Ninety-five percent of Native Americans can trace their ancestry to six "founding mothers" who arrived in the New World about 20,000 years ago, says a study by Utah-based Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation and the University of Pavia, Italy.

The date is about when humans first arrived in the Americas, according to the research.

The 95 percent figure is true whether today's Native Americans live in North, Central or South America, adds the study.

The research was published online Wednesday by the Public Library of Science, www.plos.org.

According to the study, this is the most comprehensive research ever into the genetic origins of Native Americans.

The finding does not mean that only six ancestral women reached the Americas around 20,000 years ago, says one of the co-authors, Ugo A. Perego, director of operations at the foundation based in Salt Lake City.

The research was based on studies of mitochondrial DNA, abbreviated as mtDNA, which is passed only from mothers to daughters. If a woman founder had only sons, her mtDNA would not have been passed down although she would have descendants.

Also, a press release from the foundation notes, "The study also confirms the presence of genetic subgroups of more rare, less known and geographically limited genetic groups who arrived later." Those groups are not detailed in the paper.

The scientists studied all available complete mtDNA data for Native Americans, amounting to more than 200 samples.

The mtDNA passed along from the six founding mothers is related to, but different from, mtDNA among today's northern Asians.

(The difference is because DNA changes over time. Using the known rate of change, scientists calculated the 20,000-year figure.)

The relationship reinforces the idea that the earliest peopling of the Americas happened because of a land bridge, called Beringia, that once stretched between Alaska and Russia.

The land bridge allowed people to live between today's continents. People and animals lived on Beringia probably for "a few thousands of years," Perego said.

When the climate im- proved and the ice melted, people "found an open, free corridor to go to America," he said.

"It appears that the migration was very rapid, and they reached southern Chile very rapidly as well."

In America, they found a better climate and the population increased rapidly, as reflected in the genetic information. "In the 20,000 years between the time of arrival and today, many different sub-lineages began."

As the settlers moved south, they populated more and more of North, Central and South America.

The study is titled, "The Phylogeny of the Four Pan-American MtDNA Haplogroups: Implications for Evolutionary and Disease Studies." Its authors are Antonio Torroni, the lead author and Perego's mentor, and Alessandro Achilli and Antonio Torroni, all of the University of Pavia; Perego and Scott R. Woodward of Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation; Claudio M. Bravi of Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biologia Celular, La Plata, Argentina; Michael D. Coble of the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory, Rockville, Md.; Qing-Peng Kong of the Kunming Institute of Zoology, Kunming, China; Antonio Salas of the Hospital Clinic University, Alicia, Spain; and Hans-Urgent Brandel of the University of Hamburg, Germany.

The nonprofit Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation was founded in 2000 by the late James LeVoy Sorenson and by Ira Fulton, with Brigham Young University in Provo providing a lab for testing genetic information. It has grown tremendously since. Its Web site notes the foundation is dedicated to building the world's foremost collection of DNA and corresponding genealogical information.

Restoration Studies Symposium

This Symposium is co-sponsored by the John Whitmer Historical Association, the Community of Christ Seminary, and the Sunstone Education Foundation, and begins with a special advance screening of Adam Christing's upcoming documentary A Mormon President about Joseph Smith Jr.'s 1844 run for the US presidency. Following the screening there will be a welcome from Wallace B. Smith, president emeritus of the Community of Christ.

Saturday's events begin with a plenary session on the future status and use of the Book of Mormon in the Community of Christ, discussed by a panel of leading thinkers on Community of Christ theology.

Another plenary session will be held at noon with an accompanying pizza lunch, with panelists discussing the ten Mormons who have run for President of the United States since 1844.

The remainder of the day (morning and afternoon) is a series of concurrent sessions with paper presentations and panel discussions covering a wide variety of theological and religious and cultural studies topics.

The Symposium comes to a close with an evening plenary address by renowned scholar Jan Shipps, who will draw upon her forty years of studying the Latter Day Saint movement to reflect on the place and trajectory of the Community of Christ within the broader Restoration context.

