July 28, 2025 • 44 mins
Before the Pilgrims landed at Cape Cod, what was happening in North America? Who was there? What civilizations rose and fell? For years, the answers to these questions have been shrouded in mystery. On today’s broadcast, journey with Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson through the native ruins and heritage sites of pre-colonization America as you unpack who the first Americans were and where they came from.
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S1 (00:00):
Hi friend, thank you so much for downloading this podcast
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(00:22):
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(00:43):
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(01:45):
with Janet Parshall. Now please enjoy the broadcast.
S2 (01:51):
Here are some of the news headlines we're watching.
S3 (01:53):
The conference was over. The president won a pledge.
S4 (01:55):
Americans worshiping government over God. gone.
S5 (01:57):
Extremely rare safety move by a major 17 years.
S4 (02:01):
The Palestinians and Israelis negotiated.
S5 (02:04):
This is not. The answer.
S1 (02:18):
Hi friends. Welcome to In the Market with Janet Parshall.
I am so glad you're going to spend the hour
with me. Listen, if you are the least bit interested
in science or anthropology or social science or the creation
evolution debate, this hour is going to absolutely entranced you.
This is an important question. I had never thought about
it before. Maybe you have. So let me just put
(02:40):
it out there on the table as a way of
starting our conversation. When we talk about Native Americans, the
implication there is that they were native to American, not
that they were natives, but that they were native to America. Right.
Different tribes all across the United States of America. Well,
did they spring up ex nihilo and suddenly just show
up in the United States, or did they migrate from
(03:01):
somewhere else? And if they did, does that somehow speak
into the creation evolution debate? That is what we're going
to talk about this hour, but we're going to go
a whole lot deeper with the doctor, Nathaniel Jensen. He
has a PhD in cell and developmental biology from Harvard University. Yep.
Take out those thinking caps. This is where you get
to renew your mind as well as having your heart transformed.
(03:24):
He served as a research biologist, author, and speaker with
answers in Genesis. Formerly conducted research with the Institute for
Creation Research. When he was at Harvard, he was actively
involved in adult stem cell research and published several peer
reviewed papers. Those are the best kind in secular journals
in his field. His current research involves using DNA comparisons
to understand the true origin of species and to understand
(03:48):
human origins and human history. See where this is going
with Native Americans. He has published Groundbreaking results on this question.
In addition, he's contributed to several books, including The Design
and Complexity of the Cell and Creation Basics and Beyond.
He has the. He has authored The Lost Treasures of Genesis,
Replacing Darwin. The New Origin of Species, replacing Darwin made
(04:10):
simple and traced human DNA human DNA's big surprise. He
recently has published the book we're going to talk about today,
and I've got it listed right on my website. It's
called They Had Names, and there's this beautiful Indian headdress
on the front of the cover. You'll see it when
you go to our information page. And the subtitle gives
you a hint of where we're going, tracing the history
(04:31):
of the North American indigenous people. Now, Nathaniel, I have
to tell you, right out of the gate, people would go, oh,
we're listening to NPR. We're, you know, following the indigenous peoples.
I would not had I not known you and the publicists,
I would have thought, this is an interesting pitch. This
is a markedly secular book. And then I got into
it and I thought, oh, no, no, no, this is
entirely different approach. This goes right to the core of
(04:53):
where you're now finding passion in your bones, which is
the origin of people groups. But I got to turn
back the time a little bit. So you started out
at Parkside in Wisconsin. That's where you got your undergrad
in molecular biology and bioinformatics. Are you a wisconsinite by birth?
S6 (05:10):
I am a was born in Milwaukee, born and raised
so born Milwaukee but raised in Racine and Fairweather Packer
fan fair.
S1 (05:17):
Oh okay. I was with you until you got to
the fair weather part. I lived in Waukesha for years,
so I'm a die hard Packer fan. Let me just
make that clear. So thank you. Now, between between the
bachelor's and the. Did you get a master's in something?
S6 (05:32):
My original plan was to get a master's. My dad
was a dentist, and he had advised me early on
saying if I wanted to go into science and make
decent money or at least be able to support a family, well,
he said you needed an advanced degree. Parkside had a
three plus two program which said you could get your
bachelor's and master's in five years total. I learned early
on that Masters was not really a stepping stone for PhD.
