up into more likely landing in Florida or somewhere like that. And then the colonized the, the Book of Mormon people colonized the Ohio and the Mississippi Valley. So there are two cultures that, that appear prominently in heartland discussions, and that's the Adena and the hopeworld cultures. These are woodland cultures within the Ohio and the Mississippi Valley. The Adena were the earlier culture. I think they sort of arose around about 500 B.C. and sort of petered out around about 100 A.D. and the Hopewell culture was. Arose sort of around about 100 AD and then petered out around 500 or 600 AD. So these are the mound builders, mound builder culture. So if we go to the next slide, I mean, it's a. The heartland theory has a lot of appeal for members of the church, but it's important to note that it aligns completely with young Earth creationism. So virtually all of the heartlanders are young Earth creationists.

John Dehlin [00:36:28] And for those who don't know what that term means, I know it's obvious, but. Simon, tell a listener.

Simon Southerton [00:36:33] Yeah, so these are people that believe that the earth is literally 7,000 years old. Adam and Eve were placed on the earth and then there was a global flood which killed everyone but four and a half thousand years ago, that killed everyone but Noah's family.

John Dehlin [00:36:50] And Simon, tell me if I'm wrong, but Mormonism really relies on a young Earth creationist view, not just because Mormons believe the Bible is literally history, that Adam and Eve literally were the first parents. Many prophets, seers and revelators in the past have condemned evolution, and we'll talk about that later, that the global flood was real. Even the Book of Moses, as John Larsen has reminded us, relies on Noah being a real person and his children. And the curse of Ham, you know, all comes in scripture, Even the Jaredites in the Book of Mormon, they come over around the time of the scattering of the Tower of Babel. So you need a literal Tower of Babel. And then even, I think, doesn't the Doctrine and Covenants even state that the, that the Earth is 6 or 7,000 years old? Like in every possible way? Mormonism is built on, you could say the rock or the sand of young earth creationism. Is that all true?

Simon Southerton [00:37:53] You could say that there is abundant scriptural evidence to back it up, including the fact that the global flood wiped out everyone in the Americas, so the promised land was cleared of humans. It was also because Adam on diamond was where Adam lived and presumably Noah, who's, you know, I don't know, a few. A couple of thousand years later, the ark had to get to the other side of the world. So it's. It sailed across there. So it all does fit with that. But. But it's unfair to sort of, you know, refer to all and that, I don't think. I guess when I was a member, I felt like most of the people I was around at church were young Earth creationists. But that's not the case with LDS scientists and scholars. The vast majority of those scholars who have any training in science would shun young Earth creationism very, very resolutely. It's a. It's. Yeah, so it's not a. And I think it's fair to say that there would be quite a large number of members of the church who wouldn't view themselves as young Earth creationists. They have this sort of. It's one of those things that's up on the shelf. They haven't resolved it all yet. So.

Young Earth Creationism and LDS Scientists

John Dehlin [00:39:20] Well, I would say by the time I reached BYU in the. In, in the late 80s, the entire biology department, including former mission presidents and stake presidents, and were all teaching evolution being factual. So those who think that. And the church has carefully chosen not to take a formal position on evolution anymore. But. But it's pretty clear that even the most faithful, believing Mormon scientists accept evolution as, As a valid theory, correct, Simon?

Simon Southerton [00:39:53] Yes, yes.

John Dehlin [00:39:54] Yeah. So that ship has sailed for people who care about science, for believing Mormons who value and care about science, that ship has pretty much sailed. Evolution is a fact, and the Earth is billions of years old.

Simon Southerton [00:40:06] Well, I think it's worth. When I first encountered the DNA and I was, you know, I read the apologetic material, I did sense that there was quite careful not to. To touch those beliefs, you know, not. Don't talk too much about, you know, how long American Indians have been in the continent, that sort of thing. When Ryan Parr criticized my book, he. He referred to the original colonization of the Americas as a multiple millennial stroll. I mean, he's done research that shows that it's, you know, 15,000 years ago. You're referring it to as, as a multiple millennial stroll that'll keep the creationists happy because, you know, it's only a couple of thousand years. So. So, yeah, it's. But there are. It's so, yeah, so the apologists were fairly coy about challenging creationist or young earth creationist type views in the church. But when DNA came along, this created a unique challenge for them because all of a sudden, to get out of this mess, they needed real scientists. They needed scientists with DNA knowledge to come in. Scott Woodward, Michael Whiting, Keith Crandall, who else is there? There's a. Oh, Hugo Prego, Hugo Perego, who wrote the church's DNA essay. All of these people accept evolution. All of these people know that American Indians have been in the country in the Americas for 15,000 years. That doesn't align with the Global Flood

Gerardo Sumano [00:41:57] or the Book of Mormon itself either.

Simon Southerton [00:41:59] Right.

Gerardo Sumano [00:41:59] Like, because the Book of Mormon says, I think, that before the Jaredites, no one had inhabited the land before or something like that.

Simon Southerton [00:42:09] So we get back to the slide. So the one. So one of the appeals was that it was young, but it also, the heartland idea aligns with many of the traditional beliefs that members of the church have. So virtually everyone or the vast majority of the church thinks the Hill Cumorah in New York is the Hill Cumorah. And so having a second Camorra in Mesoamerica, that's really out there. It's a very challenging idea. How do you get the plates? And there are multiple plates. There's lots of stuff. How was all that material transported to North America? But they, you know, you've also got the doctrine, as we talked earlier, the Lamanites are clearly specified in the doctrine Covenants. But another thing is that it appeals to American nationalism in a big way. If you go along to a firm foundation conference, you just see rows of American flags everywhere. Okay. I can't see the heartland ideas having much appeal to many people outside of America.

Gerardo Sumano [00:43:21] Yeah.

Simon Southerton [00:43:21] It is just hyper nationalism that they're seeing. And this aligns with Manifest Destiny, this idea that America is God's chosen country. So. But the other thing, it also appeals to people who, you know, get drawn into conspiracy theories. So it's. And one of those conspiracies, I think, sadly, reflects fairly poorly on the whole organization. And that is this idea that American scientists are hiding the evidence of the civilizations in North America. And I heard that.

Gerardo Sumano [00:44:03] I've heard.

Simon Southerton [00:44:03] Yeah, that's a common thing. It's a common theme when you read I'll. And I'll have. I've got some quote, a quote from Rodney Meldrum later on. But the other thing is they're heavily, very, very critical of BYU scientists who've been drawn into accepting the science and conceiving the science. But I think the overall foundational appeal of the heartland idea is that is sort of very well aligned with how the Book of Mormon came about. The Book of Mormon arose because of the mound builder myth. It inspired the Book of Mormon. And I think the mound builder myth is basically inspiring the heartland theory today. It's just 200 years later.

The Mound Builder Myth and Pseudoscience

John Dehlin [00:44:54] And remind our listeners what the mound builder myth is.

Simon Southerton [00:44:58] Simon well, as American colonists moved west over the Appalachian mountains into the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, they encountered mounds everywhere. Like within just a few miles of Joseph Smith's home, there were I think about seven mounds. And it was just the burial practices of the local indigenous first nations people in that area. They would bury somebody in a mound and then they would come, somebody else would die, and then they would expand the mound and bury more relatives in the mound. But there were quite a lot of earthworks in the area. But the native cultures, the native peoples thought that knew the origin of the mounds had basically been wiped out by the diseases that were advancing ahead of European colonists as they were moving west. And so they weren't, they had, it was limited knowledge amongst the local remaining people about how these mounds were built. And so this myth emerged that there had been a white race of advanced people who had built the mounds and the, the dark skinned Native Americans had wiped them out at some stage in the past and then they were the people that remained in the area. Now if you can't see the obvious similarity of that myth with the, the central plot of the Book of Mormon, then you're not really trying very hard. It's quite clear the darker skinned Lamanites fit aligned very well with the people that were remaining in the area. And the white skin race would have been the Nephites that were wiped out. So I believe that that's what's really. Yes, I think that mound builder myth has inspired, I believe that it inspired many other. Fawn Brodie and many other scholars who have looked at the mound builder myth would see that it has inspired the story of the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:47:13] I'm pretty sure the Tanners and others have found maybe 15 books that occurred prior to the Book of Mormon that basically claimed very similar things, that Native Americans were descendants of the twelve tribes or descendants of Israel or Jerusalem in some way. And this idea of the light skinned and the dark skinned people view of the Hebrews just being one of like 12 or 15 books that had the same story, you know, decade, a decade even or two before Joseph Smith ever came up with it. And I remember, you know, reading about Thomas Jefferson himself having mounds around his house. And, you know, these beliefs went back as early as the mid-1700s, because you need some way to demonize and dehumanize the people that you're displacing. You have to dehumanize them. And so, like the black priesthood, like the curse of Cain teaching the mark is the dark skin, you need some way to make them dehumanized so you can displace them. So it's a. It's a very racist theory at its core. Am I right, Simon?

Simon Southerton [00:48:19] Yeah, well, the, The. I guess the other thing was that the mounds were. I mean, they were very compelling because they had. They also had quite elaborate, you know, breastplates and metalwork. Much of it was from native copper. I think it was from Michigan. But also there were some mounds where they had, you know, steel objects. And that was because the. They had obtained them, you know, after. From Europeans at some point. And then when somebody died that had one of these very valuable steel objects, they buried them with them. So that was very common. So.

John Dehlin [00:49:01] But after. After 15. After 1500. Right, that would have been. After 1500, they would have acquired those things from Europeans.

Simon Southerton [00:49:07] You know, the influence of Europeans advanced, you know, often probably centuries before colonizers got into an area, because if you had these extensive trade networks where people would be trading way out into the middle of America, as Native Americans did prior to Europeans arriving.

John Dehlin [00:49:32] Got it.

Simon Southerton [00:49:32] So, yeah, so the. The heartland model is very appealing, but as I mentioned earlier, I think it's worth going back. And so I've mentioned that young Earth creationism in this slide, but I didn't actually really. I wasn't really sure whether John. Sorry, Rodney Meldrum was a young Earth creationist until about five years ago, because it emerged about five years ago that he was heavily involved with the development of the universal model. And this was back in the 90s. So he worked. He. I think he actually attended the church in Arizona at one stage with Dean Sessions. Well, that's where he got involved with Dean Sessions. So Dean Sessions has a. He's got an organizational psychology degree from byu, and he has spent probably close to a quarter of a century building this universal model, which basically, in my view, is an attempt to write scientific textbooks that support creationism. So he's currently. He's published two of these volumes. One of them, the first volume, I think, is designed to prove that Noah's flood was real. So, you know, the things like the. The Grand Canyon was created in basically in a Day after the flood waters receded, that sort of thing. His next volume disproves evolution, Improves the earth is 7,000 years old. And he's got another volume coming out on the universe system.

John Dehlin [00:51:25] Do we know his. His scientific credentials so that he can defy the global consensus of scientists worldwide? He's got to be.

Simon Southerton [00:51:34] Well, he's got a.

John Dehlin [00:51:35] He's got to be like a G.

Simon Southerton [00:51:37] You know, it's a Bachelor of science degree, but he's. It's mostly in psychology.

John Dehlin [00:51:41] He doesn't have, like 50 PhDs to be able to attack all geography and geology, physics and.

Simon Southerton [00:51:50] No, no.

John Dehlin [00:51:51] Okay, I'm sorry.

Simon Southerton [00:51:53] So, I mean, this is a claim he makes. The Universal Model includes more natural law and scientific truth than any other scientific work ever published. That's a pretty bold claim. Yeah, and it's a. It's a claim that irritates Brigham Young University. I know because the student magazine at Brigham Young University publicized a conference somewhere where Dean Sessions was going to present the Universal Model. And they wrote a complaint. The geology department wrote a very, very firmly worded complaint about this. Advertising, this nonsense. This is crack pottery at the extreme.

John Dehlin [00:52:52] One of our listeners writes, why do you need a degree if the Holy Ghost can just give you the truth? From Bradley. Thank you, Bradley, for that.

Simon Southerton [00:53:01] So, I mean, if anyone wants to look into this a bit further, I should look at some work that Barry Bickmore, a professor of geology at byu, has published on his own blog. He's actually met Dean Sessions. So Dean Sessions came in to discuss some of his geology claims. And one of them is that he believes that the Earth is sitting on the core of the Earth is water. Can you see where this is going?

John Dehlin [00:53:33] Well, Carabarella, my co producer, my co host on Mormon stories, she attended the Book of Mormon what geography conference. What's it called? Gerardo? Just a month or two ago.

Gerardo Sumano [00:53:47] Yeah, I'm not sure the name, but.

John Dehlin [00:53:50] And she captured this video of these. Of these speakers with large audiences claiming that the core of the Earth was water. Not molten lava.

Simon Southerton [00:54:00] No, magma.

John Dehlin [00:54:01] Yeah, not magma.

Simon Southerton [00:54:05] I haven't read his book and I never will because I don't have the time. They're two and a half thousand pages, these three books. These are enormous, filled with illustrations and whatever. But can you imagine why you need to have the middle of the Earth?

John Dehlin [00:54:21] I mean, tell us, what's that? Because that's where the. Where else does the water go? Because basically, if the Earth could be covered with water. Yeah, but then the water has to recede. I mean, I Guess Heavenly Father could take the water up in like a, kind of like a cyclone swirly thing. But absent of that, you need the water to go somewhere. Right.

Gerardo Sumano [00:54:43] I think the Bible mentions that the,

John Dehlin [00:54:45] the, the water recedes into the earth,

Gerardo Sumano [00:54:47] that the water came from. From below the earth. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:54:51] Okay, so it's got to be there. It's got to be full of water, basically.

