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The conquistadors described the Inca nobility as being tall and having fairer skin than theSpanish. The Inca surgeons performed highly skilled brain surgeries that had “significantlyhigher” success rates than American Civil War doctors.4 The research by Gary Urton, theDumbarton Oaks Professor of Pre-Columbian Studies in the Archeology Department at HarvardUniversity,5 supports the oral traditions that the Incas ancient ancestors had a written languagethat eventually became lost6 (fulfilled prophecy: Jacob 4:1-2). The surviving Incas told theSpanish that theirs was not the original empire, rather they were only trying to replicate thegolden age of their distant ancestors, the first Incas.So who then were the original Incas? Every Peruvian school child studies the two legends of thefirst Incas. The first oral tradition is of four viracochas (meaning white skinned) brothers whocame to Peru from the sea. The oldest was mean and violent. The youngest brother was kind,industrious, and introduced a new religion to the natives. The youngest brother became theirfirst and beloved king. The oldest brother became so violent and disruptive that the youngesthad to take his sisters and separate himself from their cruel sibling. After living for some time atLake Titicaca, the youngest brother and his followers eventually settled in the Cusco Valley inwhat is today Peru. The Spanish found and destroyed the remains of the first Inca king at theruins of Wimpillay in the Cusco Valley. Wimpillay dates to 500 BC.7 As documented in my book,Nephi in the Promised Land, the legend of the four brothers has undeniable parallels to theBook of Mormon account of Nephi and his three brothers (Compare to First Nephi).The second legend is also about the first Inca king, who with his wife, appeared in the LakeTiticaca region and taught the primitive natives to be clean, to be industrious, to farm, to weavecloth, and to be kind to each other. Most important, the first king introduced the people to anew religion. Anthropologists refer to this as the Yaya-Mama (father-mother) religion. Theanthropologists believe the origins of this second legend dates to approximately 500 BC.8 Thereare striking comparisons with this tradition and the history of Nephi as recorded in the fifthchapter of Second Nephi.Both legends are centered on the great founder of the Incas, their first king. Were these justmyths or did such a man actually appear from the sea and teach the natives how to live andworship? It was not until 2018, that a three-year study of paternal DNA of two hundred directdescendants of Inca nobility allowed scientists to conclude that the Inca nobility had a “singleunique patriarch” and that the two legends were probably about the same person who lived4Daley, Jason, “Inca Skull Surgeons Had Better Success Rates than American Civil War Doctors,” SmithsonianMagazine, June 13, 2018, ons-180969324/ accessed 27 July 2018.5Mann, Charles, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbas, (New York: Vintage Books, 2006).397.6Hiltunen, Juha J., Ancient Kings of Peru: The Reliability of the Chronicle of Fernando de Montesinos (Helsinki:Suomen Historiallinen Sevra, 1999), 354.7Bauer, Brian, Ancient Cusco, Heartland of the Inca, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), 157.8Kolata, The Tiwanaku, Portrait of an Andean Civilization, (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 1993).79–81.7 George D. Potter, 2018

both at Lake Titicaca and Cusco.9 In my book, Nephi in the Promised Land I provide compellingevidence that this “unique patriarch” was Nephi, the first Nephite king, and the initial author ofthe Book of Mormon.Viracocha, the Fair-Skinned God of the AndesThe introduction of the Book of Mormon claims: “The crowning event recorded in the Book ofMormon is the personal ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ among the Nephites soon after Hisresurrection. It puts forth the doctrines of the gospel, outlines the plan of salvation, and tellsmen what they must do to gain peace in this life and eternal salvation in the life to come.” TheBook of Mormon declares to the world that Jesus is the Christ and that He visited his followersin the New World.Anthropologists have studied the beliefs of the ancient Andean people. They know that thepreeminent God of the Andes has always been Viracocha, the White God. The native people ofthe Andes believe that Viracocha, their fair-skinned God, visited their ancestors and that he hadthe form of a man, with fair-skin, was bearded, and dressed like someone from Palestine.Archaeological evidence of the Viracocha worship in Peru reaches as far back 2180 BC. It is theearliest worship of the fair-skinned God in all the Americas. When he first visited theirancestors, he healed the sick, forgave sins, shed tears, taught them how to treat one other withlove, and brought the dead forth from their graves. They say that Viracocha wore sandals and awhite robe. The Peruvian white god walked on water and promised to return to them someday.It is hard not to draw comparisons between the oral traditions of Viracocha and the account ofChrist’s visit to the New World as recorded