(05:55):
That the PhD duration was the same regardless of whether
you had one or not, and you could actually skip
the Masters if you did enough research. So I tried
to do enough research so I could skip it and
just go directly to PhD, which I was able to do.
S1 (06:05):
Wow. Well, now, Nathaniel, they don't let just anybody into Harvard.
So you have to have a lot of smarts, as
my dad used to say. So. But your passion for
biology goes back to your undergrad work, right? Has this
always been a passion for you? And is it your
dad was a dentist. So did you talk science around
the dinner table?
S6 (06:25):
I've always had an interest in science, and even though
my dad was a dentist, I never liked blood. And
I still turn away when people take my own. So
I thought, medicine is not for me. And I remember
in high school I went to a small Christian high school.
We had Bob Jones textbooks, and there was an insect section,
and I'd always jump every time I saw the caterpillar
or some other squishy thing. And so I thought, well,
I don't know if I'm going to go into biology.
(06:46):
And my undergraduate was actually molecular biology, so I thought, okay,
it has some some rigor of chemistry but has some
real world applications. I thought maybe this kind of satisfies
all those constraints, which it did and eventually got interested
in cancer research at that time, which again, if you
can avoid the blood. Well, I should add finish the story.
The irony is I went to graduate school, worked on
blood stem cells of all stem cells that just sustains
(07:08):
your body, your bloodstream. And it killed probably about 2000 mice.
Take out their blood, take out their bones, and eventually,
you know, just learn to not think about what I
was doing. But that was the circuitous path to get
to my PhD.
S1 (07:20):
And it reminds us God has a sense of humor. Right.
You don't like this here. This is where I'm going
to take you. So I think that's interesting. Okay, so
here's a word I've not heard before bioinformatics. What is that?
S6 (07:32):
That was something I had to learn to that was
added to the program when I started my undergraduate. And
it was basic. So this is let's see here. I
graduated from high school in 1999. So I was at
Parkside 1999 to 2003. And that was right when this
idea of using computers to study biology was becoming hot.
So just for context, the human genome is the complete
(07:52):
sequence of our human DNA was announced, I think about 2001.
I think Clinton was president, Francis Collins was head of NIH.
Craig Venter was another guy who was working on the project.
So that was met with a lot of fanfare. And
that was really the first big push to have human DNA.
And after that was then getting DNA from people around
the globe. And so databases with tons and tons of
(08:13):
information have exploded. And just I guess for reference, then
a human genome is going to have 3.2 or so
billion DNA letters. So you think of how is that
encoded in a piece of computer information. It just reams
and reams of data that you can't you can spend
a lifetime just running your finger over it. It's impossible
to analyze by eye, essentially any sort of reasonable amount
(08:35):
of time. So to be able to use computers to
crunch the numbers, align DNA sequences, compare them, that's that's
really what the field is. Can we use computers to
simplify our tasks in biology because we're producing data at
a rate that's too fast for human beings on their
own to analyze. And so what it amounted to was
I took one computer science course. There was there was
(08:56):
actually there was two. One was a really lousy one.
Another was the weed out course for the computer scientist folks.
I complained, of course, to my professor saying, what's the
point of this? But he said, well, you'll be able
to speak to the computer scientists, which I was. So
it was a success.
S1 (09:07):
So this is going to be a great interview, and
we haven't even gotten to the core of the book.
And I want to find out why this idea of
the origin of species understanding human origins and human history
is really so important to you, and how this does
step right into the creation evolution debate. Doctor Nathaniel Jensen
is with us. He's written a brand new. I find
(09:29):
personally fascinating book called They Had Names. Tracing the history
of the North American indigenous people. More with Nathaniel right
after this. Are you intimidated when sharing your faith? Many
(09:56):
believers struggle with fear when it comes to evangelism, and
that's why I've chosen Why Jesus by Ray comfort as
this month's truth tool. Learn through Ray's real life conversations
that will show you how to overcome fear and trust
in God's faithfulness. As for your copy of Why Jesus,
when you give a gift of any amount in the market,
call 877 Janet 58. That's 877 Janet 58 or go
(10:16):
to in the market with Janet Parshall. Doctor Nathaniel Jensen
is with us, has his PhD in cell and developmental
biology from Harvard University and is the author of the book.