For those who are visiting Independence for the first time, Sunday morning we will conduct a special tour of the Community of Christ Temple and Auditorium complex, complete with a viewing of some of the amazing historical artifacts held in the Temple Archives. The $5.00 cost of the Sunday tours will be contributed to the Community of Christ for the preservation of their historic sites and artifacts.

Full advance registration is $40 for members of the John Whitmer Historical Association, $45 otherwise. For more information contact Sunstone at 801-355-5926.

Claremont is located 35 miles east of downtown LosAngeles, all sessions will be held in Stauffer Hall on the Claremont Graduate University Campus. Several interesting topics include a study of ex-Mormon narratives, Mormon theology, the life of Gordon B. Hinckley, immigration, Mormon women studies, and early Mormon literacy.

Full advance registration is $35, $40 at the door. For more information contact Sunstone at 801-355-5926.

Or read about the program here.

Abandon your Friday evening commute and drop in to listen to Mike Paulos, editor of the new book The Mormon Church on Trial: Transcripts of the Reed Smoot Hearings. Mike will begin speaking around 6:30 p.m. at Benchmark Books This young scholar has interesting insights into these famous hearings which became a transforming event in Utah and Mormon history. Former BYU archivist Harvard Heath, author of the book's introduction will also be in attendance. Heath is an authority on Senator Smoot and is the editor of In the World: The Diaries of Reed Smoot. Mike and Harvard will be available from 5:30 - 7:30 to sign copies of the book and to answer questions. Come enjoy some light refreshments, the comfortable and informal surroundings, a few new friends and maybe a new book or two. If you can't make the event, call ahead and the staff will get a copy autographed and drop it in the mail for you.

Benchmark Books
3269 South Main Street, Suite 250
Salt Lake City, Utah, 84115
801-486-3111

(To locate Benchmark Books, drive to the corner of 3300 South and State Street in Salt Lake City, Benchmark is North of McDonalds on the second floor of the dark red brick office building)

The public is invited to the "Sunday Afternoon Books and Authors Series" at the Olpin Student Union Building's Little Theater, University of Utah, at 3:00 p.m. The event is sponsored by the Friends of the Marriott Library. It will include presentations by Stan Larson and Sam Passey, editors of The William E. McLellin Papers, 1854-1880, and Dawn House, one of the contributors to this important new volume. There will, of course, be a question-and-answer period.

McLellin was one of the elders chosen for the original Twelve Apostles of the LDS Church in 1835. However, by 1838 McLellin had become a disaffected "friendly critic" who retained his belief in the divinity of the Book of Mormon but disagreed with the direction of the church. His papers were discovered by Dawn House, an editor at the Salt Lake Tribune, in Houston, Texas, in 1985 while reporting on the Mark Hofmann forgery and murder investigation. The papers were in the possession of Otis Traughber, son of an RLDS acquaintance of McLellin's in nineteenth-century Missouri. More precisely, Otis had the papers that had not already been purchased by the LDS Church in 1908 and thereafter secured in the First Presidency's private document vault. The Larson/Passey volume includes the LDS holdings and those which were ultimately purchased by the Marriott Library.

In January (2008), Signature Books will release The Mormon Church on Trial: Transcripts of the Reed Smoot Hearings, edited by Michael Harold Paulos. "The Smoot hearings are important not only to the study of Mormonism," writes Kathleen Flake, Professor of American Religious History at Vanderbilt University, "but also to the nation's interpretation of the First Amendment." Dr. Flake continues:

Making significant portions of the hearings' 3,500-page transcript available for the first time and including rich but unobtrusive annotation, this volume should be welcomed by scholars and the general reader alike, both of whom will find the hearings as interesting and amusing as they are important.

This sentiment is echoed by U.S. Senator Orrin G. Hatch, who discloses that "Reed Smoot has long been a hero of mine." The Senator adds that he "appreciate[s] this thorough, detailed collection of [Smoot's] early experiences in the U.S. Senate. With Latter-day Saints more prominent in government today than ever before, it is noteworthy how this book chronicles the way Senator Smoot challenged and overcame the anti-Mormon prejudices of his day to represent Utah in Congress.”

