They try to tell us that we don't find all of the DNA from the past because of bottlenecks, etc.

Here is an example from Mr. Ash.

http://www.mormontimes.com/article/1741/Founder-effect-genetic-drift-bottlenecks-and-the-Book-of-Mormon

"A bottleneck, for example, can occur when a large portion of a population dies from war, famine or disease and the haplotypes of the surviving group don't accurately represent the diversity of the larger group from which they emerged. This type of bottleneck likely occurred when diseases introduced by the Spaniards wiped out millions of Native Americans — perhaps up to 80 percent of pre-Columbian populations."

"Drs. Beth Shook and David Smith, two non-LDS scientists, claim genetic drift among Native Americans has "altered haplogroup frequencies and caused the loss of many haplotypes" (American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 2008)."

There is something that Mr. Ash won't tell you about Drs. Beth Shook and David Smith's report. He won't tell you that the "extinct" DNA is nothing more than the haplogroups already known to have come from Asia long before the BofM time period.

http://ohiohistory.wordpress.com/2008/09/04/new-study-of-ancient-dna-reveals-population-history-of-northeastern-north-america/

"Shook and Smith also point out that “seven of nine Hopewell haplogroup A haplotypes,” distinctive variations of the mtDNA, seem to represent lineages “that might now be extinct.” In other words, attempts to link particular ancient groups with modern groups will be complicated by the fact that some ancient groups may have no living descendants."

The apologists like to make people think that "extinct" dna could be hiding the proof for the BofM. They misquote scientists to do this.

The DNA found in pre-Columbian human remains only show what science knows to be from the migrations +10,000 years ago. When scientists talk about extinct dna they mean the haplogroups we already know about. They mean that it is found in ancient human remains in America but not always in living populations. None of these genetic reports ever claim or even imply a missing, unidentified haplogroup from the old world during Biblical times.

Mr. Ash talked about war, famine, disease and surviving haplotypes. Ever notice how the apologists love to quote from only the American studies? I think they are playing on people's lack of understanding of the history of America's indigenous people.

Take a look at England. It's history is known. There are writings, unlike in pre-Columbian North America. There were wars, famines, extensive loss of populations during the Great Famine, Black Death, etc. And there have been DNA studies comparing the ancient people to the living populations. Comparing these studies in Great Britain with the American studies shows how consistent science is.

Here are the titles of two reports.

Tracing the Phylogeography of Human Populations in Britain Based on 4th-11th Century mtDNA Genotypes (2006)
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/1/152.full.pdf

Ancient human mtDna genotypes from England reveal lost variation over the last millennium (2007)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2391188/pdf/rsbl20070269.pdf

When I read them I saw that the diversity did become limited from disease, etc, but the ancient haplogroups are known. Also there are haplogroups corresponding to the invasions, etc. The science of DNA backs up both the written history and the archaeology studies.

The same DNA science is used in the American studies. What it consistently shows is that there is no Biblical time period old world haplogroups in pre-Columbian America. It even shows that with the Hopewell, it was not an invasion from another haplotype.

http://ohiohistory.wordpress.com/2008/09/04/new-study-of-ancient-dna-reveals-population-history-of-northeastern-north-america/

"One conclusion you might draw from these data is that whatever brought about the end of the Hopewell culture, it did not involve the movement of new groups of people into the Northeast."

Where is the DNA for BofM people? Only in the imagination of apologists, that's where.

In a paper recently published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Icelandic scientists claim they may have detected Native American DNA in Icelanders. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.21419/pdf

If this research is confirmed it would raise very interesting questions for Mormon apologists.

In 520 AD there were allegedly hundreds of thousands of Lamanites wiping out Nephites somewhere in the Americas. Apologists would have us believe that we wouldn’t expect to detect Israelite DNA in the Americas because we don’t know what Israelite DNA looks like (untrue) or it got diluted away (why?).

In 1000AD, just 500 years later, Norse sailors spent 3-10 years in Newfoundland, establishing small settlements and then sailed back to Iceland. Scientists found about 60 Icelanders (about 0.2% of Icelandic population) had mtDNA that belongs to lineage C1e, a lineage that is most similar to mtDNA lineages in the Americas and Asia. The authors traced the lineage to 4 women living in the early 1700s and think it is unlikely that the lineage came from Europe as there was little contact with Europe prior to 1700. They think it probably entered the Icelandic population soon after colonization in 870 AD. As all the C lineages are very closely related, it is likely that it arrived in a single female. (http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=21814&pageid=28&pagename=Sci-Tech)

If this turns out to be validated by further study, which I strongly suspect it will, it begs the question. Why does Israelite DNA from populations in the hundreds of thousands just disappear in the Americas but American Indian DNA from one or two women survives quite happily in Iceland? Just lucky? Or maybe God is hiding the Lamanites as some sort of test for the faithful?

Thanks Simon.

if DNA just gets wiped out so conveniently?