They had names tracing the history of the North American
Indigenous people. I'm going to dive into this in a bit,
but Nathaniel, you're such an interesting person. So I know
(10:38):
there are people listening all across the country who would
have me ask you. You talked about going to a
Christian high school, you talked about Parkside in Wisconsin, and
then you went to Harvard. Obviously, the presupposition on my
part is, if you want your Christian high school, I'm
assuming you had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. If
the answer to that question is yes. When you were
at Harvard, were there personal challenges to your faith, or
(10:58):
were there times where you questioned your faith, given the
crowd that you ran with at Harvard?
S6 (11:04):
I'd say I have a convoluted answer to both those questions.
I grew up in a Christian home, prayed the sinner's
prayer many times growing up, always struggled with assurance of salvation,
in part because I was living in sin. So, I mean,
for me, it was pornography. It's hard to get your
hands on pornography in the pre-internet age and in a
Christian home, but I still found ways to satisfy my
lusts and tell myself the whole time. Of course, almost
(11:25):
got baptized during this time. Tell myself that I was
still fine, that I didn't have a problem, all that
sort of thing. And so I don't know that I
really had a transformation where. So for me, being a Protestant,
I'm like, I know that believing in Jesus is supposed
to produce a desire for godliness, for holiness, for purity.
But something's not clicking. So in a sense, for me,
the gospel, of course, meaning good news was old news.
(11:48):
I had heard it all my life and it just
something didn't connect. And it was in graduate school again.
I attended church faithfully this whole time. Externally was a
model child. That's not a brag. As much as I
was able to hide my sin very well. And it
was sitting with the book of Hebrews, read through the
whole book one night and asking questions of so what
is the connection between saving faith and godly living? Where
(12:11):
I'd say the gospel went from old news to good news,
where it's exciting, where? Oh, wait a minute. The Bible
actually teaches that holiness is objectively beautiful. We think of
beauty as something subjective, but the Bible teaches it's objective.
God himself is objectively, gloriously beautiful because he is holiness.
That's the standard that he holds us to. And so
that's where it lit a new fire under me. In
a sense. So was I born again then? I don't know,
(12:32):
but that's that's when career paths changed to or career ambitions,
I should say. And there was a second part to
your question that I've forgotten, getting caught up in my
own story. But.
S1 (12:41):
Oh, no. Yes, yes.
S6 (12:43):
I feel like on the apologetics side, being raised in
a Christian home, I was well equipped, so I was
homeschooled through eighth grade. I remember going I found my
notes in the past couple of years going to Ken
Ham Seminar, Worldview Weekend, and I think in Waukesha, actually
in eighth grade and eighth grade and notes from there.
And have you been evolutionized? And so we had books
in our home and read those voraciously. It was exciting.
(13:05):
So that when I got to undergraduate, I commuted Parkside
is a, I think 80% or was 80% commuter campus.
I really didn't find much that was challenging in the
sense of I had already heard it. Good creationist apologetics
teach you evolution so that you know what it is
and know how to respond to it. And so there
really weren't any surprises in class that I think was critical.
(13:28):
And I think also a piece of advice I'd read,
I think it was Marvin Olasky some years ago, drawing
on his experience teaching at UT Austin, I think liberal bastion,
and saying his advice to incoming students was to expect
to read double, which I think that's great advice, he said.
Whatever discipline you're in doesn't have to be biology. It
can be English. You're going to hear the secular worldview
(13:49):
in class. You have to expect, if you want to
walk away with Christian worldview, to read just as much
outside of class as in it. Now, of course, any
college student knows if you're a full time, there's constant classwork.
How are you going to do that? And so I
strongly advise parents, grandparents, incoming students, do as much apologetics
before you get to college as you can. In a sense,
(14:09):
do that double ahead of time, kind of pre inoculate yourself,
because it'll be a whole lot easier if you're not
scrambling with an existential crisis in the middle of biology class.
And I heard that everybody oh he's made that assumption.
Oh he misinterpreted that that sort of thing. It was
a whole lot easier. Uh, and I should say that
the last factor, I think, in all this is a
(14:29):
strong supporting church. So at Parkside, I still attended my
home church. There was a very faithful, supportive group. Older
Saints prayed for me. Even going off to college, there
was a I attended a small kind of a college church.
