To find Jewish and American Indian genetic links, go to Ysearch and check out the Q-P36 modals for Ashkenazi Jews, Native Americans, and Norse Q.
[
www.ysearch.org]
In 1996 Stanford researchers led by Peter Underhill PhD calculated the age of the primary native American lineage Q-M3 at 2147 years before present (BP).(Underhill 1996) He used an observed Y mutation rate of 2.1 per 1,000. Underhill did not accept this date because it did not fit the big picture as he saw it. However, a distinction must be made between the findings of science and the conclusions of scientists. This young age for M3 remained a problem for years.
Eventually, an "effective" mutation rate of 0.7 per 1,000 was calculated for Maoris and Gypsies. Applying this to American Indians gives a lower limit of ~10,000 years BP. (Zegura 2004) However, the bottom line is this. Even if the "effective" mutation rate was calculated correctly for Maoris, it may not be applicable to American Indians. Observed rates run as high as 2.8 per 1,000 and higher. (Kayser 2000). At the end of the day, most American Indians could still be descended from a man who lived little more than 2,000 years ago.
Furthermore, this guy would have belonged to the Q-P36 lineage group. Q-P36 a.k.a. M242 is found in 5% of Iraqi Jews and 5% of Ashkenazi Jews (Shen 2004). About 15% of Yemeni Jews belong to a branch of Q-P36 called Q-M323. (Shen 2004)
A recent study (Zegura 2004) is cited on the web page of Rich Deem as "proof" that DNA evidence refutes the Book of Mormon. This is comical because Zegura's work is a gold mine of data that supports the Book of Mormon when the actual findings are seperated from the conclusions of Zegura. Zegura, of course, has a right to his own opinions. However, Deem appears to have cut and pasted Zegura's summary and altered a few words. Where Zegura says "...most haplogroup R lineages present in Native Americans most likely came from recent admixture with Europeans", Deem says "...R was found to come from recent admixture with Europeans".
What was actually found was that a lot of American Indians have west Eurasian lineages. Along with R, there was E3b, J, G, F and I. All of these as well as Q-P36 are found in modern Jewish populations. In other words about one third of American Indian males who believe themselves to be of full-blooded pre-Columbian origin and were accepted as such for genetic study belong to lineages commonly found in Modern Jews. Most of the remaining belong to Q-M3 that is derived from Q-P36.
Note also that a much higher percentage of Native Americans have West Eurasian lineage than the sample group in Zegura's study. (Hammer 2005) THose with known European ancestors were screened out.