Simon Southerton [00:54:58] But look, you know, there are lots of people that have. But, but it is interesting. I went for 10 years not realizing. So Rodney Melden kept this close to his chest. He didn't. Maybe when he was at conferences he would be a bit more open about it. But anything he published, it didn't. He didn't sort of come out as a Young Earth Creationism, a Young Earth Creationist. But it's quite clear that he has been. He's been a Young Earth Creationist from day dot all the way. And you know, in many ways, while he has built the Heartland theory on the X2A lineage, the entire thing is built on the Universal Model. So I mean, Dean Sessions, he's the man. He's the man that came up with the science that underpins this whole thing. So.

Gerardo Sumano [00:56:02] And he's part of this foundation or this organization called the Firm.

Simon Southerton [00:56:06] Yeah, he's heavily involved with that. So he now speaks. Dean Sessions now speaks at most of the, the Firm foundation conferences on the Universal Model. And I mean, he's a. I think he's a, a academic at a college somewhere in Utah where they teach the Universal Model to a small number of kids. Okay. But yeah, so anyway, I think. And, and the next. I mean, the, the method that Dean uses. Yeah, that's the, the website.

John Dehlin [00:56:44] So there's Dean Sessions website. Yeah, he's the author of the Universal Model.

Simon Southerton [00:56:50] Yeah. And Barry Bickmore. I've got a link on. There'll be on your website a link to, to Barry Bickmore's response or his interaction with Dean Sessions. And I agree entirely with, with Barry's assessment of, of what's going on here. Dean Sessions is a Gish galloper. If we go to the next slide, it's now back, back slide here. Gish. There was a guy named Dean Dwayne Gish. He died about 10 years ago, but he was a, a Young Earth Creationist, but. And a very, very successful debater against scientists. And the approach that he would use was he would just throw. He'd go into a debate and he would just throw the opponent a whole pile of really weak and dubious claims across a whole lot of scientific Disciplines. And it was an effect, very, very effective debating technique because his opponents, well, firstly it made him look really impressive. It made the Gish. The gish. It made him look like he was an expert across a whole pile of fields. But his opponents were just completely swamped because usually there was. If somebody makes a false or specious claim, they can do that in about five seconds. But to repeat, to respond effectively to that claim often takes you 10 minutes.

Gerardo Sumano [00:58:37] Yeah.

Simon Southerton [00:58:38] So somebody just bangs out 15 of these specious claims. The opponents are completely overwhelmed because they feel like they've got to respond to every one of them in order to answer him. And so they're just, they don't have enough time. They don't have the expertise to comment on all of the different fields of research. But more often than not they just don't have the energy and like me, I don't have the energy to read Dean Sessions books because there'll be just thousands and thousands of these weak, specious claims and I'm not an expert in all those fields. So

John Dehlin [00:59:17] check mate. Checkmate, Simon.

Simon Southerton [00:59:19] So I'm done.

John Dehlin [00:59:20] Checkmate. Dean Sessions wins by volume alone.

Simon Southerton [00:59:24] That's right. I'm sunk.

John Dehlin [00:59:27] Ironically, Fairmormon claims Jeremy Runnels is a Gish Galloper with the CES letter. But that's, that's another podcast. But I just, I decided had to note that. Okay, so Sessions.

Simon Southerton [00:59:41] Well, I will point out there is another Gish Galloper that I'm going to mention later on.

John Dehlin [00:59:45] Okay.

Simon Southerton [00:59:46] And that is John Sorensen Johnson is a enormous Gish galloper because he's, he's the, you know, he's the architect of the limited geography theory. A little bit about, about that a bit later on. So we go to the next slide. I think this is, this is the elephant in the room. Okay. This is the, the underlying problem that, you know, I think the younger creationists are struggling with. Human evolution is a very, is a huge threat to the idea that the human race has been on the earth for 7,000 years. But as quite a well respected BYU professor says to his first year students every year, this is a something I've heard long grapevine, but I'm sure it's true. He would tell all of his new first year biology students that evolution is a fact. Get over it. That was the very first thing he would tell the biology students coming in because they would all come in, the vast majority of them believing that The Earth was 7,000 years old. But there's just abundant evidence for evolution and DNA, which wasn't Even known about when the theory of evolution was first advanced by Charles Darwin. The most powerful evidence of evolution and in fact the mechanism of how evolution occurs is all written in our DNA. It explains everything very beautifully. And this slide, I think shows you how beautifully DNA under, you know, underpins evolution. If you look at animals that look much more closely related to us, they have much more gene homology. So we have striking DNA homology, gene homology with many other animals on the planet, even fish. So. But also a degree of DNA homology. So there's a bit of a difference there. Genesis is a long stretch of DNA which codes for a protein, so that they refer to that as a gene, and that's gene homology on the left. But DNA homology also really confirms our very close relationship with other primates and other animals. But I've just listed some primates there. The percentage of DNA homology. So if we were to pick a random person and compare their genome to yours, John, it would be around about 99.95% homologous

John Dehlin [01:02:29] male and female. That's male and female.

Simon Southerton [01:02:32] Yeah. Well, if you, if you exclude the. Yeah, I mean, if you. That's right. We just ignore the Y chromosome for a moment, but that's. Yeah. So it's about 99.95% identity. So 0.05% is still a lot of mutations. It's probably about 6 million,

Speaker D [01:02:54] but.

Simon Southerton [01:02:55] Yeah. So but if we go to our next close relative, that's Neanderthal.

John Dehlin [01:03:00] Yeah.

Simon Southerton [01:03:01] And we all carry around about 2 to 3 or 4% of Neanderthal DNA in our genomes. It's about 99.7%. Another ancient relative, Denisovans, is similar to Neanderthal in terms of how different it is from us. And we've interbred with Denisovans as well. There's a bit less there, but as you can see, the further we get down the list, that homology just sort of drops away. But DNA is just, you know, it's. Evolution gets lampooned in the church and occasionally you'll get, I mean, obviously our, the current prophet has mocked evolution fairly recently, but if you go to byu, it's just, it's widely accepted. But the other thing

Gerardo Sumano [01:04:00] I would say, BYU provo. My experience going to byu, Idaho was. I saw someone on, on the comments. Let me, let me pull it up

John Dehlin [01:04:12] really quick while you're looking that up her. I'm just going to say for the, for the listeners who can't see the slide, what the slide basically says is that we share 60% DNA with chickens, 71% with fish, you know, 80% with mice, 80% with cows, 90% with cats. And then when you start getting into the primates like gorillas, chimp, chimpanzees, etc. We're talking 98 plus percent. And I think, Simon, just the really simple conclusion there is that is that it just makes just way too much sense that if animals get more and more human like that the DNA is, is more and more similar. It means it's just another of so many evidences that we kind of likely share a lineage that is best explained by evolution. Yeah. And the fossil record has these animals existing for hundreds of thousands of years in lower life forms. And so again that, that's going to be bolstering the, the billion year, multi billion year Earth model, not, not the 6,7000 year Earth model. Right, Simon?

Simon Southerton [01:05:25] Yeah. Okay.

John Dehlin [01:05:26] What were you saying, Gerardo?

Gerardo Sumano [01:05:28] Just my experience at BYU Idaho taking science class. It was closer to what Bradley's experience was. He says in BYU science classes they would put up quotes on both sides of evolution and say you could think any way you wanted in good company. It didn't matter because it, it's not a saving ordinance. That was my experience going to BYU Idaho and taking a science class. They would show us like the old quotes by Joseph Feeling Smith by Spencer W. Kimball and then show us what the scientific community believes. And then they would show, make us read as well like some, I think there was, I, I don't know if he was a general authority, but maybe someone related to current President Eyring who believed in evolution. And then they, they would make us read his like just his arguments pro evolution. And then kind of like just say like you can believe whatever, whatever you want. But yeah, yeah, it was not as, as, as like hard cut like yeah, this is, this is what happened kind of thing.

Simon Southerton [01:06:51] Yeah. I think it's possible, in fact, it's probably more than likely that it's. BYU has become more conservative. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:06:59] Because when I, when I was at BYU in the early 90s, Bill Bradshaw was there in the biology department. I don't think there's any, any biology class or science class anywhere at BYU Provo. And in the late 80s, early 90s that would have done that. Gerardo. There might have been some religious professors that would do that. But by the time I was at BYU in the late 80s, early 90s, evolution was broadly accepted in biology classes as being, as being valid.

Simon Southerton [01:07:31] Yeah. And that would be the same with all of the current academics in their academic Work. So if they're saying that in, you know, the sorts of things you're saying, Harado and current lectures, what they're saying there, they're just putting up that. Because they've been told to put that up. Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:07:49] And it shows how extreme byu, Idaho, you know, traditionally has been in the church. It's.

Simon Southerton [01:07:54] Yes, yeah, yeah, yep.

John Dehlin [01:07:56] And it's also where Chad Dabel and Lori Vallow, like, centered their behavior. Like, it's, it's a. It's a really rough spot for the church.

Simon Southerton [01:08:05] Yeah. So. Yeah, so as. Yeah, that's a good quote from the current prophet.

Church Leaders, Evolution, and the Heartland Model

Gerardo Sumano [01:08:12] Yeah, so we have a quote here. It's a meme right. From Mist and Sunday. And it's just. It's a quote from Russell Nelson from 2007. Well, where he's. It was an interview at the research center, it says, a Pew Research Center. He says, to think that man evolved from one species to another is, to me, incomprehensible. Man has always been man. Dogs have always been dogs. Monkeys have always been monkeys. It's just the way genetics work.

John Dehlin [01:08:51] Wow, Simon. That's how genetics works.

Simon Southerton [01:08:56] I mean, they've done some, you know, there's a Russian scientist who basically evolved dogs from wolves or foxes. I can't remember what it was by just natural. By naturally selecting ones that were more tame and, you know, better behaved and didn't bite his ham and they. When he fed them or whatever. So dogs have always been dogs. Oh, my goodness. I mean, dogs are amazing evidence for evolution. Look, you know, President Nelson was an amazing cardiologist, but he's completely ignorant when it comes to evolution. And I suspect he's probably not going to make any more statements about it. But, yeah, these are very problematic comments that obviously would irritate many of the scientists of people. Brigham Young University. But I think it illustrates the problem that the church has here. It's fine to get up over the pulpit and bash evolution at church. You don't get in trouble for that. But if he went along to Brigham Young University, you would never hear him say things like that. So you have this hypocrisy going on. You have the church saying one thing in public meetings and everyone's comfortable with it. The church is funding a university over here. We're filled with scientists that know that what they're saying in church isn't true. So I. It's just. Yeah, I think they've sort of created the problem in many ways. The. And you know, referring to the heartland theory, I think the church has also contributed to creating this, this, this heartland problem. But if we get back to DNA, the other thing, DNA tells us a great deal about how related we are. But it's also been amazing for revealing in very clear detail how humans have migrated around the world, particularly now that we've got capacity to isolate DNA from ancient bones that have been buried for tens, if not hundreds of thousands of years. And so there's now a very clear picture that's emerged of human migration around the planet. And DNA also enables, particularly now with genomic DNA, it enables scientists to determine roughly when humans arrived in particular areas.

Gerardo Sumano [01:11:35] Oh, I didn't know that. I didn't know that they could tell when they arrived.

Simon Southerton [01:11:38] Oh, yeah, like there's a beautiful study just published in the Pacific. You know how we had a chat about Polynesians a few months ago? Well, I think about a couple of weeks later, they published a paper where they looked, they isolated DNA. Well, they took DNA from all of these Polynesian populations in Eastern Polynesia. And by tracing the particular chunks of their chromosomes which get broken down each generation, they're able to look back and see when people arrived on a particular island. And they mapped out precisely when humans arrived on particular islands all the way through Eastern Polynesia. So they know almost to the decade when the Polynesians sailed to, say, Easter island or Hawaii and New Zealand and places like that. That's. So, yes. So DNA, particularly genomic DNA, that's been used quite a lot to determine the timing of arrival in particular areas. But, but for today's chat, I think it's worth taking a look back and seeing what. If you look at the next slide, how.

John Dehlin [01:12:54] Hey, Simon, do you mind if I just tell listeners what this slide actually says? Just because listeners won't be able to see. Basically says it's saying that we've been able to locate through genetic research and other research that humans existed in Africa around 200,000 years ago, or our ancestors, basically. And then you see that spreading into the Middle east by a hundred thousand years ago, spreading to Western Europe, well, spreading eastward to China around 70,000 years ago. And then there's a split off where it goes westward to western Europe around 40,000 years ago. And then you've got it going down into Australia 60,000 years ago, and then over into America, you know, let's just say Alaska around 25,000 years ago, and then into South America about 15,000 years ago. So it shows these really clear migrations that show a slow migration of the human population across the Earth in a very chronological way. But the big problem for the Book of Mormon is we've got, you know, if North Central and South America were preserved by God for his chosen people, and that's what the Book of Mormon claims, then people shouldn't be showing up in North Central South America until, you know, let's just say 1000 BC or 3000. Let's just say what, 3000 years ago? What's that?

Simon Southerton [01:14:30] Yeah, about 2.

Gerardo Sumano [01:14:32] I think it's 2000 before Christ.

John Dehlin [01:14:34] Well, 2000 years ago would be Christ. So Tower of Babel would be.

Simon Southerton [01:14:39] Yeah, so it's about three. I'm trying to think when the Jaredites claim I think that was 2000 B.C.

John Dehlin [01:14:46] okay, yeah, so then that'd be 4000 years ago. But, but that doesn't jive with, with, with humans entering North America 25,000 years ago and, and spreading down into South America 15,000 years ago. So, you know, I just wanted to make sure our listeners knew what that said. Okay, Simon, sorry.

Simon Southerton [01:15:04] Well, we've did some. There was a fascinating piece of research that was just published this year on these footprints that were discovered in. I'm trying to think of the state it was in. I think New Mexico or somewhere down there. Yeah. They discovered a whole series of footprints alongside the footprints of mammoths. And when they carbon dated seeds that had been pressed by those feet into the soil and then it was covered over, they were 23 to 22 to 23,000 years old. So it's, it's shifted back that entry Point from 15,000 to 25. It's now probably 25,000 years ago. They were in, they were actually in the Americas before the, the ice had blocked the migrations.