They were all college aged students, basically, but very transparent.
Held you accountable, so lived with other Christians, which I
think was critical. Uh, that was the first time moving
(14:51):
away from home, then living with other people. So all
those factors together, I think, were were critical in not
just surviving but thriving. So I don't I don't feel
like there was a, an existential crisis of Is Christianity
true or not? In undergraduate or graduate school, there was
a time I was suicidal, I think, because I thought
I'd found something wrong with the theology I just discovered, which,
you know, if you think you found the good news,
then it's not good news. Of course, that's that's a
(15:12):
big deal. But by the grace of God made it through.
Then through that, and again, thanks to the support of
local church. So all those, all those things I think
were key factors in, in doing what I was able
to do, uh, come out for the glory of God
on the other side.
S1 (15:27):
Amen. I'm so glad I asked you that question. And
what wise counsel do your homework on the apologetics so
you prepared ahead of time. I think that's absolutely fabulous.
So while you're at Harvard, you graduate with Harvard. You
work at a time with answers in Genesis, and you
serve as a research biologist and author and a speaker.
So that again, portends, obviously, your interest in creation and
(15:48):
the evolutionary debate. How a is that true? B why
was that of interest to you, and how does that
tie back into cell and developmental biology?
S6 (15:59):
I had a passing thought going into graduate school of
working in creation apologetics at the time. So back up,
I guess, to my high school days. I read a
I read a book about a theory of cancer. Actually,
it turns out to be a quack idea, but I
swallowed it hook, line and sinker and thought, well, I'm
just going to go to school, get the credentials, and
then prove to the world this idea is correct. You
learn a lot of lessons along the way. But that
(16:19):
was my ambition early on. Was cure cancer, win the
Nobel Prize, all that sort of thing. Actually, I think
it was when cure cancer, win the Nobel Prize, then
have a platform to preach the gospel in theory. Noble,
but easily contaminated.
S1 (16:31):
Yes, but where there is no vision, the people perish.
So I love this.
S6 (16:35):
Okay. And got into it. So the connection to stem
cells was 2003, 2004, which is when I was finding
a lab in graduate school. The connection between stem cells
and cancer was just getting hot. And so this was
cutting edge stuff. It was really heady stuff because at Harvard,
they poached from other schools, they picked the brightest and
best people, bringing, of course, in millions of dollars of
(16:57):
grant money, working on the best questions. And so it
is possible you can you can wake up every day,
walk into lab saying, I might make a Nobel Prize
winning discovery today. It fills your mind with dreams and
ambition and selfishness and pride to and all that. All
that changed. This goes back to my testimony then middle
of graduate school, kind of discovering good news of the gospel.
(17:18):
And so then I began to say, well, how can
I use or abuse my training for the kingdom more directly?
And that's eventually what led to creation research.
S1 (17:26):
Wow, what a great place to take a break. But
what a fascinating story, Nathaniel. Doctor Nathaniel Jensen is with.
Jensen is with us. I'll slow down so I can
say it correctly. He's the author of a brand new
book called. They Had Names tracing the history of the
North American Indigenous people. Much more to discuss right after this.
(17:51):
They had names. The new book by Doctor Nathaniel Jensen,
the subtitle Tracing the History of the North American Indigenous People. Previously,
by the way, Nathaniel has written Replacing Darwin The New
Origin of the species, and traced human DNA's big surprise. So, Nathaniel, again,
because the overwhelming majority of people in the audience don't
(18:13):
have a PhD in cell or developmental biology. Walk this
through at a primer level. Okay. Primary school level so
we can understand this. My first question to you is
this is your passion. You really do love to study
human origins and human history. So how does understanding the
origins of the Native American people in this country tie
(18:36):
back at all into the question of creation versus evolution?
S6 (18:41):
Yes, that's a great question. And the answer comes, in
a sense, from the background I had growing up going
to Christian worldview conferences, watching debates. We had VHS tapes
of Duane Gish and debating evolutionists, and was familiar then
with the other side and what they had demanded of
us for 40 years. Familiar, I think, with the court
(19:01):
decisions in the 1980s that kicked creation science out of
the public schools. So when I started at the Institute
for Creation Research in 2009, the then CEO, which was
Henry Morris, the third, said to me that my task
was to develop a biology research program. So my thought
was applying sort of what I learned in graduate school,
which in God's grace, then I was able to then
(19:22):
apply what skills I learned in graduate school for for
a kingdom, kingdom or kingdom application Occasion was okay. What
questions are unanswered? What questions do we need to develop more? Secondly,
what are the tools? And then it's basically been for
the past 15 years a process of following the evidence
wherever it leads. And so I started off saying, well,
if we're going to go in biology, what's the big
(19:43):
biological question? Well, Darwin's question was the origin of species.