"The Natural object is always the best symbol"—Ezra Pound

We hope to focus our discussion, readings, and workshop on how our unique natural worlds give us poetic centers of gravity, touchstones of artistic resonance, and—as in Hemingway's "Big Two-Hearted River" stories*reflect the depths of hope and longing in our souls.

Warren Hatch is an assistant professor of English and Literature at Utah Valley State College and co-editor of Irreantum, journal of the AML. Warren's poems were selected by National Poet Laureate Billy Collins to win the 2006 Utah Writers Poetry Competition of the Western Humanities Review. Collins has said of him, "This poet has an unerring ear and a beautiful sense of how a line should be timed. I like the way precise verbal description can suddenly switch to a more colloquial line. He has the gift, the light touch, yet serious ballast on board." Scott has also won Utah Arts Council poetry contests, and his poetry collection, Mapping the Bones of the World, was published this year.

Join us from 10:00 a.m. to —12:00 noon at the Bountiful-Davis Art Center, 745 S. Main, Bountiful

Judy Busk, the author of The Sum of Our Past : Revisiting Pioneer Women will be reading from her book this Thursday, October 11, 2007, 7 p.m at the Orem Public Library, 58 N. State Street in Orem (phone: 801-229 7175). She will also speak to the Ladies Literary Club, Friday, October 12, 2007, 1:15 p.m. The literary club meets at 850 East South Temple in Salt Lake City (phone: 801-364-3451).

The annual meeting of The John Whitmer Historical Association will be held from Thursday, September 27th through Sunday, September 30th in Kirtland, Ohio.

Plenary and breakout sessions will be held in the new Temple Visitor Center, in the Community of Christ church, and in the lower court of the Temple itself.

Tours include visits to key Kirtland-area historic sites, including the restored Newell K. Whitney store and home; exploration of an 1830s ashery and sawmill with discussion of joint ownership within the United Order; the Isaac Morley Farm, site of a communal experiment among the followers of Sidney Rigdon (pre-Joseph Smith); John Johnson Farm, located in Hiram, Ohio, site of the vision of the three degrees of glory; and Fairport Harbor, the disembarkation point for Saints gathering to Kirtland from the New York area. Also the Zoar Village and Shaker sites in the area. See you there!

At long last the diaries of L. John Nuttall are available. The editor, Jedediah S. Rogers, has performed an enormous service by carefully transcribing and anotating them. Nuttall was notably the personal secretary to LDS church presidents in hidding, John Talyor and Wilford Woodruff. Jed will explain all this at Benchmark Books on Friday, September 28. The event will kick off at 5:30 p.m. at the bookstore located at 3269 South Main Street in Salt Lake City. As many of you know, Benchmark Books is located on the second floor of the building just north of McDonalds on the northeast corner of 3300 South and Main Street. The environment is always friendly. If you have not visited them before, Benchmark Books is a fun and interesting bookstore. Jed will begin speaking around 6:30 and will be available to sign books and answer questions. This volume, In The President's Office: The Diaries of L. John Nuttall, 1879-1892, is the eleventh installment in the Significant Diaries Series. Other volumes will also be available that night.

You can contact Benchmark Books ahead of time and reserve a copy by calling 486-3111 or if you don't live in Salt Lake you can reach them at 800-486-3112.

Warren Hatch will read selections from his new book of poetry, Mapping the Bones of the World, at the Harold B. Lee Library Auditorium at noon this Friday. Hatch is an Assistant Professor of English and Literature at Utah Valley University and editor of the journal Irreantum. His poems were selected by National Poet Laureate Billy Collins to win the 2006 Utah Writers Poetry Competition of the Western Humanities Review. He has also won the Monk Poetry Award, Utah Arts Council poetry contests, BYU's Eisteddfod Crown and Chair competitions, and BYU's Mayhew-Hinkley contest (poetry) and Ann Doty contest (short fiction). The library auditorium is located next to Special Collections on the ground floor. Click on the image to the right for more details.

The Salt Lake City Sunstone Symposium and Workshops will be held again at the Salt Lake Sheraton City Centre Hotel, located at 150 West 500 South in down town Salt Lake City.