John Dehlin [01:16:02] And it's worth noting those who, who find the, those who like to mention the discovery of horse bones in the Americas, what they always fail to mention is that those horse bones date Back to like 12,000 years ago, which again is prior to the Bible, even allows for animals or humans potentially to exist. And so. Okay, sorry, just had to add that.

Simon Southerton [01:16:29] But yeah, DNA is very useful for tracing human ancestry, obviously. And I'm going to talk a bit about, I'll present some mitochondrial DNA evidence. So it's worth just sort of reviewing what mitochondrial DNA is and how it's used to trace ancestry. So this slide shows a typical pedigree chart with eight great grandparents, right down to two parents and then siblings. And all, all of us carry mitochondrial DNA. And it's a small circular molecule of DNA that's present not in our nucleus where all the rest of our DNA is. But out in the cytoplasm and mitochondria are small compartments that generate the energy for the cell. And mitochondrial DNA, because it's such a small molecule compared to our genome, our genome is enormous. Like it's a duplicate copy of 3 billion base pairs. The mitochondrial genome is only about 13,500 base pairs. So as DNA technology advanced, it was the easiest thing to study for probably a couple of decades. And then genomic studies have come on stream in the last decade or two. So mitochondrial DNA we all inherit from, because when the sperm fertilizes the egg, the mitochondrial DNA outside of the nucleus of the egg is what is carried on in the zygote and the developing embryo. And that mitochondrial DNA is always inherited from our mothers. So a father doesn't pass on his mitochondrial DNA. It's the mitochondrial DNA of the mother. So it's a simple uniparental DNA molecule which is passed generation to generation. And every now and then there's a little spelling mistake in somebody's mitochondrial DNA and then that is passed on to their offspring. Every time a new spelling mistake occurs or a mutation, that's a branch point in what then builds into a mitochondrial genome family tree. So some of the first mitochondrial DNA studies that were done in humans were done in. So that the mitochondrial genome was first sequenced in 1980. It was about a decade later that some of the first mitochondrial studies were done. Looking at ancestry of humans across the world. And a paper published by Theodore Scher in 1990 and then many other papers subsequently has revealed the ancestry of Native Americans. And if you look at the next slide, this shows some of the data, the accumulated data. That's okay, I've just got a low battery warning on my, on my. Oh, no, computer, I need to duck down.

John Dehlin [01:19:36] Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. I'm gonna go ahead while Simon is doing that and just thank all our listeners for, for their comments. We've got plenty of people who are joining us and commenting, and those comments are valuable. Okay. Simon, are you back?

Simon Southerton [01:19:56] Yeah, all good. The little green. I think it's charging. Yeah, it's charging.

John Dehlin [01:19:59] Okay, good. We don't want you cutting out probably. So we've got Native American mitochondrial DNA.

DNA Evidence and Native American Origins from Asia

Simon Southerton [01:20:08] Yeah. So there are five lineages amongst Native Americans that enter the Americas from Asia. That's the A, B, C and D veneers. So this, that gives you an indication of how early this was in the mitochondrial DNA studies because they decided they're going to name them by the letters of the Alphabet. First paper Published. They took A, B, C and D. The X2A lineage was a little bit, was sort of in the initial year or so. They were sort of working out where it sat. But now they've, they've confirmed that it's been in the Americas for a long time and it's, it's a, a founding lineage amongst American Indians. So 99 plus percent of contemporary or living Native Americans from right across the Americas have a mitochondrial lineage that originated in Asia. And a very small proportion, about 1% or less.

Gerardo Sumano [01:21:13] Can you say what, what percent again?

Simon Southerton [01:21:16] 99%.

Gerardo Sumano [01:21:17] 99% of Native Americans come from Asia? Is that what you're saying?

Simon Southerton [01:21:22] No, that's 99% of mitochondrial DNA of the individuals tested, 99% of them have a mitochondrial lineage that's derived from Asia. So the scientists interview the people in most cases to determine that they have no European ancestry. But some scientists, maybe not as careful, but there are also people who, who have ancestry, European ancestry that they're unaware of. Because Europeans have been in the Americas for, you know, 500 years, it's not surprising that you get a very small proportion that have a European lineage or an African lineage. So.

John Dehlin [01:22:04] Right.

Simon Southerton [01:22:04] And in many cases when they've looked, delved more deeply, they find that they're a European lineage that's common in France or particularly Spain and Portugal. Then if we look in the second table there, the pre Columbian individuals, there's 1200 pre Columbian. So they've taken DNA from ancient remains and determine their Native American. Sorry. To determine their mitochondrial DNA lineage. And they're all, they're all from, descended from Asia. So this is an enormous amount of work that's been done over the last 30 years and there's really no sign of a Middle Eastern DNA presence. And Simon, sorry.

John Dehlin [01:22:55] And if, and Simon, I don't want to cut you off. Let me finish your thought and then I want to ask you a question.

Simon Southerton [01:23:00] I was just going to hop onto the next slide.

John Dehlin [01:23:02] Okay, so if, if a, if a Heartland theory person that, that didn't understand what you were saying, wanted to kind of interpret the slide, they would say, okay, well that 1% is the opening. So if you can find 1%, because the book of Mormon doesn't necessarily need to be over a very large geography and because DNA can, you know, be swamped or disappear over time, we only need 1% of Israeli DNA to be even available. Those are the modern day Lamanites that Joseph Smith was talking about and they're the ones that have ancestors that come from the Middle East. What would you say in response to that?

Simon Southerton [01:23:46] Yeah, I mean, that's, that's clearly what the, the heartlanders are claiming.

John Dehlin [01:23:50] Okay.

Simon Southerton [01:23:52] But as we're going to talk quite a bit about the X2A lineage in a moment, so.

John Dehlin [01:23:58] Okay, we'll hold off on that then

Gerardo Sumano [01:24:00] because, because I think they're claiming that they've found it. Right. Like the, the, the, the whole claim is that they have found the, the evidence to prove that.

Simon Southerton [01:24:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:24:12] Yeah. Okay.

Simon Southerton [01:24:13] Okay, we'll, we'll look at that in fairly close detail.

John Dehlin [01:24:17] Okay. All right.

Simon Southerton [01:24:19] Yeah. So, so with that in mind with the mitochondrial DNA evidence, let's go back and look at this. BYU's limited geography. So as recently as 10 years ago, they are linking the Mayan civilization with the people of the Book of Mormon. And the DNA has been equally unkind to the LDS claims that the Maya civilization would carry some would include some of the descendants of Lehi. I mentioned earlier about Gish Galloping and Mormon's Codex, I would classify as a classic example of Gish Galloping. A parallel is basically a poor. Is a weak evidence. So currently there is no scientific evidence that Israelites beat Columbus to the Americas. No reliable. There's plenty of dubious claims and hoaxes and frauds, but there's no scientific evidence that's accepted outside of Vinland in North America. So that's Vinland off the coast of Canada just weeks ago. They determined by radiocarbon dating of tree rings on the buildings were built there by Norse sailors that they colonized it exactly 1,000 years ago. So that's the earliest European arrival. But they, they don't appear to have stayed very long. And they, they left not long after and the settlement was abandoned. Yeah. So, but yeah, if we get back to the. The next slide shows the DNA evidence that some of the DNA evidence related to the Mayan population because it's quite a lot of the work that has been done has been done on the mine population. If you look at ancient mines, sorry, the total mine population, number of mines that have had their mitochondrial DNA lineage determined, there's 1,108 individuals that have been tested. Of those 1108, 1103 were carrying an Asian mitochondrial lineage, four were carrying an African lineage, and one was carrying a European lineage. That European lineage was an H lineage, which is very common in Spain or Portugal. So if you look at ancient individuals, there's 138 individuals have been tested and all 138 have an Asian mitochondrial DNA lineage. There's a map there of the Yucatan Peninsula and Just indicating a number of the populations, a scattering of the populations that were included in the testing. And I don't have a slide to show this, but the whole genomes of several Mayan individuals have been tested. And if there was European DNA or if there was Jewish DNA in their ancestry from a long time ago, just like they've been able to detect Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA, it would be very easy to detect it. So.

John Dehlin [01:28:04] So, Simon, if I'm understanding the two previous, the two, you know, kind of the two DNA slides you just showed that if they go back to the bones of ancient Native Americans, they're literally finding no European or African DNA at all.

Gerardo Sumano [01:28:22] I think these are living people.

John Dehlin [01:28:23] No, no, no, I'm. I started with ancient.

Simon Southerton [01:28:26] They're the bones of ancient individuals.

John Dehlin [01:28:28] The bones of ancient individuals are showing zero African or European DNA. And if you look at sort of modern, you know, Native Americans and. Or Mayans, they're only finding one, you know, 1 to 5% European or African DNA. But the explanation would be that somehow in their ancestry, after 1500 AD there would have been some African or European influences that crept into their. To their ancestry. And that would explain why we're finding a tiny trace of African European DNA in modern, you know, Mayans or Native Americans. Is that what you're saying, Simon?

Simon Southerton [01:29:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:29:12] Okay. All right.

Simon Southerton [01:29:13] Yeah, it's about 1%. Okay. In the modern individuals, working with ancient DNA is more challenging because you have to. You have this problem of the individuals who are. Because the amount of DNA in the ancient remains is so tiny, just a little bit of skin or dandruff, you know, contaminating that would completely swamp it. So. And they have to be extremely careful when they're handling these bones to avoid any contamination with the modern individual. So they would be, you know, to be honest, they would. They would. Normally, what they would do is they would sequence the genome, the mitochondrial genome of all the people in the lab that are working with that sample. And if there were any individuals that were, you know, if they find any contaminant mitochondrial genomes, it's more than. It'll match up with somebody in the lab, and they would throw that out. But, yeah, the ancient samples, they're all. They're all showing mitochondrial DNA coming from Asia. And it's the same with the genome. The entire genome is. Is backing that up.

Ancient DNA Contamination and Scientific Consensus

John Dehlin [01:30:28] And that's what archaeological and linguistic and, you know, all the other science, scientific disciplines also would. Would validate that sort of, those sort of migration patterns from Asia into the Americas. Right. It's not just genetics, it's all the other disciplines as well. Linguistics.

Simon Southerton [01:30:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:30:49] Archaeology, et cetera. Okay, so now, Rodney Meldrum.

Meldrum's Response to DNA Evidence

Simon Southerton [01:30:54] We're back to the. The main topic of the day, the star of the show. Rodney? Yeah, as you mentioned before, I mean, obviously this. The DNA evidence has created enormous problems for. Not only for the Heartland model, but for the Mesoamerican model. And, you know, BYU scientists, it's much. They're more constrained in how much they can twist or distort scientists. And to be fair to them, they haven't generally distorted the science. They just only report things that are positive, and they don't really present the overall picture of how the. Of what the DNA is saying. So if you can't twist the science too much, the only other thing you can twist is scripture. And so the apologists have twisted the Book of Mormon narrative as much as they can to accommodate the science. And this is why you have this. The limited geography now is just basically a tiny group of people mixed with the Mayans dominated their civilization for a thousand years and cleared off. And, I mean, that is just. And Rodney saw this, and he's just shocked. So the DNA was. He's convinced the DNA isn't a problem because the book one's true. And he comes along and he sees the limited geography, and it's.

John Dehlin [01:32:32] It's ridiculous.

Simon Southerton [01:32:34] It's absolutely shocking. It's absolutely spiritually ridiculous. And so that's when he jumped on the X2 DNA, because it was initially he saw one or two research papers when they were a little bit less clear about it. But there are papers from 2000 published in the year 2000, looked in detail at the X lineage. There's a whole paper on it. So the scientists knew exactly what was going on. They knew that the lineage wasn't present in Asia. But scientists, including Hugo Perego, subsequently looked at many X2A lineages in the Americas and determined that it arrived just at the same time as all the other lineages. So it was never really in doubt. But once he latched onto it, he has not shifted. And so he's.

Gerardo Sumano [01:33:28] And what are Rodney Meldrum's qualifications doing now?

Simon Southerton [01:33:35] I think he did a marketing degree at Utah State University for about a year, but after that, he was involved in. He had his own company. I think it was High Country Soups or foods or something. And for a number of years. And then.

John Dehlin [01:33:57] So here's.

Simon Southerton [01:33:58] Okay, Y2K made. Sank it, because they were expecting. They had huge orders because people were preppers, were Collecting their soup, their dried soups. And. And Y2K didn't turn into the catastrophe where everyone is expecting. And it went under. And it was not long after then that he worked for about six or seven years with Dean Sessions as his senior research director or manager, and that was basically photocopying hundreds or thousands of research papers.

John Dehlin [01:34:35] Yeah. His biography from the firm foundation meant. Mentions no formal education at all. It just talks of. Yeah. His work as. Right. Working on these books and. Yeah. President and CEO of High Country Gourmet and director of business development for a medical learning management system, but nothing about actual education. I should add that I. I talked to Rodney before the airing of this show. We have invited him to come on Mormon Stories podcast. He said that he might do a response to this, but he declined to come on today's show. And I asked him about the. The finances and his income. And I'll. I'll mention that later, but okay. Yeah, anyway, yeah, we. To answer your question, doesn't sound like he has any scientific education.

Simon Southerton [01:35:31] No, but he, he presents. He. For years he has presented himself as a lead scientific researcher on a. On a scientific textbook. He never mentioned it was the universal model until about four or five years ago. So he went for about a decade presenting himself as a lead researcher on a scientific textbook.