Let's start there. What do we know about the origin
of species? Okay, here's the things we don't know. Now
how do we answer these questions? What are the tools
that we have? Oh, we've got tons of genetic data.
Let's go there. And this is kind of where it
transfers then to the to the human side. The annual
research budget of the National Institutes of Health, the NIH,
(20:04):
that's probably the biggest funding body for scientific research in
the United States. So Institutes of Health is going to
fund human health research, human research there, aside from some bacteria,
humans are probably the best studied species genetically on the planet.
Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of DNA sequences from
(20:24):
people all around the globe are publicly available. So if
you ask the question or if you're doing a program
and saying, here's the important questions. Now, what tools do
we have? The lowest hanging fruit, in a sense, is
let's go chase the human questions, because there's just so
much you can go exploring with it. And that's part
of the reason I got into the human history field.
The second reason was humans have, in terms of biblical record,
(20:47):
the most detail. So yes, we have in Genesis chapter one,
God talks about creating kinds, and Noah brings to a
very kind and board the ark. But for humans we
have God creates two people, Adam and Eve, and then
we have God saves eight people Noah, his wife, his sons,
and their wives and board the ark. Then we have
a list. And this became especially critical three years ago.
(21:09):
In Genesis chapter ten, we have a genealogy of around
70 men. Why is that important? Because one of the
one of the types of DNA for which we have
hundreds of thousands of sequences is the male inherited Y-chromosome.
And much to my surprise and shock, we eventually discovered
at the genetic level the echo the mirror image. You
(21:30):
can find the Genesis ten genealogy. Count off the generations
basically point to spots in a DNA based family tree.
There's there's Shem, there's Ham, there's Japheth. Or to summarize
it in simple terms, any male who takes a Y-chromosome
DNA test and these are commercially available. We can now
trace that family line back to specific sons of Noah.
(21:52):
So wow. I guess to summarize then how I got
into this, it was what are the questions? And then
where's the tools. So we've got a lot of data
for humans in terms of genetics. We've got a lot
of biblical data that we can use to to frame
our questions. And then we had success. That's that's what's
so wild about it, is that I'm not some brilliant guy.
(22:12):
It's it's me and a handful of others. We don't
have billions of dollars of NIH research money coming at us.
But but the Bible is true. And so at some
point it kind of becomes shooting fish in a barrel.
And the answers emerge. And it's exciting because then you
can see real history come out of this. And then to,
I guess, kind of finish how how, how how do
we get to Native Americans after the book traced came out?
(22:36):
So that was 2022. That's where I announced, hey, we
found the echo of Genesis chapter ten. It's really a
history of civilization with DNA. We started doing videos on YouTube.
So after of course, after Covid 2020, we started doing
more online. And it just blossomed from there. I did
about one video per region of the globe, one region
for East Asia, for the Pacific, for Europe, for Africa,
(22:57):
and so on, and of course, one for Native Americans.
The YouTube team came back to me and said, hey,
that Native American stuff does really well. Give us more.
I thought, okay, well, if there's if if there's an
appetite for it, let's keep going. Of course you keep going.
If you can make discoveries. You can't just keep saying
the same thing over and over again. And we did
make discoveries. So that was beginning of 2023. And that
(23:19):
was really the impetus then for sinking my teeth into
this project on the pre-European history of the Americas, it's.
We've been having so much success. There was data available
and the pieces kept coming together. So, so, so this
book actually represents multiple disciplines. It's not just genetics. It's
one of the biggest discoveries was the DNA within a
young Earth framework is lining up with what the peoples
(23:40):
themselves say. Some of it's oral history, some of it's
been written down. A lot of it's been rejected by
the evolutionary community. And to make another long story short, uh,
this synthesis where. Oh, look here, the DNA I'm doing,
DNA research I'm doing is lining up with what the
natives themselves say has opened doors to Native American communities
that would never be open otherwise, because the biblical worldview
(24:03):
is giving back to them. History that's been taken away.