in the Book of Mormon. Full documentation of theoral tradition of Viracocha is also found Nephi in the Promised Land. While the legends ofViracocha were first recorded by the early Spanish chroniclers, I did not need to read aboutViracocha. I served a mission in the Andean highlands, including assignments in La Paz, Bolivia;Juliaca, Peru on the Altiplano near Lake Titicaca; and Cusco, Peru. I cannot count how manytimes native Peruvian elders who had never heard of the Book of Mormon, recalled withexactness story of when the White God appeared to their ancestors.While the oral traditions of the Andean people support the Book of Mormon history, they arenot the focus of this book. The chapters that follow will concentrate on the latest scientificevidences that document the existence between 2800 BC and 400 AD of the tangible attributesmentioned in the Book of Mormon. The pages of this book also include citations of historicalrecords and the findings of my own field research. There are over 600 citations in thefootnotes; the vast majority from non-LDS scholars.Missing from this book are references to ancient American cultures where no authoritativeempirical evidence has been found for a Nephite or Jaredite-like culture having existed duringBook of Mormon times. Archaeologists have identified fifty-two ancient American cultures that9Cortijo, Roberto, “Peruvian Scientists use DNA to Trace Origins of Inca Emperors,” May 26, tist-dna-inca-emperors.html. Accessed June 2018.8 George D. Potter, 2018

existed just during the Book of Mormon period (6 in North America, 5 in the Caribbean, 6 inMesoamerica, and 35 in South America).10 Most of these cultures were primitive Neolithicvillagers or hunter-gather nomadic tribes that in no way approached the advanced level ofcivilization described in the Book of Mormon. Undoubtedly, only a very few of the ancientAmerican cultures were part of the Book of Mormon narrative and even these societies wouldhave experienced periods of righteous living as well as long periods when unrighteousbehaviors were practiced.Further, this book does not reference non-empirical based theories of Book of Mormongeography. While well intended, the authors of these geographic models have taken the fewvague clues found in the Book of Mormon and fabricated maps for the Book of Mormon sitesbased on their highly subjective assumptions and personal interpretations of what thescriptures state. They claim their models are accurate based on the odd notion of “internallogic.” The rational for these maps is that until the geographic details of the Book of Mormonare identified, there is no merit in verifying the maps’ validity through archaeologicalevidence.11 If we lived in the Dark Ages such logic might have passed as a scholarly defense ofthe Book of Mormon. Naïve thinking on this order conjures up visions of standing in the court ofIsabella I and Ferdinand and hearing their court priests argue against Columbus stating that theroyal maps clearly show that the world is flat and rides through the universe on the back of aturtle. Each proponent claims their map of Book of Mormon lands is the most accurate. Yet,after thousands of archaeological excavations, there is still no compelling scientific evidencewithin the boundaries any of these maps north of Panama that support the theory that aJaredite or Nephite like civilization existed therein.Patience with emerging of DNA technologyDNA analysis is a new and exciting tool which will one day prove extremely helpful indiscovering where the Book of Mormon history took place. Genetics is a new science withlimited technology for identifying small ancient subgroups within a much greater population.DNA scientist Michael F. Whiting warns: “It would be the pinnacle of foolishness to base one’stestimony” of the Book of Mormon “on the results of a DNA analysis.” The Americas werepopulated by hundreds of Amerindian tribes long before the arrival of very small clusters ofBook of Mormon colonists from the Near East. Furthermore, with the genocides experienced bythe Jaredites and Nephites, their genetic markers discontinue over 1,400 years ago.Even finding ancient Lamanite DNA markers among living populations of Native Americans willbe extreme difficult. This is due to the admixture of European colonizers with non-Indians. Astudy published in 2012 in the journal of Genetics and Molecular Biology reported theprevalence of the European male Y-chromosome Q1a3 among 68 populations and 1,814 SouthAmerindian individuals, indicating that interpopulation mixing took place during colonial times10Wikipedia: List of pre-Columbian Cultures, accessed March 13, 2010.Clark, John E., “A Key for Evaluating Nephite Geographies,” Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 1 (1989):21; reprinted as John E. Clark, “Revisiting ‘A Key for Evaluating Nephite Geographies’,” Mormon Studies11Review 23/1 (2011): 13–14. or Sorenson, John L. Images of Ancient America: Visualizing Book of Mormon Life(Provo, Utah: Research Press, 1998), 188.119 George D. Potter, 2018