Gerardo Sumano [01:35:53] Yeah. And let me just re. Try to reinstate what you said and correct me if I'm wrong, but if I understood correctly, you're saying Hugo Perego looked at these X lineage or DNA stuff and he concluded that there was nothing there. There was nothing that would support the Book of Mormon. Pretty much it was just confirming what scientists have always thought. And then Rodney Meldrum looked at the same evidence, but then he concluded the opposite and said, no, actually, this X lineage DNA thing actually supports the Book of Mormon, and Hugo Perego is wrong and everyone else is wrong, and I got it right. Is that kind of what's happening?

Simon Southerton [01:36:43] Yeah, I mean, let's be clear about this. Hugo Perego has published more X2DNA, X2A DNA research than any other scientists.

John Dehlin [01:36:53] Okay, so he is. Well, let's just start there.

Simon Southerton [01:36:56] He's done the research.

John Dehlin [01:36:57] He is a scientist. Right. Hugo Perego is a scientist, right?

Gerardo Sumano [01:37:01] Yeah, he's a big scientist. Like, he, he has pretty good, like, pretty big qualifications and I think pretty involved with the gospel topic essay about DNA on the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:37:12] Yeah, that's the other point, that if we want to know which side the church chose, we know they chose Hugo to write their DNA in the Book of Mormon. Essay that was published by the church that shows what side the church is on, which is the Mesoamerican.

Simon Southerton [01:37:29] Yeah, but they're a little bit off the rails, according to Rodney. They're a bit off the rails at the moment by the science.

John Dehlin [01:37:37] Yeah, yeah.

Simon Southerton [01:37:40] But look it, it's. He landed in very fertile ground because not only was their Dean Sessions, you know, providing the groundwork for this, he very soon linked up with Wayne May. And Wayne May has publishes a magazine called Ancient American since about 1993. And basically his magazine features an awful lot of. His magazine is devoted to proving that Europeans reached the Americas hundreds of years before Christ. And in fact, if you look at the dates that he often puts up in his presentations, it aligns perfectly with the Book of Mormon period. So there are many, many Americans over the last couple hundred years have been highly motivated to find evidence to place to create fraudulent evidence that, that, you know, the French or the Jews or Assyrians or somebody got to America because it's all exciting stuff. It's sort of conspiracy theory sort of stuff. And so a lot of the, A lot of people have created fakes. A very famous collection of fakes is the Michigan Relics. This is a large number of fake engravings on slate and in copper and stone that were planted in places all over. About seven or eight counties in Michigan. And the church, some church members really taken by these because they supported the Book of Mormon. And eventually James E. Talmage was sent to look at, to participate in one of the digs. He went over there and he found they, they found some of these and he, he declared them a fake back then. And then several decades after him, Milton Hunter, a general authority of the church, purchased these and they were brought to, to Salt Lake. I'm not sure where they were kept, either BYU or somewhere. So these Michigan relics were purchased by the church. And he promoted these for years. And then after he died, they sort of sat there on shelves for a number of years. And then another. A couple of academics looked at them and they were found to be frauds again 100 years later. Yeah. And they, they donated them to the. His Michigan Historical Society. So now these relics are all on display in Michigan, but Wayne May is convinced that some of these relics are real. Yeah. So when you have a really big hotspot of fakes, Michigan is famous for them to then say, oh, some of them are real. Let's, you know, yeah, they've been universe like the fraud. Is that obvious that scientists have, have matched the, the slate. Okay. The, the, the. They've matched it to particular quarries that are adjacent in the area. So quarries that have been developed in the last. In historic time, you know, in our time, since Europeans have arrived in the Americas. So they've matched the thickness and the variety of the slate to the Michigan quarries nearby. The copper is modern copper, that sort of thing. So there's such obvious fakes that even, you know, anyone that's sort of remotely unbiased will see that, yes, these fakes, these are frauds.

Fake Michigan Relics and Fringe Archaeology

Speaker D [01:41:43] Right.

Simon Southerton [01:41:43] But many of these are. They're convinced. Rodney and his group are convinced. So he linked up with Wayne May, but he's also hooked up with Digital Legend Press, which is owned by Boyd Tuttle and other LDS scholars who I think, or pseudo scholars that have very deep pockets and they've produced these amazing documentaries. That documentary that you referred to earlier on, the Lost Civilizations of North America, this was Produced in. In 2010. And they got, you know, they got all these scientists excited about this and they interviewed them all. Brad Lepper and Deborah Bolnick, some very famous scientists that have worked on the woodland cultures in North America. And they interviewed them all and then they went away and produced this. This documentary. So I think this was a case of. Clearly a case of false pretenses. They set these scientists up thinking that they were, you know, that Digital Legend was, you know, the producing company was genuinely interested in the true story of the ancestry of these people. Yeah. But then they. They misquoted and they took them out of context and they were so upset. The scientists were so upset. They published three rebuttals and complaints about the. And I've got the links on the website where you can find these complaints. Yeah, yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:43:20] Do you want to go to the next slide, John? Because I think we're about to get to that slide where he has the. One of the rebuttals from the. From the scientists.

John Dehlin [01:43:30] Okay.

Simon Southerton [01:43:31] Oh, okay.

Gerardo Sumano [01:43:36] Yeah. So this is kind of like what.

Simon Southerton [01:43:38] Yeah, to me is, as a scientist, I find this really quite offensive to be claiming the scientists who have devoted their careers to the. Studying the archaeological remains of North American Indians, to claim that they're trying to hide how, you know, how advanced they were and, you know, to claim that these scientists are deceitful, these deceitful archaeologists.

John Dehlin [01:44:11] Simon, let's read the quote just for people that can't see the slide.

Simon Southerton [01:44:14] Okay. This is a quote from Rodney Meldrum that's currently on his firm Foundation Annotated Book of Mormon blog, which I accessed yesterday. Quote, they hid the story of the Native Americans as Being wonderful, as being a wonderful spiritual people who are far more advanced than intellectuals want to tell us anything that doesn't fit the current reality of these deceitful archaeologists they declare as a hoax or fake.

John Dehlin [01:44:46] So it's this conspiracy mindset that somehow the scientific community wants to, wants to hide from us that, you know, Native Americans were spiritual or whatever. They need to, whatever Meldrum wants us to believe about Native Americans being Book of Mormon. Like he says there's a conspiracy in the scientific community to hide any evidence, you know, that North American Native Americans were Book of Mormon. Like. Right?

Simon Southerton [01:45:15] Yeah. All of the scientists there have done a Bachelor of Science at university. They've done a PhD. So they have spent probably a decade of their life dedicated to their field. And they're working because they love finding the truth. And to accuse them of hiding the truth, to accuse them of being deceitful, it's just ridiculous. It's just utterly ridiculous and it's offensive. And Melden Water take this off his website. And they need. But this is a common theme. I was just watching a video that Wayne May produce, Jonathan Neville, a whole lot of them, they're always referring to the scientists as, as dishonest and hiding up, hiding the true history of, of the woodland cultures, the Adena and the Hopewell, in order to hide how impressive they were. I mean, it's, it's also incredibly racist. Really. This is, they're essentially claiming, because, you know, this is going back to the mound milder myth, mound builder myth. They're essentially claiming that scientists are hiding the presence of Jews who had migrated to America and, and inspired these earthworks. That's what they're claiming. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:46:50] And what's racist about that, Simon? What's, what's racist? What's racist about that?

Simon Southerton [01:46:57] They're claiming that in order to build those amazing structures, they needed the input of Europeans. They needed Jewish people to come over there and inspire them.

John Dehlin [01:47:10] White people with any white people claims.

Simon Southerton [01:47:12] In Mesoamerica with the mines, John Sorensen and BYU and the farms crowd, it's racist to claim that Jews were necessary to inspire the Mayan culture to come to flourish and become so amazing.

John Dehlin [01:47:27] And that's, that's, that's what the, the mound builder myth, you know, was claiming in the 1700s.

Gerardo Sumano [01:47:33] If you, if you go to the next slide. Actually, John, that's part of. Oh, no, sorry, the next one after that, we'll go back to that one. Yeah, that, that's the response from the, these scientists who, from what I understand, Simon, they're Not Mormon, right?

Simon Southerton [01:47:50] No.

John Dehlin [01:47:51] What is this? What is this? What is this article?

Gerardo Sumano [01:47:55] So this is the response because Simon was talking about the dvd, the, and the video that Rot Melron produced and about this evidence. And he brought in this four scientists who had spent several years of their career studying this stuff.

Simon Southerton [01:48:18] And he brought experts. They're experts on the North American woodland cultures.

Gerardo Sumano [01:48:25] Right.

Simon Southerton [01:48:25] They were all interviewed for the dvd, were many other upsiders who were upset, but they didn't. They probably chose not to put their name to this because, you know, the scientific community, they'll get. There's lots of Mormons in the scientific community and quite a lot of scientists are concerned about what impact that might have on the career. You never know who's going to review your next grant application, that sort of thing. So they felt so badly about how they'd been misunderstood, mis portrayed that they published three rebuttals.

Gerardo Sumano [01:49:03] Yeah. And that the, the information they shared was used to, to support a false claim. That's, that's pretty much what they're saying. But right now that we're talking about this racist claim of the mountain builder myth and all that stuff. If you read the conclusion. John, can you, can you read that?

John Dehlin [01:49:21] Yeah, yeah, I can. In the past, many scholars have pointed to a sometimes explicitly racist agenda behind the claims of diffusionists who argue that the glories of Native American civilizations were achieved only through borrowing from various Old World groups. The producers of the lost civilizations of North America. That's Rodney Meldrum's dvd. Right. And the diffusionists they feature in their documentary turn this argument on its head by suggesting that it is instead those mainstream scholars who are the real racists because they deny Native Americans their role in an already globalized world of the early centuries of the Common Era. However, the only support for this picture of Native American old world interactions 2000 years ago comes from resurrected frauds and distorted history. There's no credible archeological or genetic evidence to suggest that any Old World peoples migrated to the Americas after the initial incursion from Siberia prior to the tentative forays of the Norse Beginning around 1000 CE, which is after, you know, after Christ, basically, other than limited contacts between Siberia and the American Arctic.

Simon Southerton [01:50:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:50:50] And it also says DNA science apparently settles well. No, no, I'll stop there. Okay, go ahead, keep going, guys.

Gerardo Sumano [01:50:57] Yeah, it's just, it's super interesting that they even acknowledge that this like racist idea, right. That the, that Native Americans couldn't have built this civilizations are done this stuff without borrowing from the Old World.

Simon Southerton [01:51:13] It's, it's the. I mean, John Sorenson, a professor of anthropology at byu, was a diffusionist, okay? And so that underlies. And diffusionism is racism.

John Dehlin [01:51:27] And again, diffusionism is. Tell us, tell us one more, tell us one more time what diffusionism is.

Simon Southerton [01:51:33] It's the idea that pretty much all of the major advances in civilization stem from ideas that were developed in the Middle east, basically the cradle of civilization. And, you know, you couldn't have a pyramid in the. That had to be a link between the American pyramids and the pyramid of Egypt. It's actually a fairly simple thing. If you build a four walled structure, three wall structures, pretty complicated, four wall structures, and you want to build it tall, tends to turn into a pyramid, doesn't it? So it's. Yeah, it's. It's that sort of idea. And that's pervasive throughout all of the. I mean, Mormon's Codex by John Sorensen is. Is basically diffusionism writ large in a huge book. And it's been roundly rejected by. By modern science.

The Zarahemla Dig and Heartland Claims

Gerardo Sumano [01:52:34] Right.

Simon Southerton [01:52:35] But if we get back to, you know, Rodney, this particular DVD that they produce, if you go back. Yeah, stick. Okay, stay with that slide. That DVD that they've produced would have been incredibly popular. They would have made a lot, an awful lot of money out of it. But somebody had to finance the production of that dvd. It was very professionally done. That Lost Civilizations in North America documentary aired on tv. So somebody's paying for that. So somebody's got deep pockets, and they've even got enough money to buy land and do archaeological digs. So now these people, now the Heartland group, are involved in doing lidar as we speak. They're doing lidar surveys of land around where they think the Temple of Zarahemla is. And this is a dig on the opposite side of the Mississippi river from Nauvoo. So they had lidar images that suggested there was something underground. Purchased. They went and purchased 13 acres, 13.7 acres of land from a farmer. $300,000 they shelled out for the land. They went out there with buckets and spades. Looked like a regular archaeological dig. And they just dug deeper and deeper and deeper. And then towards the end of the day, second day, I think they brought in the bulldozers because they hadn't found anything.

John Dehlin [01:54:13] What were they hoping to find? What were they hope. What were they hoping to find, Simon?

Simon Southerton [01:54:18] Well, I think they had lidar images that suggested there might be a wall down there. They're hoping to find a wall of the Temple of Zarahemla. Now it's not surprising that's deep sand there because it's, you got the Mississippi, Mississippi River a couple of hundred yards away. And you know, prior to European settlement there would have been some pretty massive floods probably every year. So it's probably extremely deep sand.

John Dehlin [01:54:48] And what our listeners don't, what our listeners don't see are these photos of these kind of pasty white middle aged dudes with, with hats, with these red and yellow and blue buckets with shovels digging large holes. It's almost reminding me of what Joseph Smith would have been doing, treasure digging with his own white middle aged friends, you know, in New York back in the 1820s. But then they're pulling, they've got photos of bulldozers trying to dig and it's just inexplicable. They're spending a third, a third of a million dollars trying to dig for Zarahemla somewhere around the Mississippi.

Simon Southerton [01:55:32] I would say close to half a million would have been spent easily to

John Dehlin [01:55:35] try and dig for Zarahemla somewhere around

Simon Southerton [01:55:38] the, you know, planes flying over, all sorts of things.

Gerardo Sumano [01:55:43] Do we,

Simon Southerton [01:55:47] that hard hat? Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:55:50] Oh, the, the safari hat. Like a safari hat.

Simon Southerton [01:55:52] It's a safari hat. That's Wayne maybe. And he's using dowsing rods.

John Dehlin [01:55:57] Oh my gosh, are you kidding me?