S1 (24:06):
Yes. Yes, yes. Wow. Okay. When we get back, I
want to get into some of the particulars about this,
because this is fascinating. By the way, in the book
they had names. Nathaniel has all kinds of maps and
graphs and charts. It is it is a beautiful book,
just in content, but in presentation as well. It's fabulous.
I've got a link to my information page in the
market with Janet Parshall, under the synopsis of each of
(24:27):
the two hours we do every day, there's a red box.
It says program details and audio. Click that on takes
you to the information page. You're going to see Nathaniel's
handsome face. You're going to see a link to his
Facebook and his X account. And on the right hand side,
his brand new book. They had names much more after this.
(24:53):
As a Christian, how do you digest the cultural issues
of our day and in the market? We believe that
understanding happens when we bring biblical truth to expose the
darkness in our world. That's what we do every day
and in the market. May I ask you to join us?
When you become a partial partner, your monthly gift ensures
this daily program continues. Become a partial partner today by
calling 877 Janet 58 or go to in the market
(25:14):
with Janet Parshall. We're having an absolutely fascinating conversation with
Doctor Nathaniel Jeanson. He has a PhD in cell and
developmental biology from Harvard University. And he, by the way,
has written a couple of excellent books before. The one
we're talking about today, one is called Replacing Darwin The
New Origin of the species, and traced human DNA's big surprise,
(25:37):
and that DNA component factors greatly into the third book
that he's written called. They Had names tracing the history
of the North American indigenous people, where he says that
through his study of the DNA, through the Y chromosome,
it's dads that passed down that Y chromosome that has
given us the best historical record of North America. And
this goes right into the subject of creationism. And I
(25:58):
loved what you said, Nathaniel, before you see the ads
on TV. Well, we did, at least before China hacked
them and some of the companies went bankrupt. But either way,
you could find out about your DNA and see if
you were related to Erik the Red right by sending
in some of your DNA. But this is part of
the bioinformatics that we talked about earlier. So now we
have a plethora of information about DNA, which really is
(26:20):
the creationist friend, because it really does connect us back
in such an inarguable way. So you start out the
book by talking about the first Americans. And the time
stamp on this, I think, is very interesting, because you
go from 1000 BC to AD 3300 rather. So again,
like so many of us, I think our first response is, well,
they're Native American. They were always here. Well, that's not
(26:42):
even a logical thought when you think about it. They
had to come from somewhere. They didn't spring up out
of the ground. And what you write about in the
group is what the DNA tells us about where these
people groups came from, which is absolutely fascinating. So pick
out one group, for example, because you note that, uh,
in fact, that some of the Native Americans could be
(27:02):
connected to Attila the Hun. Now, that is an eye
opener in and of itself to talk to me about that.
S6 (27:09):
Yes. Eye opening for me too. If you if you
read mainstream sources, evolutionary sources, it's it's kind of an
odd story when you step back and think about it.
They say 15,000 years ago a single migration. So 15,000
years ago, incomprehensible amount of time, long before any sort
of civilization evolutionary timing would put the first civilizations like
Sumer and Egypt and the Nolans 5000 years ago, so
(27:30):
long before that people group comes over, they disperse rapidly,
and then they kind of just sit in place, hunter
and gatherer, for 11,000 years or so and no contact
with the outside world, no contact with the old world.
It just it's like the only people who grew up
on earth that does this. Everyone else has contact. There's fighting,
there's conquest, there's movements, they're migrations. And the Native Americans
(27:50):
just kind of sit here and do nothing.
S7 (27:52):
I mean.
S6 (27:53):
If you think about it says, well, it kind of
makes you scratch your head.
S7 (27:56):
Exactly.
S6 (27:57):
What the. Yeah. What the DNA is revealing. So I'll
tell you what I wrote in the book. And because
this is an ongoing research project, I'll tell you what
we just announced a few weeks ago because I just
made another discovery. So the 300 A.D., is that the
bookend to one of those? Uh, I guess calendars that
I have chapter headings in the book, because the 3
to 600 A.D. we see with this male inherited Y chromosome,
(28:22):
I should say that's that's the oldest date I can
go back to with genetics. I talk about in the book,
you can see plenty of archaeological evidence for people here.