even among isolated populations.12 The scientists analyze DNA and then use Bayesian statisticsto estimate when and where genome changes occurred in the ancestors of the present daypopulations. It is not an exact science, and the widespread intermixing with Europeans makesdrawing conclusions about ancient Amerindian populations based on paternal DNA of currentpopulations difficult. For example, a study in 2018 in the journal of Molecular Genetics andGenomics reported a DNA study of twelve royal Inca families who are putative descendants ofthe Inca imperial family. The scientists discovered that their DNA included haplotypes R, E, I andT which are not Native American but Eurasian in lineage. However, they could not determine ifthe Eurasian DNA existed before or after the post-Columbian colonization.13An earlier study by the LDS owned Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation reported thatthe only uniquely Hebrew DNA marker (Colen modal haplotype) found among American nativepopulations was in Bolivia (part of ancient Peru), Columbia and Brazil14. However, this studywas found to be questionable because nearly all native population groups have to some degreeintermarried into people of European, Asian, Middle Eastern or African ancestry. Thus, it wouldbe difficult to isolate from modern Native Amerindians paternal DNA markers from Laman,Lemuel, or the sons of Ishmael. Even more unlikely will be identifying paternal markers fromany Jaredite or Nephite males who survived the genocide of circa 400 AD, since their DNAwould have been completely diluted over time through DNA degradation.It might be even more difficult to find mitochondrial (mtDNA) markers in modern populationsof descendants of the Lamanites. If my assumption is correct, the Lamanites resulted from ahandful of Middle Eastern men, namely, Laman, Lemuel, and the sons of Ishmael intermarryingwith women from large Amerindian tribes. As unorthodox as the local colonization hypothesisof the Book of Mormon people might seem, it helps explain the multitudes of people and thewars, and that took place during the first generation of the Nephites in the Promised Land. Itwould explain why the skins of the Lamanite children were darker than those of the Nephitesand why their culture was describe by Nephi as that of an “idle people, full of mischief andsubtlety, and did seek in the wilderness for beast of prey” (2 Nephi 5:24), and why Enos wrotethat many of them eat only raw meat (Enos 1:20). These are not the behaviors one wouldexpect from the children of Israelite mothers who were mentored by their parents in the strictrules of hygiene associated with the Law of Moses. Since Israelite lineage is through a child’smother, it explains why Nephi wrote that the “curse” was not darker skin, but being “cut offfrom the presence of the Lord” (no longer of the covenant people), and why Nephi instructedhis people not to mix with them, for the same “curse” would befall them (no longer of thehouse of Israel) (2 Nephi 5:20,23). If it is true that the original Lamanite men married wives12Bisso-Machado, Rafael, Maria Catira Bortolini, Francisco Mauro Salzano, “Uniparental Genetic Markers in SouthAmerindians,”Genetic and Molecular Biology, 2012 April-June; 35 (2): 365-387.13Sandoval, Jose R., Daniela R. Lacerda, Marilza S. Jota, Ronald Elward, Oscar Acosta, Donaldo Pinedo, PierinaDanos, Cinthia Cuellar, Susana Revollo, Fabricio R. Santos, and Ricardo Fujita, “Genetic Ancestry of Families ofPutative Inka Descent,” Molecular Genetics and Genomics, 03 March 00438-018-1427-4, accessed 25 July, 2018.14Groote, Michael de, “Hebrew DNA found in South America?” Deseret News, (Salt Lake City), 12 May 225191,00.html.10 George D. Potter, 2018

from Native America tribes, then the Lamanites children would be from the seed of Lehi, buttheir entire mitochondria DNA would be from their non-Hebrew native ancestral mothers.The resulting impact on DNA markers would be identical to the evolutionary influence theEuropean colonizers had on the current DNA of South American native tribes. The 2012 reportsstate: “Asymmetrical sex-mediated admixture was common during the first centuries of SouthAmerican colonization, and involved mostly European men and Amerindian/African women.The main consequences of this historical contract was the formation of mestizos and thepresent-day national societies; the former are characterized by a composite genome, with themajority of Y-chromosomes being of European origin, while their mtDNA derives fromAmerindian or African sources.”15 The study concludes that “The diversity of the markers madeit difficult to establish a general picture of Y-chromosome variability in the populationsstudied.” In other words, today’s Lamanite descendants would possess native AmerindianmtDNA only from their Indian mothers.Advances of Ancient DNA AnalysisFortunately, advances of ancient DNA analysis might help identify candidates for the long lostJaredites and Nephites. By extracting and analyzing DNA from ancient skeletons, geneticmarkers can be identified for populations that no longer exist or which through evolution canno longer be found in modern populations. For example, a study of early skeletons, headed byPontus Skoglund of the Harvard Department of Genetics, found that ancient Amazonpopulations from South America had DNA markers from Australasians. The article was