Simon Southerton [01:55:59] Find something. And I don't know who the other individual is, but another guy over there has got a metal detector and he's going along the wall of the hole trying to find some sort of metal objects. I mean, if you do it, I'm surprised they didn't find anything because they buried it all over and it all went, all of this was taken, These photos were taken, were published on the Heartland website and a, an archaeologist named Andy White collected all of these images and he's got it stored on his web, he's got a blog and he looks at pseudoarchaeology that's going, A lot of this stuff happens. People are out there digging to find things and he's published it and so we've got a very clear record of what went on. And they buried, they actually filled in the site and moved on and they took all the images from their web page. But he's quite concerned and I'm equally concerned because you know, what if they do lidar and they find a genuine, a genuinely interesting archaeological remains and then they go in with a team with bulldozers and backhoes with no training, they'll just, you know, they'll just destroy, they'll destroy. Very valuable.

Gerardo Sumano [01:57:20] Is this still Going on, Simon, like, are they still digging there?

Simon Southerton [01:57:25] Well, a couple of years ago, I know they had a web page where they're raising money for more of these sorts of things.

Gerardo Sumano [01:57:30] Did they find anything?

Simon Southerton [01:57:33] If you dig a hole in. I don't know. I don't know if they found anything in this particular dig. It looks very clean to me. It looks like a child's play sandpit. But I think if you do lidar over very fertile ground, like around the Mississippi river, because Native Americans have been living there for 15,000 years, you're going to find little because every time somebody builds a campfire and the charcoal, charcoal survives. Burnt charcoal survives very long periods of time. So when that gets buried, if you do lidar, you actually see hundreds and hundreds of these little spots from where there's been a fire in the soil. So it can pick up that sort of stuff. So, you know, if they do, if they look long enough, they're going to find a, you know, the remains of a palisaded fort or something. And yeah, just like they had done with the X2A, they'll find you.

Speaker D [01:58:32] Oh, yeah.

Simon Southerton [01:58:33] This is amazing evidence for Book of Mormons here because the Native Americans have lived there for 15,000 years. You know, they have left signs of their civilizations or campfires behind.

Gerardo Sumano [01:58:45] Right.

John Dehlin [01:58:45] This whole. This photo reminds me of the documentary behind the Curve, which is a documentary about modern flat earthers. And there's this point in the documentary where they. They set up these lasers, like, lasers like multi. Multi miles apart. To try another one. You want to try and demonstrate that. That there's no curvature on the earth. Because if you set up the lasers in just the right way and the beams connect, then you can show that there's no curvature on the earth and thus the earth is flat. And this is like the climax of the documentary kind of spoil alert. The lasers show that there's a curve in the earth and all these flat earthers are looking at each other and they're like, well, how do we explain these results?

Simon Southerton [01:59:32] We'll get back to you. I saw that. I love that documentary. That just doesn't compute. It's because they've got a fixed conclusion in their mind. And it's like it almost just throws out any evidence that will challenge it.

John Dehlin [01:59:52] Simon, I just have to also tell the story, and I don't mean to politicize this, but I'm not. I'm talking about medical issues, but not political issues. I have some friends that are emergency room doctors and they, they are seeing COVID patients come in to ER rooms in the United States. And these COVID patients are being admitted to intensive care units because they're dying and they're needing to get incub intubated and their oxygen levels are super low. And these are. These are. You know, 99% of these people dying of COVID Covid are. Chose not to get the vaccine. And when. When they come. When they come to the hospital to say, doctor, help me, I'm dying. And the doctor says, okay, let me do a test to find out why you're dying. And then the doctor comes back with the test and says, you have Covid. You're dying. The patients that are dying get mad at the doctors and say, you're lying. I don't have Covid. And you are being paid by big pharma and other governmental interests to tell me I have Covid when I have to be dying of something else other than Covid. That's. Yeah, that's kind of.

Simon Southerton [02:01:05] It's sort of really. Yeah, the same sort of thing.

John Dehlin [02:01:07] Yeah. Okay. Sorry.

Simon Southerton [02:01:09] Yeah, so if we go to the next slide. Let's skip that one.

John Dehlin [02:01:14] Skip this one. Yeah, okay.

Simon Southerton [02:01:17] Yeah, we. Okay. So there was, if there was ever to be devised a very mean test for the heartland theory. If there was ever any conniving Native American from the past who wanted.

Kennewick Man and Meldrum's Interpretation

John Dehlin [02:01:39] If Satan. If Satan wanted to plant evidence.

Simon Southerton [02:01:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:01:43] To. To frustrate.

Simon Southerton [02:01:45] Man was a very, very naughty man. He's created a very difficult problem. He was discovered in 1996. Look, it's a. It's a very interesting story, and I'll. I'll just tell you a little bit of the backstory. His skeleton washed out of the banks of the Columbia river in Kennewick. Now, Kennewick, turns out it's a. It's extremely dry part of Washington State. It gets hardly any rainfalls, but it's almost. It's almost more of a desert than most of Australia. And so it was very good for preserving skeletons. And most of his skeleton washed out. In fact, all of it washed out of the banks. And it was reported. And they. They got a forensic guy, Jim Chatters, came down and they collected up the bones and they very. When they looked at the skirt, the skull, they could tell it was clearly an ancient skeleton. Largely one of the things was that his teeth were worn down. Just like usually most Paleo Indian skeletons are. Their teeth are very worn down. But the skeleton at the time was one of the early. The skull was one of the earliest Native American skeletons they'd found. And it looked more Similar to the I knew from Japan than it did to contemporary American Indians. So at the time, in fact, it looked more European than Native Americans. Now, at the time, they didn't realize this, but over the last couple of decades, many, many other early skulls have been found, and they're all very similar. Okay. They all don't look identical or very the same as the current Native Americans. Now, this is because the skull would actually fit within the normal in the natural variation that's present in Native Americans. But it didn't look like it was the center of the bell curve, if you know what I mean. It was sort of a bit of an outlier, but it was part of the varia, what you would normally. What you would see in the distribution. But the problem that created was it looked like it was an earlier ancestor from an earlier people that had colonized the Americas. And some people believed that this might have been a group that the Native Americans had wiped out. So it became very controversial. But the skeleton was so amazingly preserved that scientists were really keen to study it. It was the best preserved ancient skeleton that had ever been recovered in the Americas. So the scientific community was very, very keen to study this skeleton in its minutest detail, to learn as much as they could about the past, because an early radiocarbon date of a bone from the skeleton determined that he was about eight and a half to 9,000 years old. But the big problem that then occurred for the Heartland group is that when they sequenced Kennewick Man's genome, He had the X2A lineage, and it was an X2A lineage that was ancestral to all the other lineages. But just jumping back a bit, there was a pretty ugly legal battle for almost a decade between. Because the normal procedure is that if an indigenous skeleton is found, it's then reburied by the local Native Americans. The reason scientists were able to study it was because at the time, they believed that it was a different culture. And so there was a very protracted and a fairly ugly legal battle. And there's a lot of bad feeling on both sides, Indigenous first nations people. I think if you were to ask Thomas Murphy, he would certainly. He would be able to tell you how bad that became, that bad blood between the two groups. But to cut a long story short, they got permission to study the. They won the court case. They got permission to study the skeleton. They did, in detailed analysis. And when they discovered that it was closely related to Native Americans, they went back to procedure, and the skeleton was handed back, and it's now been reburied somewhere in unknown location. But what. So Kennewick man was studied intensively by a group of around about 50 scientists. And so it's a. Two facts here, extremely challenging for the heartland theory. One of those, one of those is that the skeleton is 9,000 years old. So it clearly predates the Book of Mormon period by about five or 6,000 years.

Gerardo Sumano [02:07:12] And how DNA, Simon? I, I don't know. Growing up in the church, I always heard this apologetic argument that carbon dating may not be a hundred percent reliable. How much truth is that? Like how confident are we are that this skeleton is 9,000 years old?

Simon Southerton [02:07:38] Oh, that's just, that's just a nonsense. It's a myth.

Gerardo Sumano [02:07:42] Okay, so we can be 100 confident that this is around 9,000 year old skeletons.

Simon Southerton [02:07:48] Yeah, I'm going to go through some of that data. Okay, in a moment. There are annuals like carbon dating is cosmic radiation causes the carbon produces carbon 14 in the atmosphere at a very low level and then it decays away over about 30 years. You know, there are some years when slightly more carbon 14 is produced, but generally it decays away at a fairly constant rate. And you can be very confident within probably a couple of hundred years of the, the, the age of the material. As long as you've removed contaminating things like, you know, a tree root grows through a piece of carbon from a fireplace. You know, if the tree root grows through 5,000 years after the carbon was laid down from the fire pit, it'll contaminate that sort of thing. Right. So scientists have, as long as they're very careful to remove contaminating evidence, it can be extremely accurate. Okay, okay.

Gerardo Sumano [02:08:51] So you said problem number one for Heartlanders is that it? This is a 9,000 year old skeleton. Yeah.

Simon Southerton [02:08:59] Because that he, because he's carrying the X2A DNA. That's when they really got bothered by Ken man because his age. That meant that's the strongest evidence that we have that the lineage was present in America before Lehigh or the Jaredites or anyone arrived.

John Dehlin [02:09:19] Right before Adam and Eve lived on the Earth.

Gerardo Sumano [02:09:23] Yeah.

Simon Southerton [02:09:23] A few thousand years before that as well. Yeah. So we go to the next slide. So this was a problem that the Heartlanders had to address. They felt compelled to address. So on the left here is an illustration of a book published in 2014. The authors of that book are about 50 nationally recognized forensic anthropologists from a range of fields. The work was led by Professor Douglas Owsley, who's the head of anthropology at the Smithsonian Institute. And I mean if you, I've read a fair chunk of this book, and it's just incredible. Just the detailed work that was done and how thorough the scientists were. It's a beautiful piece of work. They learned an incredible amount about Kennewick Man's. From the bones, they could tell that he used. One interesting one was he had two depression fractures in his head. Because back in Paleolithic, Americans used to swing what's called a bowler, and it was a small stone in a sling, and they would sling it around their head. It was basically a couple of stones connected by probably a leather piece of leather or something. They swing it around the head and they would throw it at birds, and it would swing around the bird's legs and capture a bird, and then they would eat the bird. When he was inexperienced, he'd flung this around his head and he clunked his head a couple of times with the bowler, and the stone had. Had left a depression in his skull a couple of times. The way that his bones were worn, they could tell the way that he. He walked, they could tell that he carried a spear, they could tell he was. Which arm he threw the spear with. From his bones, they could tell what diet they did. They do stable isotopes of oxygen and nitrogen that enables them to tell what sort of food he ate. He ate salmon. They could also tell that he periodically experienced hunger. Okay. Now, if you're a Paleolithic American Indian, you. You're going to periodically experience hunger, particularly if you live before the domestication. Sorry. Before they learned how to dry salmon northwest was about 5,000 years ago. They figured out how to. Because they had this enormous resource of food, but in a narrow window during the year. And so with Kennewick man, they figured out that he lived prior to that the drying of salmon, which enabled the first nations people to have a steady source of food all the way through that period when salmon came, fresh salmon wasn't available in the rivers. So. But there's just a whole pile of other things that they learned about Ken Oak Man. So I don't know whether David Read was assigned or whether he volunteered, but David Reed, who's a patent attorney, has written basically what amounts to a rebuttal of the Kennewick man work done under the direction of the head of anthropology at The Smithsonian and 50 other scientists in the Americas. So this is sounding awful lot like doing sessions, isn't it?

John Dehlin [02:13:03] Yeah. Non scientist takes on the Mormon legends press.

Simon Southerton [02:13:09] Okay. This digital legend press is a LDS

John Dehlin [02:13:12] publisher Mormon non scientist who believe takes on the entire global scientific community.

Simon Southerton [02:13:20] Basically yes. And he's got the. The clay molding of Kennewick man on his front cover, taken directly from the Smithsonian Institute. And I take it from me, they're not very happy. But they had no way to control it because the Smithsonian has a policy of allowing people, the public in America and around the world to use their work as long as they just ignore.

Gerardo Sumano [02:13:46] And that's his area of expertise, too. He's an attorney, David Reed. So he can take it and know for sure he won't get in trouble.

Simon Southerton [02:13:55] Yeah, but I mean. I mean. Yeah. So I actually learned about David Reed's book because the publisher sent me an advanced copy. Oh, my comments. Which they didn't listen to. And they also sent a copy to one of the scientists involved in the work, Jim Chatters, who actually collected the skeleton. It was washed out of the river. So what I want to do now is just go through the science and point out, because we go to the next slide. These are the two major claims, because I'm not going to get in. I'm not going to respond to every single claim that a Gish Galloper makes. Yeah, you're nowhere. There are two key claims and Simon,

John Dehlin [02:14:48] what are your credentials? What are your credentials, Simon? Just so we establish that I'm retired, but I mean, you're training.

Simon Southerton [02:14:59] Well, I was. I had a degree in science, plant science from the University of Sydney and PhD from the University of Sydney. And I led the scientific research at CSIRO 15 years. And forestry, molecular genetics.

John Dehlin [02:15:15] Oh, so you have a PhD in molecular genetics.

Simon Southerton [02:15:18] CSIRO is Australia's national science research body.

John Dehlin [02:15:22] Okay, all right, just making sure. So you're not a patent. You're not a patent attorney.

Simon Southerton [02:15:27] So. So his key claim is that Kennewick man was 2500 years old, which just by coincidentally fits perfectly with the Book of Mormon.

Gerardo Sumano [02:15:35] Yeah.

Simon Southerton [02:15:36] And this is based on the calcium carbonate which was associated with the skeleton. And he obviously claims that X. The other claim that he makes is not only that the X2A came from the Middle east, but he claims that it's only four mutations away from the Egyptian X2J mitochondrial lineage. Okay, so I'm going to address both of these claims in a little bit more detail because I think it's important for people to know. So let's look at the calcium carbonate.

