There is a new paper online that may be relevant to Book of Mormon issues, especially in light of the attacks based on DNA evidence. The paper is “Human Lymphocyte Antigens: Apparent Afro-Asiatic, Southern Asian, and European HLAs in Indigenous American Populations” by James L. Guthrie. It deals with human lymphocyte antigens (HLAs, proteins on white blood cells that can be classified like blood types to understand genetic relationships between groups. Guthrie’s survey of the evidence suggest that Mesoamerica had significant genetic influence from non-Asian groups prior to the arrival of Columbus. Here is an excerpt:

The purpose of this paper is to point out that certain indigenous American populations have HLA alleles that are rare in America but common in parts of the world not usually associated with American Indian origins, and many of the unexpected HLAs are characteristic of populations sometimes claimed, on the basis of other kinds of evidence, to have had ancient contacts with Americans. In other words, there seems to be genetic support for the idea of ancient interhemispheric mobility. I propose that the “non-Indian” HLAs were introduced from the outside at various times between the initial colonizations of the hemisphere and the late fifteenth century A.D. I also consider other possible explanations, but they seem less likely to me. The percentage of apparently foreign HLAs averages only 7% in the populations tested so far, and this observation does not contradict the supposition that the founding American populations were overwhelmingly Asian.

Thanks to D.C. Pyle for letting me know.