Meldrum’s Quest

Rod Meldrum, president and CEO of High Country Gourmet Foods, with the stated mission of helping “many thousands of people prepare physically for the second coming of the Savior, through food storage,” is a man on a mission: to prove that the Book of Mormon is consistent with US geography and DNA evidence.

So far, his book/video tour has included LDS stake centers and ward buildings in St. George and Wellsville.

His interpretation of the events toward the end of the Book of Mormon, with a climactic battle near the Great Lakes region of what is now the United States, is consistent with LDS Traditionalist views. However, in recent years those Traditionalist views have been at odds with scientific evidence regarding DNA lineages of Native Americans which do not show any evidence of Jewish heritage. In light of this evidence, many LDS scholars have adopted a “limited geography theory” that the peoples spoken of in the Book of Mormon in fact inhabited only a small area of Central America. Meldrum’s standpoint puts him at odds with these LDS scholars. I will be interested in seeing how this plays out.

Simon Southerton, noted molecular biologist, author, and former Latter-day Saint, said in a forum posting:

…his interpretation of the DNA evidence; however, is deeply flawed. He evidently bases it largely on the presence of the X lineage, which occurs at it highest frequency in Algonquian tribes (Cree, Ojibwe, Cheyenne, Kickapoo, Shawnee etc.) from north eastern North America. There is an ancient version of the X lineage among the Druze from Israel. But a much more closely related X lineage has been found in the Altai from southern Siberia, the same population with the highest frequency of the A, B, C and D lineages.

I don’t pretend to fully understand that, but it seems that if I actually knew what I was talking about, I might be suspicious of the unlikely conclusions drawn by Meldrum as Southerton is.

What I find more interesting, though, is that if Meldrum’s findings were really consistent with science, wouldn’t he be touring talk shows and publishing in scientific journals rather than giving lectures to faithful Latter-day Saints in stake centers? I mean, finding abundant Hebrew DNA in Native American tribes would be a truly revolutionary development that would challenge current pre-Columbian history and science to the core.

We have some food storage in our really over-sized storage room from High Country Gourmet Foods, I think. The word “gourmet”, despite being in the name of the company, is not really something which appropriately describes food which can be stored indefinitely at room temperature. Similarly, the word “science”, despite being at the heart of Muldrum’s argument, is not really something which appropriately describes his apologetic campaign to the faithful.