Gerardo Sumano [02:16:09] Sorry to interrupt again, but is Rod Meldrum related involved in this claims?

John Dehlin [02:16:17] Would David Read be presenting at one of Rodney Meldrum's conferences?

Simon Southerton [02:16:20] David Reed just presented at Rodney Meldrum Firm foundation conference, and he would sell

John Dehlin [02:16:24] his books There and all that. Yeah.

Simon Southerton [02:16:27] Okay. Okay, okay. And you can buy his book for about 23 bucks.

John Dehlin [02:16:31] Okay.

Simon Southerton [02:16:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:16:33] Okay.

Simon Southerton [02:16:34] So, yeah, this slide's probably a bit out of order, but. Yeah, let's just show you where Kenny Kennewick man was located. There'd be some people outside of America wouldn't know where Washington is. So this is Washington State.

John Dehlin [02:16:47] South central Washington state, yeah.

Simon Southerton [02:16:50] And this is a very, very interesting. You know, it's a very, very dry landscape. And so essentially what he'd done is be following. He would have been following the Columbia river, probably catching salmon. And then he died and was buried. Buried deliberately, it looks like, by the people he was with. So we go to the next slide. So this is an outline of the. This is a photograph of the. Of the skeleton. As you can see, there's a large proportion of the bones are present. Something like about 97% of the bones were present. Now, if you go to the full. Just focus. Full image of the slide. If you look very carefully, I've got my pointer, but it's not you. I can see it. But see at the end of the yellow arrow there, there's a little gray area that is in fact a spear point that is lodged in Kennewick Man's pelvis. And you can see an image of the spear point expanded there. That spear point is common around about the 7 to 10,000 year ago period. You know, it was common that. That long ago. So it's completely consistent with the radiocarbon dates for Kennewick Man. So he lived for potentially a decade or so with that spear point in his hip. He was very fortunate that it didn't. It didn't appear to impact his walking and that. And that's because they could tell if it impacted his walking, like if he had a huge limp, that would have worn his bones in a different way. And they. They didn't find any evidence of that. So it's likely he was very painful. He pulled the spear out. It might have even been one that was accidental. Anyway, he pulled it out and lived the remainder of his life with the spear point in his hip. He probably would have known it was there, I guess, because the stone didn't come out. So you can see why they were so desperate to study the skeleton, because forensic scientists know how. How much you can learn about a skeleton by studying all of the bones. They did very, very detailed analysis of the bones. We go into the next slide. As I mentioned, the skeleton was washed out of the riverbank. So you needed forensic scientists to work out where the bones were located in the soil profile. And one thing they found was that there was calcium carbonate deposited in the soil at two different depths in the soil profile. One around about a meter, and one at about a meter and a half. There were these calcium carbonate deposits in the soil. And because the skeleton was. The skeleton had carbon calcium carbonate attached to it, and the soil grains matched the one, the profile, at about a meter down, they determined that's where the skeleton was buried. Also attached to the skeleton were

John Dehlin [02:20:14] products

Simon Southerton [02:20:15] that degraded away from the Mazama ash. The Mazama ash layer is famous in the archaeological community, well known amongst archaeologists. It's an ash layer that at Kennewick was around about, I think, about 12 inches deep, maybe 8 to 12 inches deep. And it's an ash layer from the Crater Lake volcanic eruption, which was known as Mount Mazama before it was blown up. In the eruption that's now left Crater Lake in Oregon, and you can see the enormous ash layer that came from that eruption. And that's been. That happened about 7,000. The eruption took place about 7,700 years ago. And it's left this, what they refer to as the Mazama ash layer. And the scientists know that he was buried underneath the ash layer because of the carbonates. And they also know because the Mazama ash breaks down to a clay molecule called alaphane, and there was alefane attached to the bones. So that conclusively proves the Kennewick man was buried well before the Mazama eruption. And any calcium carbonate attached to those bones came from rainwater that came down the profile. If you've ever been in a cave underground and seen the wonderful stalactites and the stalagmites, that's calcium carbonate that comes from rainwater, because rainwater carries carbon dioxide dissolved in it. In fact, rainwater is a very weak carbonic acid, and it percolates down through the soil. And in a soil in a situation like this, in a very dry location, like we have with Kennewick in Washington, you get a heavy dose of rain. It's very rare, but then it starts to evaporate. The calcium carbonate, the dissolved carbon dioxide, is traveling down the soil. The evaporation of the surface then dries the soil out, and eventually it precipitates and forms hard calcium carbonate. And so this carbonate layer, which is the layer that David Reid has focused a lot of his attention on, is not derived from Kennewick man. It's derived from the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that's washed down Thousands of years after the. The body was buried and the soil accumulated over the top. So most of the soil that accumulated over the top of Kennewick man was blown there. So it was just windblown dry sand that blew across what is almost effectively desert. And then very little of it was from flooding because the Columbia river had just had eroded away a deeper channel and gone further away from the site. And so it was mostly windblown soil above the skeleton. So if we go on to the next slide. So scientists know all about carbonates, and they know the carbonates are not connected with Kennewick man, but they just study them because they're interested in learning when the carbonates were deposited. So this is taken from the book published by Douglas Owsley and his co authors. And you can see on the bottom these yellow triangles, they're dates of the carbonates. And you can see in the picture on the right the different places that the carbonates are found. You can see some on the outer layer of the bones, some on the very degraded bone at the top. And also inside the bones, there are these carbonates that have cemented together with the sand in there. And so because the scientists were interested in finding out when those carbonates formed, they carbon dated them. But if you look down the bottom of that bone sample, you can see there's some bone protein that they isolated. So they didn't just go and grind up the bone and do carbon date it. They purified collagen from the bone. The bones were that well preserved, the scientists were able to purify. And there are chemical processes for doing this where you purify the protein, the collagen protein from the bone, so you remove all of the contaminating impurities. And if you look at all these blue diamonds at the top there, those are the collagen dates. Those are the only radiocarbon dates that relate to Kennewick Man. Sorry. They're the only carbon dates, the only radiocarbon dates that relate to Kennewick Man. The carbonate dates are related to rainwater that occurred thousands of years after his burial. And that's what Kennewick Man. Sorry. That's what. Sorry, David Reed is claiming are the actual radiocarbon dates for Kennewick Man. You go to the next slide.

Radiocarbon Dating and Kennewick Man's Age

John Dehlin [02:25:55] Simon, can I. Can I ask you a question to kind of summarize what I think I just heard? The way that he arrives at the date, 2500 or whatever.

Simon Southerton [02:26:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:26:05] Is by pulling the dates that tie to the sand, not the bone. Is that right?

Simon Southerton [02:26:11] Yes, it's rock Carbonate. It's carbonate rock. And the carbonates are all formed with the interaction of stone sand with carbon dioxide dissolved in rainwater coming down through the profile. So it's completely unconnected with Kennewick Man.

John Dehlin [02:26:30] So the. So the material that allows him to date Kennewick man to conveniently 2500 B.C.

Simon Southerton [02:26:37] yes.

John Dehlin [02:26:38] Or 25. Sorry, 2500 years ago. Comes from the rock, not the bone. Comes from rock found near the bone, not the actual bone.

Simon Southerton [02:26:48] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:26:49] Okay. Okay. I just wanted to make sure we summarized in a way that people like me could. Could understand it. But. But if you actually went to the bone, it would be 8,000 years ago, not. Not 2300.

Simon Southerton [02:27:01] Yeah, but it's. But it's so clear because the fact that they're able to purify collagen. Okay, you can't get protein or collagen from rock unless it comes from a human. It has. That's the only human connection. It's a completely direct connection to a human. They've got protein. Once they've got protein, if they do a. If you go back to that image, you'll see that there are two red dots there that are in sort of in between. And the scientists that did that, that was the National Park Service, they did four measurements, and they even acknowledged that they didn't get very good quality collagen. Okay, so if you don't get good quality collagen, you're going to get a not very good quality radiocarbon estimate of the age. And. But they're still very old. They still predate Book of Mormon periods. But when the scientists did the very detail and the most meticulous study, those blue dates, they've all purified, and they've got outstanding yields of collagen protein. And the only source of that protein is Kennewick Man. So you then have a direct link to Kennewick Man. And so when you radiocarbon date the protein which has carbon in it, that tells you very precisely how. How long ago Kennewick man was buried. And the average of those. That's about a dozen dates, is very, very close to the very, very first measurement that was done. That's that orange triangle in the top, top left, the green circle is the average of what they believe to be the most accurate measurements based probably on the, you know, outstanding.

John Dehlin [02:29:01] We have a viewer. We have something like that, Simon. We have a viewer wondering if maybe the rocks got collagen injections or collagen implants and that that might. No, I'm just kidding. Just being silly. Thank You, Tom Marsh. Okay, so the emails. So I guess some scientists didn't like David Reed's interpretation.

Scientific Community's Rebuttal of Heartland DNA Claims

Simon Southerton [02:29:23] Yeah, well, this is where I get pretty annoyed because I was sent a copy of the book. Then I discovered afterwards that Jim Chatters, one of the scientists who picked up the bones from the Columbia river, intimately involved in the science. And he reads David Reid's book and he says the 2000 year dates you cling to are actually dates on soil carbonate, which deposits continuously from water percolating down from the surface. They are not dates on the skeleton at all.

John Dehlin [02:30:03] That's pretty clear.

Simon Southerton [02:30:04] Email from the scientist who did the work to David read on June 10, 2020. Further correspondence. He noticed that David Rees and paying attention in the next email on 12 June. This is what the scientist says. Bottom line, the carbonate dates from Cayman's burn are not reliable. There was really no research reason to do them. The reliable radiocarbon age of Cayman, based on both the projectile point in his pelvis and the protein in his bones, is around 8,400 years before present. Okay, okay. David Read is an adult. In my view. He's lying to go ahead and publish a book claiming that the carbonate dates are linked to Kenneth man after a scientist has repeatedly pointed out to you and then to go and continue to publish your stuff. That's lying. This is fraud.

Gerardo Sumano [02:31:08] And we know he, he saw the emails.

Simon Southerton [02:31:11] Correct?

Gerardo Sumano [02:31:11] That's what you were saying.

Simon Southerton [02:31:12] I know he saw the emails because he corresponded backwards and forwards with Jim Chatters.

Speaker D [02:31:15] Right.

Simon Southerton [02:31:16] There's no doubt. And his publisher, Boyd Tuttle at Digital Legend Press has seen these because I sent them to him. And he's, he's also heard me explain why the carbonate dates are not. Ken Oak Man. Yeah, you can imagine how the scientists feel about this sort of rubbish.

John Dehlin [02:31:37] Anyway, so there's thousands and thousands and thousands of Mormons all, all along the Wasatch front and elsewhere who desperately need the Book of Mormon to be true. But they're smart enough to know that the Mesoamerican limited geography theory doesn't hold water because even Joseph Smith didn't believe it. And so they're willing to cling to shoddy pseudoscientists who make fraudulent interpretations. And Rodney Meldrum and David Reed and all these other people just happen to kind of make a living off of, off of advancing the pseudoscience and misleading thousands and thousands and thousands of Mormons into kind of conspiracy theories that also betray our most fundamental understandings of, of the, the foundations of, of the earth as science has is now Describing it to us. Right?

Simon Southerton [02:32:35] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we now, I think we might be moving on to DNA. Yeah, yeah. So if you expand that. Yeah. I mean, we'll probably talk about the whole movement generally towards the end here. But I wanted to sort of delve into his X2A lineage claims as well, because.

John Dehlin [02:32:58] Oh, wait, wait. Simon. Sorry. We've got a comment in. This is Boyd Tuttle writes, David Read addressed each one of the concerns raised by you and other critics in the appendix of the book. Why don't you discuss those in your presentation, Simon?

Simon Southerton [02:33:15] I haven't seen them.

John Dehlin [02:33:17] All right. Okay. So, Boyd, your job is to get Simon and me the appendix of which you speak. I'm@mormonstoriesgmail.com and we'll have. Simon, I don't know how. Simon, how. How did David Reed hear your critiques and address them in an appendix

Gerardo Sumano [02:33:39] before he read the.

Simon Southerton [02:33:40] Before.

John Dehlin [02:33:41] It's like, Simon, have you made these critiques elsewhere where they would have.

Simon Southerton [02:33:45] No, I haven't seen. I haven't seen the appendix.

John Dehlin [02:33:48] No. But have you made this, these critiques you're making to us, have you made them elsewhere?

Simon Southerton [02:33:53] To Boyd Tuttle.

John Dehlin [02:33:55] Okay.

Simon Southerton [02:33:56] And to David Reed.

John Dehlin [02:33:57] Okay.

Simon Southerton [02:33:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:33:59] All right. So David Read, get. Get us and Simon the appendix. And I'm sure, you know, let's remind

Gerardo Sumano [02:34:05] Boy that those critics that he. Well, he's calling critics are the actual scientists who actually handled them.

Simon Southerton [02:34:14] I will confess up front. I'm just going to be very hard to find the energy to respond to a bunch of Gish gallopers. You're just going to throw out all of these dubious claims If. If I. Okay. Boyd needs to explain how 50 of the America's leading forensic archaeologists were completely fooled and a patent attorney, David Reed. Okay. I'm appealing to authority, but you're appearing to.

John Dehlin [02:34:47] You're appearing to. You're appealing to the scientific method and the scientific community and the people who held the bones.

Gerardo Sumano [02:34:53] Right.