The symposium begins Wednesday, August 8th with a variety of workshops on writing, meditation, philosophy, education and discussions of faith and doubt. Wednesday evening’s Smith-Pettit Lecture will be given by Helen Whitney, the creator of the PBS four-hour Frontline/American Experience documentary The Mormons. Durring the regular symposium, Whitney will premiere a screening of a previously unreleased version of her documentary that was excised during editing. This act, titled “Faith and Doubt,” presents firthand accouts of Latter-day Saints who lose or find faith.

Other interesting sessions are Dennis Potter’s session on Arthur "Killer" Kane, atonement and the documentary, New York Doll. Other sessions includ humor and Mormon culture with cartoonist Jeanette Atwood, Salt Lake Tribune columnist, Robert Kirby and LDS comedians Steve Marshall and Benght Washburn, a pre-screening of Richard Dutcher's new film Falling, Todd Compton on early Utah Mormon Indian liaison, Jacob Hamblin and several sessions and panels that will discuss the presidential bid by Mitt Romney including a paper on Romney by Grant McMurray, the popular former president of the Community of Christ. To register call 801-355-5926.

Congratulations to Vickie Cleverley Speek, who yesterday received a Mormon History Association award for "God Has Made Us a Kingdom": James Strang and the Midwest Mormons. At the association's annual awards banquet, held this year in Salt Lake City, Carol Cornwall Madsen of BYU won Best Book for An Advocate for Women: The Public Life of Emmeline B. Wells; Levi S. Peterson won Best Biography for his own autobiography, A Rascal by Nature, a Christian by Yearning; and Speek won the Best First Book Award. For critical praise for Speek's work, click here.

A PBS documentary, The Mormons, will be broadcast this week as part of "The American Experience" series. Produced by award-winning filmmaker Helen Whitney, the documentary will include interviews with several Signature Books authors, including Alex Caldiero, Todd Compton, D. Michael Quinn, Grant Palmer, Margaret Toscano, and Trevor Southey. Check local listings for broadcast times.

April 20-27, 2007—— Parley P. Pratt Conference

The University of Arkansas—Fort Smith is sponsoring a conference entitled "Religion and Reaction: The Life, Times, and Legacy of Parley Parker Pratt." The conference is timed to commemorate the bicentennial of Pratt's birth and the sesquicentennial of his death in Arkansas. For more information on the conference, visit www.PrattConference.org.

This years Sunstone West will be held at the Clarion Hotel San Francisco Airport, 401 East Millbrae Avenue, Millbrae, California. Sessions include Obedience-Culture Churches and Public Policy: Wrong Messengers and Wrong Messages by Glenn Cornett; Divided Loyalties? Mitt Romney: the First Mormon President? With Robert A Rees, John Hatch, Newell Bringhurst and Krys Corbett; Circling the Wagons Around Our Gay Loved Ones: How Are We Doing? with Carol Lynn Pearson; and The Mormons: A Conversation with Helen Whitney with clips from her forthcoming documentary. You can register at the door or call 1-801-355-5926 in advance.

Salt Lake City—The compiler of a book of quotes from the top leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will speak at Benchmark Books, Thursday, March 22, at 5:00 p.m. The store is located at 3269 South Main Street in Salt Lake City. The public is invited to join in this discussion.

Four days prior to the bookstore event, Van Hale, who hosts the weekly “Mormon Miscellaneous” radio show on KTKK 630 AM, will interview Bergera. The interview will air live on March 18, 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. The show can be accessed through streaming audio on “www.k-talk.com” or podcast at “http://mormonmisc.podbean.com.”

Bergera has authored or co-authored several previous books, including The Autobiography of B. H. Roberts, Brigham Young University: A House of Faith, and a two-volume work—Joseph Smith's Quorum of the Anointed, 1842-1845 and The Nauvoo Endowment Companies, 1845-1846—jointly named the Mormon History Association’s Best Documentary Book for 2005.

LeCheminant taught in the Church Education System in southern California and Salt Lake City. He has published in the Journal of Mormon History and elsewhere and contributed to other books. His doctoral dissertation discussed the church’s early reliance on “rational apologetics,” or a defense of church positions by an appeal to science and reason.