{"id":47523,"date":"2024-07-02T14:42:35","date_gmt":"2024-07-02T20:42:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.timesandseasons.org\/?p=47523"},"modified":"2024-07-02T14:43:13","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T20:43:13","slug":"all-indians-today-descend-from-lehi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2024\/07\/all-indians-today-descend-from-lehi\/","title":{"rendered":"All Indians Today Descend From Lehi"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This is PART 6 of 6 of an exclusive series for <\/em>Times & Seasons on \u201cThe Tribes that Greeted the Lehites\u201d by Mike Winder. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read Part 1 \u201cA Land of Many Tribes\u201d <\/em><\/strong>HERE<\/a>. Part 2 \u201cLehi\u2019s Thanksgiving\u201d <\/em><\/strong>HERE<\/a>. Part 3 \u201cAll Those Who Would Go with Me\u201d <\/em><\/strong>HERE<\/a>. Part 4 \u201cNephite Succession Crisis\u201d <\/em><\/strong>HERE<\/a>. Part 5 \u201cSherem the Native American\u201d <\/em><\/strong>HERE<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the children of Lehi and Sariah intermarried with first Ishamel\u2019s offspring and then their children intermixed with the natives of the Americas, what has been the result genetically after 2,600 years? Are the American Indians encountered by the Europeans in 1492 and beyond also descendants of Lehi and Sariah? I believe that ALL<\/em> of them are, based on the groundbreaking research<\/a> by Yale statistician Joseph Chang. He points out that because everyone has two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on, by the time you get back 1,000 years or so your pedigree would have 137,438,953,472 ancestors on it. Not only is this tens of billions more than are on the earth today, it is more than have ever lived on earth! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chang explains that this paradox is due to the fact that the higher up a pedigree we go, the more lines are coalescing among fewer individuals. About 1,000 years back, for example, 20 percent of the adult Europeans alive would turn out to be the ancestors of no one living today (that is, they had no children or all their descendants eventually died childless). Each of the remaining 80 percent would turn out to be a direct ancestor of every European living today. Thus, everyone<\/em> with European ancestry is descended from Emperor Charlemagne, but also any peasant that was alive back then that has posterity alive today. Likewise<\/a>, everyone <\/em>with Asian ancestry is descended from Genghis Khan, and everyone<\/em> with Arab ancestry is descended from Muhammad, and so forth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if you get back 3,400 years, Chang\u2019s mathematical models show something even more startling. At that point, he concluded<\/a>, \u201call individuals who have any descendants among the present-day individuals are actually ancestors of all present-day individuals.\u201d Meaning, everyone on earth\u2013from the most remote Australian aborigine and African pygmy to the Navajo chief and Norwegian banker, is descended from the same ancestor group. We are all<\/em> descendants of the Egyptian Pharaoh Cheops and the lowliest slave that built the pyramids (and everyone else alive on the earth in those ancient days that has posterity still on the earth). Everyone<\/em> on earth would also be a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and each of the 12 tribes of Israel (who lived around 1800 B.C.). For as Dr. Chang phrased it<\/a>, \u201cIf you\u2019re a human being on Earth, you almost certainly have Nefertiti, Confucius, or anyone we can actually name from ancient history in your tree, if they left children. The further back we go, the more the certainty of ancestry increases.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So back to Lehi. A Ta\u00edno Indian in the Caribbean who met Christopher Columbus when the Santa Maria <\/em>first arrived in the Bahamas in 1492 had two parents, four grandparents, and so forth. By the time we get back to the year 850 A.D. there would have been 27 generations and over 67 million ancestors in that generation alone. (Remember, all of the Americas would have only had 50-100 million souls at its pre-Columbus peak). When we reach the time of Lehi and Sariah, 575 B.C., there would have been 84 generations that have elapsed. Mathematically, this means that this Ta\u00edno would have 9.6 septillion ancestors in that generation! Since such an astronomically huge number is ridiculous (this is a 9 with 24 zeros), then there was surely tremendous coalescing along the way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chang\u2019s statistical models show that anyone with Native American ancestry in 1492 would have been descended from everyone<\/em> alive in North and South America from around the year 300 A.D. that had any living posterity in 1492. Remember, \u201cthe further back we go, the more the certainty of ancestry increases.\u201d So, by 900 years before that (600 B.C.) it would be with absolute certainty that anyone alive in 1492 anywhere in the hemisphere would be a descendant of Lehi and Sariah. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the FAIR Latter-day Saints blog wrote<\/a>: \u201cIf Lehi had any descendants among Amerindians, then after 2600 years all Amerindians would share Lehi as an ancestor. Even if (as is probable) the Lehite group was a small drop in a larger population ‘ocean’ of pre-Columbian inhabitants, Lehi would have been an ancestor of virtually all the modern-day Amerindians if any of his descendants married into the existing New World population.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some may question if this is really true for ALL Native Americans met by Europeans in the Age of Discovery. Afterall, the Tehuelche in the remote tip of Patagonia were over 8,000 miles from the Inuit in Alaska. But, as Adam Rutherford wrote<\/a> in A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived<\/em>: \u201cAncestry is such that genes can spread very quickly over generations. It might seem that a remote tribe would have been isolated from others for centuries in, for example, the Amazon. But no one is isolated indefinitely, and it only takes a very small number of people to breed out with people from beyond their direct gene pool for that DNA to rapidly descend through the generations.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes it only takes one cultural interbreeding to spread the genes of one population to another, as was shown with the 2010 study<\/a> that revealed that at least one Native American female was brought back to Iceland by the Vikings a thousand years ago. \u201cOne ancestral link to another cultural group among your millions of forbears, and you share ancestors with everyone in that group,\u201d noted anthropologist Mark Humphrys<\/a>. \u201cSo everyone who reproduced with somebody who was born far from their own natal home \u2014 every sailor blown off course, every young man who set off to seek his fortune, every woman who left home with a trader from a foreign land \u2014 as long as they had children, they helped weave the tight web of brotherhood we all share.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, then, Parley P. Pratt would have been pretty accurate when he declared<\/a>, \u201cFour-fifths, or perhaps nine-tenths of the vast population of Peru, as well as of most other countries of Spanish America, are of the blood of Lehi.\u201d President Gordon B. Hinckley, in the dedicatory prayer of the Mexico City Temple in 1983 was also accurate when he declared<\/a>, \u201cBless thy Saints in this great land and those from other lands who will use this temple\u2026.Most have in their veins the blood of Father Lehi. Thou hast kept Thine ancient promise.\u201d And President Dieter F. Uchtdorf was sincere when he prayed<\/a> at the dedication of the Quetzaltenango Guatemala Temple in 2011, \u201cour hearts are filled with gratitude for Thy remembrance of the sons and daughters of Lehi. Thou hast heard their cries and seen their tears. Thou hast accepted their righteous sacrifices.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mike Winder is the author of 14 books, including his newest, <\/em>Hidden in Hollywood: The Gospel Found in 1001 Movie Quotes<\/em><\/a>. Illustrations by Image Creator from Microsoft Designer with prompts from the author.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the children of Lehi and Sariah intermarried with first Ishamel\u2019s offspring and then their children intermixed with the natives of the Americas, what has been the result genetically after 2,600 years? Are the American Indians encountered by the Europeans in 1492 and beyond also descendants of Lehi and Sariah?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10404,"featured_media":47524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,1058],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-of-mormon","category-guest-bloggers"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/All-Indiand-Today-Descend-from-Lehi.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10404"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47523"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47526,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47523\/revisions\/47526"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}