Simon Southerton [02:34:57] Well, when we move on to the DNA, I don't think. Because David Read has made various claims in the past. One point, he claimed it was only one mutation away from Kennewick man and this Egyptian lineage. But he corrected that. But let's look at his claim. David re. Claims that there are four mutations that are different between Kennewick man and an Egyptian X2J lineage. The mistake that he makes is that he assumes that the Egyptian lineage that he's comparing to Kennewick man is the ancestral lineage. There are four mutations that are different between Kennewick man and. And an ancestral lineage but there are six mutation differences between the Egyptian lineage that he's actually talking about and the ancestral lineage. So There are not four mutations that are different between Kennewick man and Egyptian X2J. There are 10 mutations that are different. Okay, so I should just run through what this slide shows. It's basically a. A pedigree chart of Native American X2A lineages. And each lineage has new mutations that are unique to it, and they descend from previous lineages, and they all go back to Kennewick Man. So they're all descendants of Kennewick Man's X2A lineage. Now, on average, the number of different mutation, new mutations in American Indians compared to the Egyptian X2 lineage, the number of mutations is around about 20. 19 to 20 extra mutations in X2A lineages in American Indians. So it's not the fourth that he's talking about. So he's completely wrong. Right.

John Dehlin [02:37:16] And what's between 10 and 4?

Simon Southerton [02:37:18] Mitochondrial tree. Okay. The. The ancestral X, what they refer to as the X2AJ lineage, has not been found in a living individual. That's the. That's the lineage that David Reid is comparing Kennewick man to. The only lineage x2a.x. Sorry, x2j lineage that's been found is in a living Egyptian, and it's 10 mutations away from Kennewick Man.

John Dehlin [02:37:52] So what's the difference between 4 and 10? What's the difference between 4 and 10 mutations?

Simon Southerton [02:37:58] Well, the more mutations there are, the longer into the past. If you just take two lineages, if there's only one mutation different, then that probably suggests they share a common ancestor within the last 500 to maybe a thousand years or a couple of thousand years. If it's four mutations, then it's probably four to 5,000 years. If it's 10, it's more like roughly 10 to 15,000 years.

Gerardo Sumano [02:38:31] Right.

Simon Southerton [02:38:32] So, yeah, Kennewick man and the Egyptian probably have an ancestor around about 20 to 25, maybe 30,000 years ago.

John Dehlin [02:38:44] And again, by these own people's own admission, The Earth's only 7,000 years old.

Simon Southerton [02:38:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:38:52] So it's ridiculous.

Simon Southerton [02:38:53] Wait, his claims are just patently false. He just doesn't understand it. Yeah. As you can see here. Oh, we've got somebody who is an author on one of the papers in the Owlsley Jants book. Oh, I'm explaining it. Well, thank you, Tim. I mean, it's a fantastic book. If you're interested in human forensics and how painstaking these folk are, it's. You can purchase the ebook. I'm Happy to do a promo for the ebook. It's about 600 pages in length, but they. They just detail the whole story really beautiful, really nicely. Including the complicated legal battle was very tough and some very hurt feelings on both sides of the story. But I can speak with some Authority on the X2A lineage because of my background in genetics, and I can assure you that Hugo Perego would agree with everything that I've said. Yeah. And he knows a heck of a lot more about x2 DNA than I do in having done work on handled samples. So there's no doubt he's just completely wrong in his X. So if we click onto the next slide, this is actually some work that published by Hugo Perego. This is the guy that wrote the church's DNA essay. So he just took a whole pile of X2A lineages, as well as all of the other four lineages in the Americas. And within each lineage, you can look at how much diversity there is, how many mutations they are, and they can estimate how long ago those. How long. How long those lineages have been present in the New World. And Hugo Perego's estimate for the X2A is 17,000 years ago, that it's been a group, a sort of a lineage cluster in the Americas. And there are four other. The four other lineages, mitochondrial lineages present in American Indians, have similar ages. 1500-017000-16300, 16,500. And Perego's work was validated by another group of scientists that looked at similar data and coming up with similar ages for. For how long the X2A lineage has been present in the Americas. Wow. Yeah.

The X2a Lineage and Book of Mormon Origins

John Dehlin [02:41:32] And

Gerardo Sumano [02:41:34] this is a question just to clarify. So originally, before the DNA tests were done on the Kinetic man, Rotten Meldrum was relying on this X2 lineage to be the people of the Book of Mormon, correct?

Simon Southerton [02:41:55] Yes, yes, he's been very clear about that. The X2A lineage came from the Middle East.

Gerardo Sumano [02:42:00] And then because of the evidence that studying the Kennewick man brought forth. Well, that. That tells us that that lineage has been here for way longer than any of the Book of Mormon people. You know, we're supposed to be here. Okay, that makes sense.

John Dehlin [02:42:20] No longer than the Earth.

Simon Southerton [02:42:23] He was not even interested in kine. Sorry. Sorry, John. He wasn't even interested in Kenneth man until the DNA.

Gerardo Sumano [02:42:30] Right.

Simon Southerton [02:42:30] Was published. But it was 2015. Boom.

Gerardo Sumano [02:42:33] Right.

Simon Southerton [02:42:34] But he's.

Gerardo Sumano [02:42:34] But he's still claiming it, right?

Simon Southerton [02:42:36] He's still claiming that because he thinks is.

Gerardo Sumano [02:42:40] Is Lehigh. Pretty much.

Simon Southerton [02:42:41] Yeah. He. And I think to understand this You've gotta. And this is what really irritates the BYU apologists is the John is Rodney, right from the outset, has claimed that he's basically on a mission from God. He had a blessing From Hartman Rector Jr. A former apostle, a former general authority.

Gerardo Sumano [02:43:08] Yeah.

Simon Southerton [02:43:10] And I can only guess what was in that blessing. But, you know, in an email to people who. His supporters, he clearly outlined that he's basically, you know, God has revealed it through this blessing that he is to do this heartland work. Yeah. And that has really, really irritated the Mormon apologists because that's sort of rule number one. You don't claim that the spirit is telling you that this piece of evidence fits here or whatever, because who has the. The church has even come out and said they don't have a position on geography.

Gerardo Sumano [02:43:53] Right.

Simon Southerton [02:43:55] So, you know, Rodney Melbourne is essentially claiming that God has revealed the geography to him.

Gerardo Sumano [02:44:03] Right. And that's. I think that's what used that as

Simon Southerton [02:44:05] evidence in the same way that he views archaeological evidence. Yep. So, look, I'll have a. I'll have a brief look at the appendix. If Boyd Tuttle's happy to send it to me. I'm not going to purchase the book, but this is just going to be a rabbit hole. I'll go down and there'll be this false claim after dodgy claim after nonsense claim. It'll just go on and on and on forever. Because what we have, just the facts that we've just discussed don't have any impact because they don't fit. So you ignore them or you just work your way around them.

John Dehlin [02:44:44] I want to end by talking about my exchange. I had a brief exchange with Rod. I want to share, but there's a couple more slides. Can we finish the slides and then come back to my conversation with Rodney Meldrum and why all this matters? Is that okay, Simon?

Simon Southerton [02:44:58] Yeah, sure. I've only got a couple more, I think.

John Dehlin [02:45:00] Okay. Yeah.

Simon Southerton [02:45:01] The next slide, this is just to show that they've also sequenced most. I think they got a fairly good coverage of Kennewick Mann's entire genome. And then they can do a comparison. So they've isolated DNA from a large number of populations around the world. And over on the right here, you see a. I don't know if you can see my pointer, but on the right there, you can see what sort of a scale. So if the circle is a red color, that indicates the genome has a lot of similarity. If the circle is yellow or. Sorry, yellow or greenish, it's sort of a little bit of similarity. And if you get blue, there's virtually no similarity or very low similarity. And you can see there's a green square out in the Pacific. So they compared Polynesians, and because they have common ancestry with American Indians, there's a little bit of green color there. But when you look at Europeans and they'd be related, more closely related to Middle Eastern populations than they would be to American Indians, and they don't see, there's hardly any relationship. So that just confirms all the other stuff that we know. But if we go to the next slide, this just sort of summarises the data that we now know on Kennewick man, and these are facts. Okay. We know Kennewick man is nine, around about 9,000 years old. Okay. Bone collagen is the gold standard for dating skeletons. And 12 dates. Okay. All around about 9,000 years. So that's definitely the age. The spear point backs it up completely. It's around about the right age. Okay. I'm pretty sure that David Read's got an explanation for why a 7,000 year old spearpoint is in Kennewick Man's hip. But yeah, I'm not really interested. His genome's closely related to local Native Americans. His X2A lineage is ancestral to all Native Americans. X2 as mentioned before, he was a hunter gatherer. So he clearly lived before 5,000 years ago when they, they started harvesting and storing salmon to give you that constant year round food supply. So, yep, that's pretty much. Yeah. So that's my last slide. So. So, Simon, in my view, it's clearly an open shut case, really, when it comes to Kenneth man and the Heartland Theory.

Motives Behind Heartland Pseudoscience

John Dehlin [02:47:37] So let me ask, let me ask you now, Simon, like, so the first question is, what do we think the motive is of Rodney Meldrum and all of these pseudoscientists? I think we've kind of touched on it, but I want to kind of hit it directly. And then I want to ask, what does it matter? How is it harming anyone? Because you're a smart guy, There's a lot of things you could be doing. You know, this program, you know, feels like we want to spend our time in important ways. You know, a few ousand or whatever, 10,000 people in Utah county that kind of lean towards conspiracy theorists. One could argue who, who really cares? So my first question is, why do we think these pseudoscientists and Rodney Meldrum and all these Heartland Theory people, what fuels them? Is my first question, and I think we answered it. But Simon, what do you think fuels them? Why are they Doing all this shoddy pseudoscience. Is it because they're desperate to save the Book of Mormon?

Simon Southerton [02:48:46] Yeah, I think so. I mean, they've been fed in the churches, in the meetings that they've attended, and throughout their lives they've been fed a very fundamentalist view of the world distrust of science. And they've just bought into this young earth creationism. And this is a very, I think that you'd find there'd be plenty of scientists of BYU also very disturbed about this because this is a, you can't, this isn't a minor operation now. This just completely swamps fair and what's going on in the apologetic arena.

John Dehlin [02:49:29] You're saying it's big.

Simon Southerton [02:49:30] It's big, Huge. I mean, he's got a DVD, this is 10 years ago, he saw, sold in two years, 80,000 copies of his DVD.

John Dehlin [02:49:40] So there's a lot of money involved,

Simon Southerton [02:49:41] you're saying, A lot of money involved. Oh, look, if they wanted to make money, yeah, you do the same thing.

John Dehlin [02:49:51] But they probably didn't start wanting to make money. They probably started wanting to save the Book of Mormon from the, and the Mormon worldview and as you say, the young earth worldview that Joseph Smith, you know, enshrined in the Book of Mormon and the Pearl of Great Price and in the Doctrine and Covenants. Joseph Smith kind of stuck us and the Bible, frankly, stuck us with a young, a young earth, you know, creationist view. And so basically these Heartland theory people are trying to save the Bible, save Mormonism, save Joseph Smith, save the Book of Mormon from these batty scientists that are trying to kill faith. Is that kind of what they're doing?

Simon Southerton [02:50:46] Yeah, I think so, but it's, I think it's a considerable concern for the church because there are many Christian churches around the earth that don't embrace young earth creationism because it is, it's just completely, it's pseudoscience.

John Dehlin [02:51:09] And again, without getting too political, if you look at the way America is even struggling these days, there's a real problem with people trusting credible sources and trusting evidence. There's almost an epidemic in America right now of a large group of people that, that don't respect science and that don't respect data, don't respect evidence. And it's, it's causing a lot of pain and suffering. And so this, this kind of heartland theory type conspiracy theory devaluation of science is contributing to, on a Mormon scale, this larger national problem of, of distrusting science to the end evidence to the peril of our. You, some would Even say of our democracy, is that, is that. Do you think I'm stretching that too far, Simon?

Simon Southerton [02:52:03] Well, I think you're probably in a better position, but I have observed from a safe distance what's going on in America. Yeah, but, yeah, look, I think we're in a fake news era, post truth era, if you like. And yeah, this, this stuff, I mean, I can't see it stopping. I think it's just going to continue to flourish. But, you know, it's much healthier for leaders to face. Look, the Catholic Church has done this, the Church of England's done this. Many other churches tolerate, you know, a wide range of views and they very supportive of evolutionary science. But when you teach fundamentalism for so many years, it's very, very difficult for people to cope, particularly when they see the scientists at the Church's own university following, you know, what they view as just completely evil ideas. To quote, it's a very day. It's just, it's very dangerous, you know, for the church. I mean, it's no surprise that when the prophet came out and said, look, everyone should get vaccinated because the science is good and, you know, we can trust them, needs to be in a louder, booming voice. But he's undermining himself because he's, he undermines evolution, which is a fact. It's one of the most firmly verified fact in modern science. And there are many, many Mormons who fully accept evolution. And it must be very, very disconcerting to see them, for them to see this sort of, this idea flourishing.

John Dehlin [02:54:08] Yeah, so. So there's a comment from a listener that says, in my opinion, the reason that Rodney Meldrum is probably push the heartland theory. And let's just say it's not just Rodney Meldrum, it's all his donors. It's all of the people who buy the books and attend the conferences. It's thousands and thousands and thousands of Mormons along the Wasatch front and elsewhere. They've all pushed the heartland theory so intently because it's so obvious that the Central American theory of the Book of Mormon or the small geography theory, the limited geography theory, is completely untenable because we didn't even mention how did Moroni walk from Central America to Palmyra, New York to bury the plates? If the plates were what, 130, 140 pounds?

Simon Southerton [02:54:54] How could he. 60 pounds, what's that?

Gerardo Sumano [02:54:59] Is around 50, I think.

John Dehlin [02:55:01] Okay, 50 or 60 pounds.

Simon Southerton [02:55:02] 60 pounds. But you've got all the other records, too, and the urine, sun.