You can see mounds and such mound builders going back.
You have Poverty Point in Louisiana that goes back to
1000 BC, but I've got no Y chromosome links to
these people. And so something must have happened that if
you put the pieces together, there must have been an
(28:43):
invasion around that time, just a few centuries after Christ,
that replaced all those male males who were here before.
And of course, you start to wonder, is that disease?
Is it warfare? What is it? Yeah. And I have
a better answer now, in a minute. But the Attila
the Hun connection is it first that the connections came
(29:04):
in my mind because I'm like, okay, what else is
going on? If this is coming over from the old world?
This is contemporary with the history of civilization. We know
what's going on in Europe. We know what's going on
in China. We have records. And of course, 400 AD
is when the Huns come marching into Europe and participate
in the downfall of the Roman Empire. And there's a
there's a similar kind of a parallel activity going on
(29:26):
in China. The Han dynasty spans the centuries around the
time of Christ. It's kind of like the Roman Empire
equivalent in China, and they fall around the same time
due to some sort of Central Asian invader. So this
period of history is known in secular history as the
it's a German word, the the völkerwanderung or the great
wandering of peoples. So that got me excited because I'm like, okay,
(29:48):
it kind of makes sense then that people would migrate
to they'd go from Central Asia west into Europe, east
into China, and then maybe even a little bit further
east into the Americas and with DNA. Now I can say, okay,
here's the Han lineage and oh, wow, look, these guys,
the Native Americans, this, this invader group, their direct relatives
of Attila the Hun. So we can connect these all
(30:10):
in a better cause and effect relationship. We can also
see with this same sort of Y chromosome male inherited
DNA research, another migration invasion in the 900 A.D. this
gives rise I can I can be much more precise
and specific with this. This gives rise to the Algic
or Algonquian people groups. If those don't ring a bell,
you might think of people like the Blackfeet, the Cheyenne,
(30:34):
the Delaware people, the Pilgrims Day, the Massachusett, Narragansett, Wampanoag peoples.
Those are those are all Algonquians. And so their time
in the Americas was actually rather short. And I think
it's in chapter four where I combined the genetics and
the linguistic, the language information and their own accounts to say,
we can say fairly precisely that the Wampanoag and their
(30:57):
relatives arrived in New England only about a century, a
century and a half before the pilgrims did so. It
puts the first Thanksgiving in a totally different light. Now,
all that's from the book the new discovery is, I
can now say that there were at least five settlings
of the Americas from Asia, and the new discovery is
looking at female inherited DNA. This is known as mitochondrial DNA.
(31:21):
I think the reason this preserves more history is because,
for one, the men are the warriors that tend to
get slaughtered and the women and children get taken. And secondly,
I think it also is just basically biological. So females
are limited in their reproductive capacity with a nine month
gestation period. So even if a woman is continuously pregnant
(31:41):
from puberty to menopause, she can have maybe 40 kids
if she has twins or triplets or more a man.
King Solomon can have 700 wives, 300 concubines and father
a thousand children a year. If he wants to. He
can have 30,000 children in his lifetime. So I think
the the male inherited DNA is much more volatile. That's
why I can only go back to the 300 A.D. with,
(32:03):
with genetics, whereas the female inherited DNA, I think is
much more stable and I can go back to 1000 BC.
So there was a settling, probably right after Babel. That's
the first settling. There was a settling about 1000 BC
that gives rise to the Mayans. So this brings in
some of Central America. There will be a new book,
hopefully in 2027. And then the another, another settling in
the hundreds BC, which gives rise to the greatest city
(32:25):
in all of the Americas, Teotihuacan in Mexico. And then
you have this Han relatives who come in in the
300 A.D. and then finally the objects in the nine hundreds.
And then, of course, Europeans come. So this to me
just makes much more sense. It's dynamic. There's connections. Why
why would why should the Americas be this isolated, different,
you know, other they're not like the rest of the world. No, no,
(32:46):
they're like the rest of the world, the relative. We're
all related through NOAA. And so why wouldn't there be
connections between the old world and the new multiple times over?
These people are not dumb. They're not brutes. They're not,
you know, half evolved apes. Noah could build a boat.
