How Kennewick Man has Impaled Rodney Meldrum?????s Heartland Scam

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_Simon Southerton
_Emeritus
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How Kennewick Man has Impaled Rodney Meldrum’s Heartland Scam

Post by _Simon Southerton »

I was contacted recently by Boyd Tuttle, the owner of Digital Legends Press, the main publisher of Rodney Meldrum’s Heartland propaganda. He wanted to know my response to claims made in a new book he is publishing, written by David Read, called Face of a Nephite. In his book, Read attempts to discredit the research on Kennewick Man in order to defend the widely held mtDNA X2a claims of Heartlanders. David Read claims the team of 30+ scientists who studied Kennewick Man made a series of blunders and that he, a patent attorney, has discovered the real secrets in the bones. I was particularly disturbed to discover that David Read had retained two critical errors in Face of a Nephite, after they were repeatedly pointed out to him by the scientist most intimately connected with the recovery and study of Kennewick Man’s bones. I have pointed out these errors to Boyd Tuttle but he has not responded and the book is still for sale. https://www.digitalegend.com/catalog/pr ... cts_id=357

Image
The face of Kennewick Man on the cover of Face of a Nephite (Digital Legends Press). Scientists who created the clay model were angered to see this image on David Read's book, but were unable to prevent its use because of Smithsonian Institute policy.

Mormons defending the historicity of the Book of Mormon fall into two major camps. The academics at BYU camped in Guatemala, and the literalist Heartland group, led by salesman Rodney Meldrum, camped in North America. Basically, BYU scholars twist scripture to fit science, Meldrumites twist science to fit scripture. Rodney Meldrum’s fundamentalist movement is grounded on the claim that Native American mitochondrial DNA lineage X2a was brought to America by Lehi. However, in 2015, the genome of Kennewick Man, an ancient Native American skeleton discovered in Kennewick, Washington, was sequenced and found to possess the ancestral form of the X2a lineage. This was troubling news for Heartlanders, because Kennewick Man lived in what is now Washington state about 6,000 years before Lehi set sail for America.

In the past I have not paid much attention to Meldrum’s pseudoscience. However, Meldrum’s circus is now the main event in town, with Mormon celebrities like Glenn Beck, Tim Ballard, the Osmonds and 70+ other speakers appearing at his latest Heartland lovefest. These conferences typically attract 7,000+ attendees. Meldrum’s fake science is now firmly established in the Mormon mainstream.

The more I read, the more fascinating the story of Kennewick Man became. His skeleton is almost complete, very well preserved, and has been more thoroughly studied than any other ancient skeleton in American history. I have just posted an essay on my website that looks closely at the Kennewick Man story, and how Heartland pseudoscientists are perverting it.

I was amazed to discover how well Kennewick Man has impaled Meldrum and his lies.

https://simonsoutherton.com/how-kennewi ... land-scam/

TLDR (Conclusion of the essay).

“There can be no doubt Kennewick Man lived about 6,000 years before the Book of Mormon claims Nephites existed. The following evidences, both independently and collectively, prove this is the case.

1. Twelve highly accurate radiocarbon dates on Kennewick Man’s well-preserved bone collagen revealed he lived almost 9,000 years ago.
2. Kennewick Man does not carry any recent Middle Eastern DNA in his genome. He is closely related to nearby indigenous tribes.
3. All Native American mitochondrial X2a lineages (ancient and contemporary) are descended from the ancestral X2a lineage possessed by Kennewick Man. The X2a lineage family is equally as old as the A, B, C and D mtDNA families in Native Americans.
4. The Cascade spearpoint buried in Kennewick Man’s pelvis is over 7,600 years old.
5. The absence of Mazama ash and presence of allophane (weathered Mazama ash) attached to his bones, proves Kennewick Man was buried before the well documented Mazama eruption 7,700 years ago. – The date of the Mazama eruption (7,700 years ago) has been as firmly established as the year Columbus set foot in the New World. It has been confirmed in hundreds of locations across the Pacific Northwest using many different techniques, including dendrochronology, radioisotopes and thermoluminescence. It has even been observed in the annual rings of the Greenland ice core.
6. Stable N and C isotope analysis revealed Kennewick Man was a hunter-gatherer and lived before Pacific Northwest cultures developed techniques for long-term storage of salmon about 5,000 years ago.”
LDS apologetics --> "It's not the crime, it's the cover-up, which creates the scandal."
"Bigfoot is a crucial part of the ecosystem, if he exists. So let's all help keep Bigfoot possibly alive for future generations to enjoy, unless he doesn't exist." - Futurama
_tapirrider
_Emeritus
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Re: How Kennewick Man has Impaled Rodney Meldrum’s Heartland Scam

Post by _tapirrider »

Thank you Simon. I appreciate your work in doing this.
_Simon Southerton
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Joined: Tue Apr 12, 2011 12:09 pm

Re: How Kennewick Man has Impaled Rodney Meldrum’s Heartland Scam

Post by _Simon Southerton »

tapirrider wrote:
Mon Oct 26, 2020 5:39 pm
Thank you Simon. I appreciate your work in doing this.
Thanks Tapirrider. I think the scientists who worked on Kennewick Man were pretty jaded by the experience, well before David Read came along. They copped a lot of heat in the press at the time when the arguments over access to the bones were at a peak. They were all disappointed by how Read pilfered their work for figures and images in his book, but they were powerless to stop it. The Smithsonian has a policy of allowing their work to be used by anyone. I wonder if the Mormon senators putting pressure on the Smithsonian over the "Smithsonian Statement on the Book of Mormon" influenced this policy. Mustn't bite the hand that feeds it.
LDS apologetics --> "It's not the crime, it's the cover-up, which creates the scandal."
"Bigfoot is a crucial part of the ecosystem, if he exists. So let's all help keep Bigfoot possibly alive for future generations to enjoy, unless he doesn't exist." - Futurama
_Philo Sofee
_Emeritus
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Re: How Kennewick Man has Impaled Rodney Meldrum’s Heartland Scam

Post by _Philo Sofee »

Simon
In the past I have not paid much attention to Meldrum’s pseudoscience. However, Meldrum’s circus is now the main event in town, with Mormon celebrities like Glenn Beck, Tim Ballard, the Osmonds and 70+ other speakers appearing at his latest Heartland lovefest. These conferences typically attract 7,000+ attendees. Meldrum’s fake science is now firmly established in the Mormon mainstream.
No wonder Peterson and Midgley are such curmudgeons!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:
It's amazing that Mormons are so Holy the Ghost dead as to not get it....... that's the price for dumbing down the "enlightened by the Spirit" members....... On this, though, ironic as total all get out, Hugh Nibley got it right.......rhetoric destroys everything it touches, and having celebrities cheer on the Heartland thinking as valid science is one very powerful piece of evidence for the Nibley thesis.
Dr CamNC4Me
"Dr. Peterson and his Callithumpian cabal of BYU idiots have been marginalized by their own inevitable irrelevancy defending a fraud."
_kairos
_Emeritus
Posts: 1917
Joined: Tue Dec 01, 2009 12:56 am

Re: How Kennewick Man has Impaled Rodney Meldrum’s Heartland Scam

Post by _kairos »

When RM was trying to prove the historicity of the Book of Mormon , I asked him what was his biggest difficulty/problem to overcome?
He said "those damn elephants"!
By not covering it and claiming he has a DNA
Connection, the rodman seems to continue to enlist more heartlanders.
Just sayin
k
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