John Dehlin [02:55:08] Yeah, it just makes no sense. I'm going to read you guys a correspondence I had with Rodney. So I said, hey, Rodney, this is John. I left you a message. And he gets back with me. And so I asked him, is firm, is Firm Foundation a nonprofit or for profit? And he wrote, here's the. Here's what he wrote. Since the onset, I determined to fund the research myself rather than solicit money from others. My accountant recommended I set it up as an S corp. If the time comes that I need to get funding from others, I may convert it to a 501c3 nonprofit. There are CEOs of non profits that make millions of dollars, and there are CEOs of for profit companies that make practically nothing. I have been blessed to make enough money to cover my needs, but not nearly as much as some have speculated. And so I followed up and I said, thank you, Rod. And then I said, have you been public about your annual income by chance? And he wrote, no. But for many years, my adjusted income was well below poverty level, less than 30,000 a year. Although that's not the case now. It was the case for many years as we got started. I have lived on what many would consider consider a meager income and put any extra money back into the project. I have spent nearly $200,000 on the creation of our streaming website over the past two years, all without soliciting money from others, but rather paying for it personally. You would wonder where he got $200,000 to spend. And then I concluded, thank you, Rod. Is there a reason you won't share your annual income now? And I haven't heard back from him in response to that text. So it sounds like he's doing very well now, but it's a for profit, so we don't. We'll never know.

Simon Southerton [02:57:05] Yeah, look, I. To be fair, I don't know that it's necessarily money that's driving him. I think it's probably this sort of absolute fundamentalist mindset. I just don't. I can't comprehend how. Well, I can understand how people would go down that path because that's what aligns with everything that they've heard church from their leaders for decades. I mean, I went down that path for quite a while and I had a science degree and a PhD and had worked as a researcher for a decade or half a decade. So it just takes a while to make that transition. To what? To suddenly one day realize, okay, this evolution stuff, yeah, it looks pretty convincing. And it was evidence in the field of plant science that really swung it for Me. And that was the domestication of maize by indigenous Americans, which are over 10,000 years. And science scientists have identified the genes that carried mutations that shifted the ancestor of maize Teosinte, a wild grass in Mexico, which is virtually inedible, into what we have today. About five or six mutations in different genes, and you go from a weedy grass to amazing plant that is so productive.

John Dehlin [02:58:42] So, yeah, Thomas Murphy's in the house. And Thomas writes. Shout out to Thomas. He's an important pioneer in this field. Thomas writes, great summary, Simon Southerton. I would add that the heartland model is blatantly racist. And Thomas, you may have joined us a little late because we definitely covered that

Simon Southerton [02:59:07] he has Iroquois ancestry, so he's first nations ancestry. Yeah, it's a bit more personal.

John Dehlin [02:59:14] Yeah. Shout out to Thomas Murphy, who is a pioneer in all this stuff. Well, Gerardo, any. Any final thoughts or comments you wanted to make? Did Simon's presentation meet or exceed your expectations?

Final Reflections and Listener Discussion

Gerardo Sumano [02:59:33] Yes, for sure. This was great. This is great. Super detailed. I mean, I think there was no doubt, right, that this was pseudoscience at the beginning before we started the presentation, but then after we went with detail. I think what's more shocking to. To me is how this science, this people like rot Meldrum and this other person, after being corrected by the people that actually did the research, they. They still won't correct what they're. What they're saying.

Simon Southerton [03:00:15] Right. But he just. It's a simple misunderstanding of the science, too. Carbonates. Carbonate comes from carbon dioxide. It doesn't come from the Kennewick man. Right. All the carbonate dates are inaccurate and unrelated. Tells you how old the soil is, where the soil layer carbonate formed, which is thousands of years after. Doesn't matter how much they. But.

Gerardo Sumano [03:00:45] But even, but even Rodney Meldrum was corrected by the scientists he had on, like, years before the Kenneth Kinetic man. Right.

Simon Southerton [03:00:53] Like, yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [03:00:55] So it seems to be a pattern. So I don't know. Just interesting. And thanks, Simon. This was amazing presentation.

John Dehlin [03:01:05] Hey, we have. We have a wonderful comment again from Boyd Tuttle. Boyd says, John, I think your listeners would be better served by letting them hear from the principles that are being ridiculed here, rather than having your guests put their own words into their mouths. So, yeah, so I guess Boyd missed the part where I said that I did invite. I talked to Rod Meldrum earlier today. I invited him on the show and he. And it. Admittedly, it was late notice, but he said he had an appointment, but I invited him to watch this show and then come back on the show. And we would love to have him and Simon directly discuss the science.

Simon Southerton [03:01:54] Well, if they send me through five points, dot points, and I'll address them, but I'm not going to go down a rabbit hole of 25 or 30 different claims because it's not getting involved in the Kish Gallup.

Gerardo Sumano [03:02:12] Right?

John Dehlin [03:02:13] So Rod Meldrum and, or Boyd Tuttle and, or anyone else who's paying attention who has a dog in this fight, email me@mormonstoriesmail.com with five rebuttals or responses or questions for Simon and we'll have Simon back to answer them. And, or have you, you, whoever you are, and Simon back on Mormon stories to discuss the science. How's that? Is that all right, Simon?

Simon Southerton [03:02:43] All right.

Gerardo Sumano [03:02:46] Awesome.

John Dehlin [03:02:47] Simon, I gotta say that my listeners just love you're a legend. I, I've told people in every episode we've had with you that reading your book Losing a Lost Tribe was instrumental in my faith journey way back when I was living in Issaquah, Washington, working for Microsoft. And so you're a pioneer and you got excommunicated for your work and you've done so much important writing and scholarship and so you just deserve all the kudos and the affection and the appreciation from us. And that's why I'm just so thrilled that you would come back on more Mormon stories. Blank check anytime you want to prepare any presentation. Simon Southerton, we will welcome you back on I'm so happy to have you on twice in the past few months. And do you have some books or some PDFs or some ebooks that you want to let people know about just so that people at the moment I

Simon Southerton [03:03:50] may publish probably a hard copy of something in the next year or so, but I'm not, not committing to anything yet. But if you want to read a really good book, if you're interested in the true story of Kennewick man, then the Owsley and Jantz book that Tim Heaton mentioned, that's, that's basically what David Read's book is about. It's a systematic running through of that book and then a bit on the DNA as well.

Gerardo Sumano [03:04:21] But

Simon Southerton [03:04:23] yeah, that's, that's if you want to real read what real scientists do and how thorough they are. I think it's in a pretty readable, fairly reasonably technical, but I think it's designed to be read by, you know, reasonably educated audience. So, and you can put, I think you can purchase it for about seven bucks or something, $10 where you could read David Reed's book and pay $23, which is about 60 pages long.

John Dehlin [03:04:58] Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. And I think. I think Boyd and Rodney and others, I think you deserve. I think we deserve a response to Simon's thoughtful presentation here before Simon has the burden of responding to any of your. Your thoughts and comments.

Simon Southerton [03:05:19] But it. Yeah. This won't. It'll. It'll have no impact. I'm convinced of that. We've had 15 years of ignoring. Even an LDS scientist who wrote the church's essay.

Gerardo Sumano [03:05:32] Right.

Simon Southerton [03:05:34] Have ignored him. Yeah, He's. He's ground up bones. He's ground. He's isolated DNA. He's sequenced it. He's compared. He's on. Done the whole thing. And he's wrong.

John Dehlin [03:05:46] Yeah.

Simon Southerton [03:05:47] I mean,

John Dehlin [03:05:51] Gerardo, there's a shout out to you. Josh writes, I can't believe you guys are able to get all these great guests on Mormon stories. I guess we should be thanking Gerardo for getting Simon. Josh says the smartest thing I've done was to get Gerardo and Kara on Mormon stories. So before Gerardo. Before. Before you and Kara, Mormon stories is pretty worthless. So thank you for. Thank you for making Mormon stories valuable. Gerardo.

Simon Southerton [03:06:18] Can I ask. Harado, are you. Do you have Mayan ancestry or is it another indigenous group?

Gerardo Sumano [03:06:24] I honestly, I don't know. I've never done a DNA. Like, if the. The family history that my. My. My parents and family have done only goes back so far, we. We just can't tell. But I'm assuming there might be some Mayan, because there's a Mayan last name somewhere.

Simon Southerton [03:06:50] Where did you grow up, please?

Gerardo Sumano [03:06:51] Yucatan. Yeah, but my dad. My dad is from Mexico City. My dad's from Mexico City and my mom is from Yucatan.

Simon Southerton [03:07:01] I'm almost certain you have my ancestry. And if you did an ancestry DNA test, they could assign portions of your DNA to a range of indigenous populations. Yeah, you should do that.

Gerardo Sumano [03:07:17] Maybe we'll find. Yeah, that would be great. That'd be fun. That'd be awesome.

Simon Southerton [03:07:23] Because that's easy to do. They've got representative populations from all of the indigenous groups down through Mesoamerica. Awesome.

John Dehlin [03:07:35] Gerardo. You've got a viewer, Doug, who's willing to pay for a DNA test for you. That's very personal.

Gerardo Sumano [03:07:40] Yeah, yeah, send me a link, Simon, because the ones I found, they only tell you if you are Native American or, like Central Native American. They don't go back far after that. I don't know.

Simon Southerton [03:07:55] Okay. I could get in touch with some scientists that have done that sort of analysis, and they Might be able to recommend a. A company, but you. Yeah, like, I had my DNA done by a company that's got a huge database in Europe and England because that's where all my answers come from. And they. So they gave pretty good analysis, but you would need a company that's got access and that. I don't know how that might be a little bit more complicated. Then I'm. I'm making it seem, because you have to have, you know, permission and consent from those groups, that the DNA is only going to be used in certain ways. So, yeah, I'd have to. It's worth looking into.

Gerardo Sumano [03:08:42] Well, Doug already donated for it.

John Dehlin [03:08:45] Doug just donated a hundred bucks for. And I just want to thank you.

Simon Southerton [03:08:50] Got to make sure that goes to Gerardo.

John Dehlin [03:08:52] I will. Gerardo, that's. That money's yours. And I do want to thank. We've had four or five or six donors over the past few hours. Click on the little dollar sign button next to the chat in YouTube and do what's called a super chat, which is a donation. We do. We do try and pay Gerardo for his work and. And it costs money to run this stuff. So thanks to everyone who donates to the Open Stories foundation of Mormon Stories and. And who donate on the super chat features on YouTube to help make this podcast possible. And, Simon, we just adore you. Is there anything we can do to thank you for what you do?

Simon Southerton [03:09:33] Let me go,

John Dehlin [03:09:38] Simon. I'm surprised. I'm surprised. I'm surprised Mormonism still captures your attention at times, but I'm grateful. I don't want it to stop.

Simon Southerton [03:09:46] I've just got a, you know, a corral of hobby horses that I like to ride every now and then.

John Dehlin [03:09:52] May you never get off those horses. Never get off those horses. Simon, we need you.

Simon Southerton [03:09:59] Yes. Okay.

John Dehlin [03:10:02] All right. Thanks, Simon.

Simon Southerton [03:10:04] Thanks, guys.

John Dehlin [03:10:05] Thanks, Gerardo. You're the best. You guys take care. And thanks to all our listeners who have joined us today on Mormon Stories podcast. If you. If you value this programming and you can't afford to support us financially, that's. That's totally fine. We're very happy to give this away for free for people who want it and need it and can't afford to support it. If you do value this program and you can afford to support us, we really appreciate your support because we're losing. We lose donors every month to financial difficulty or people just getting bored or moving on, and so we're losing 10 to 20 donors a month. And sometimes people don't like the changes I make. They're like, why are you bringing Gerardo on? Or why are you bringing Cara on? I'm canceling my donations because I don't like Gerardo or I don't like Cara. So we, we need people to donate to replace the donors that, that quit when we make a change. So please consider becoming a monthly donor to Mormon Stories Podcast and the Open Stories Foundation.

Gerardo Sumano [03:11:09] Our.

John Dehlin [03:11:11] Our. Our foundation is a 501 C3 nonprofit in the U.S. we're transparent in our finances. We're tax deductible in the US and all of the money that you donate goes towards supporting the mission of the podcast. So go to MormonStories.org, click on the Donate button. Become a monthly donor. And we promise to keep doing this content for a long, long time. And, and we'll stop when your support stops. You can support us by subscribing on YouTube and Facebook and Mormon stories TikTok and on Instagram, by sharing this content with others, by spreading it through word of mouth, by giving us a positive review on Apple Podcast. We need those because haters give us bad reviews all the time and they don't even listen to the podcast. And we could use your positive reviews on the Mormon Stories Podcast Facebook page. Thanks for your support. Email us at Mormon Stories. We do have a Patreon page, Mark. We don't really use it much, but yeah, if you want to donate through Patreon, you can do that as well. And yeah, and we, you know, I didn't mean any disrespect to Rod Meldrum or to Brother Tuttle or any of these other people. I just think this idea of having non scientists contradict the entire global scientific community in religiously motivated ways is kind of absurd. And I think my sarcasm maybe spills over a little bit from time to time. So I apologize for that. We mean no disrespect, but we just, we don't believe it's ethical to make money off of misleading people scientifically. And so we would ask Rod Meldrum, Mr. Tuttle, and anyone else who we've referenced today, or anyone else who is a part of this Heartland Theory business to please be responsible in the things you teach people. Because the more you perpetuate pseudoscience at the expense of validating and supporting science, you're perpetuating non scientific conspiracy theory worldviews that spill over and threaten, frankly, the foundations of our democracy on this earth and, and in this country. So please stop. And yeah, Rod Meldrum, we welcome you to come on Mormon Stories and, and respond to this. And we welcome any of the pseudoscientists or publishers who, who were mentioned in this, in this presentation to come on. Mormon Stories will bring Simon on and will allow there to be a robust scientific discussion, sans Gish Gallup. So thanks, everybody. Thanks for your support. Please continue supporting us. We love you guys. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, value science. And we'll see you guys all again very soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everybody.

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