titled,“Genetic Evidence for Two Populations of the Americas.”16The process sounds easy, however, it’s like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. Thescientist must find human remains that are uncontaminated, contain enough remaining DNAmaterial for testing, carefully attract DNA and process the samples. Further, in our case, theskeletons must date to the Book of Mormon period and be from the area where the Jareditesor Nephites lived and died.There have been several claims of how ancient Native American tribes had European or MiddleEastern DNA markers in their genes. But these are misleading. For example, in 2013 theNational Geographic reported a University of Copenhagen study concluded that “Nearly onethird of Native American genes come from West Eurasian people linked to the Middle East andEurope, rather than entirely from East Asian as previously thought, according to a newsequence of genome.”17 While the study could not determine when the West Eurasian geneswere introduced to the Americas, the DNA for the genome sequence was taken from a 24,00015Bisso-Machado, Genetics and Molecular Biology.Skogllund, Pontus, Swapan Mallick, Maria Catira Bortolini, Niru Chennagiri, Tabita Humemeier, Maria Luiza PetzlErler, Francisco Mauro Salzano, Nick Patterson, David Reich, “Genetic Evidence for Two Founding Populations ofthe Americas, Nature, September 2015, 3:525 (7567), 104-108.17Handwerk, Brian "Great Surprise"—Native Americans Have West Eurasian Origins” National Geographic, 22November 2013, ria-genetics/ accessed 7 July 2018.1611 George D. Potter, 2018

year-old Siberian skeleton and actually supports the theory that the Native Americas came tothe New World across the Bering Sea land bridge thousands of years before the Book ofMormon period.However, recent ancient DNA studies are encouraging. Here are two examples of how ancientDNA studies are helping identify the Book of Mormon lands. When I published my book Nephiin the Promised Land in 2009, I proposed that the Nephites left there capital of Zarahemla onthe Altiplano of Peru and relocated to Bountiful in the valleys surrounding Nasca, Peru circa 200BC.A study published in 2014 by a highly credible team of archaeologists is interesting. It was basedon skeleton samples from the Nasca valleys in southern Peru. The team took 207 DNA samplesfrom human remains dating from circa 840 BC to 1450 AD. The team’s DNA analysis wasreproduced by the ancient DNA laboratories at the University of Adelaide and Yale University.Following strict precautions common to ancient DNA analysis, the scientists came to some veryinteresting DNA conclusions. They discovered that there was a significant increase in thepopulation of the Nasca area starting around 200 BC. This would be consistent with the Book ofMormon events when the Nephites shifted their capital to Bountiful in Nasca. The scientistsalso found that there was a “genetic discontinuity” and a decrease in the population of thearea around 440 AD, the time when the majority of the Nephites were exterminated. While thescientists believe these events could have been attributed to changes in the climate, they foundno corresponding climate change data for that time period. They declared in their report to theUnited States National Academy of Science that “alternative demographic factors such as massmortality cannot be excluded at this stage.”18But were the ancients who lived in the Nasca area during Book of Mormon times the people ofBountiful? Perhaps. A 2018 ancient DNA analysis conducted in the Lakehead University lab inCanada and two labs in the United States indicated that DNA samples taken from a 2,000-yearold skull near Nasca have only one discernible MtDNA haplogroup, U2e1. This rare haplogroupis not associated with other Native American populations, rather it is of European and MiddleEastern ancestors.19 This DNA study is not from what is considered a scholarly source andshould be considered preliminary and speculative until proven through further independenttests.Could Joseph Smith Have Authored the Book of Mormon?Joseph Smith was only 25 years old when he published the Book of Mormon in 1830. The youngprophet claimed that the Book of Mormon was an ancient record that had been inscribed ongold plates. He claimed that an angel sent by God had entrusted the golden plates into his care,18Fehren-Schmitz, Lars and Wolfgang Haak, Bertil Machte, Florian Maasch, Bastien Llamas, Else Tomasto Cagigao,Volker Sossna, Karsten Schittek, johny Isla Cuadrado, Bernhard Eitel, Markus Reindel, Climate Changes UnderliesGlobal Demographic, Genetic, and “Cultural Transitions in pre-Columbian Southern Peru.”, edited by CharlesStanish, UCLA, Proceeding of the National Academy of Science, PNAS, July 1, 2014, vol. iii, no. 26, 9443-9448.19Latest DNA Results for the Elongated Skulls of Paraca, Part 1 of 4: The Red Haired ated-skulls-paracas-part-1-4

Introduction: Why believe the Book of Mormon 5 1. The Book of Mormon's Accurate Description of the Ancient Frankincense Trail 15 2. Discovering The Valley of Lemuel 29 3. Bountiful and Nephi's Harbor 35 4. The Jaredites 57 5. South America, Geography and the Book of Mormon 67 6. A Nephite Civilization in Ancient Andes 87 7.