Smithsonian Statement Regarding

The Smithsonian Institution has received hundreds of inquiries during the past several years regarding the use of the Book of Mormon as a guide to archeological researches. Answers to questions most commonly asked are as follows:

1. The Smithsonian Institution has never used the Book of Mormon in any way as a scientific guide. Smithsonian archeologists see no connection between archeology of the New World and the subject matter of the book.

2. The physical type of the American Indian is basically Mongoloid, being most closely related to that of the peoples of eastern central, and northwestern Asia. It is believed that the ancestors of the present Indians came into the New World-probably over a land bridge known to have existed in the Bering Strait region during the last Ice Age-in a continuing series of small migrations beginning about 25,000 years ago.

3. Extensive archeological researches in southwestern Mexico and Central America clearly indicate that the civilizations of these regions developed locally from simple beginnings without the aid of outside stimulus.

4. Present evidence indicates that the first people to reach America from the East were the Norsemen who arrived in the northwestern part of North America about A.D. 1000. There is nothing to show that they reached Mexico or Central America. Some anthropologists think that there is evidence of voyages to America from the eastern Atlantic coast before the beginning of the Christian Era, but such evidence, based on certain cultural parallels, is very inconclusive.

5. We know of no authentic cases of ancient Egyptian or Hebrew writing having been found in the New World. Reports of findings of Egyptian influence in the Mexican and Central American areas have been published in newspapers and magazines from time to time, but thus far no reputable Egyptologist has been able to discover any relationship between Mexican remains and those of Egypt.

6. There is one copy of the Book of Mormon in the United States National Museum; there is one copy and part of another in the Bureau of American Ethnology; and one copy was sent by the Smithsonian library to the Library of Congress for deposit. Two of these were gift copies, and one was received by transfer from another Government agency. One or two members of the staff have personal copies that were presented to them by Mormons.

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The plain fact is that no non-Mormon anthropologists or archeologists accept the thesis that the American Indians are of Jewish ancestry. They believe that the Indians are Mongoloids and not Mediterranean Caucasoids. Most scholars believe that they entered this continent across the Bering Straits and not by ships from Jerusalem.

From: Whalen, William J., The Latter-day Saints in the Modern Day World, (New York The John Day Company), 1964, pp. 50-51.

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