Why couldn't these people build a boat to go across
the Bering Strait or whatever it is? So to me,
it has this emotional satisfaction to or maybe even intellectual
(33:07):
satisfaction like this makes more sense.
S7 (33:10):
Yeah.
S1 (33:11):
Oh, there's so many reactions I have to what you're saying,
number one, this just has to drive the evolutionist bonkers
because you can't say, oh, you know, this is just
your close minded Christianity and you refuse to look at
the facts. Well, DNA is objective fact, right? John Adams
facts are stubborn things. So you simply look at the
DNA and it is inarguable. That's got to be shaking
(33:31):
Darwin's tree pretty bad, doesn't it?
S6 (33:35):
Yes, to a degree. What's been somewhat humorous or I
guess it's even a gift from the evolutionary community. So
first of all, I should say the vast majority of
evolutionists simply ignore what we're doing. It's a very effective strategy,
you know, marginalize your opposition, ignore.
S7 (33:49):
Them, and don't give.
S6 (33:50):
Them the platform. I do the same thing with some
of my opposition, so I understand it. And then once
they make enough noise, though, you have to say something.
So there's a handful of critics, one of whom the
most vocal has basically responded to all of this research
going back even to 2022, and said that I'm wrong
because I disagree with the textbooks. So these people who
(34:13):
criticize us for having a holy book that only its
most literal interpreters can follow when they get pressed with data,
they resort to a holy book, which is textbook only
its most literal interpreters. So they're basically doing everything they're
accusing us of doing, which I thought, well, thank you
very much for embodying exactly the the criticisms you've lobbied
(34:33):
against us. So I thank you to the evolutionists.
S1 (34:37):
Unbelievable. All right. So talk to me, because when you
start thinking about the different kinds of tribes, should that be?
And I know this is a grand, expansive time we're
talking about. So I'm asking these sort of broad brush questions,
but what about the anthropological argument? So let's just say
if there's a people group that comes to the United
States and somehow they're tied to Attila the Hun anthropologically,
(34:58):
would we see, excuse me any Could there be not?
Is there could there be any archaeological evidence that says, look,
this time stamps you as being associated with the Huns? Uh,
because of something that we see a pot or whatever,
something that would give an indication of the legitimacy vis
a vis the. And I know that's not your forte,
(35:19):
but do we see any archaeological substantiation?
S6 (35:23):
That's a good question. In terms of direct correlation to
Attila the Hun. I don't know that anyone has done
that yet. So let me transfer your question to a
different field, that of that of language. So we could
ask the same question. Are there any linguistic connections between
New World languages and Old World ones? And I would
say not being a linguist, but looking at the data, uh, the,
the Native American language groupings are ripe for reassessment. And
(35:46):
here's what I mean. My position. Let's let's bring in
Genesis ten here Scripture for a minute. My position is
that there was one language grouping, which makes sense. No
one has formally stepped off the Ark. They're all family.
They speak one language. God confuses the languages at the
Tower of Babel, Genesis 11, and I think the Genesis
ten men are the first ethno linguistic groups. It's about 70.
(36:07):
If you look at some of the missionary databases, there's
about 150 language families. Most of them are in the Americas.
So I think there's been an over classification, too much
division in the Americas. And my guess is if a
professional linguist stepped in and reanalyzed and asked these questions,
they would find links.
S1 (36:24):
Wow. Wow. Does this not make you just sit up
a little bolder and realize that we have every reason
to realize the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ? Never,
ever being ashamed. Thank you, God, for opening doors, giving
us evidence. So what Romans tells us we are really
without excuse. They had names tracing the history of the
North American indigenous people. Doctor Nathaniel Johnson, our guest back
(36:46):
after this. They had names tracing the history of North
American indigenous peoples, written by my guest, Doctor Nathaniel Jeanson.
And by the way, I really and truly appreciate so
what you said in the top of the book, you
talk about writing a word to your Native American friends
and you point out you don't take anything with the government.
(37:06):
This has nothing to do with the government, but you
recognize that there has been a sordid past between the U.S.
government and Native Americans. And I'm wondering at this point,
and I know the book is fairly new, have you
gotten response from any Native Americans on the book itself,
and if so, are they pleased with what you're writing?
S6 (37:25):
I'd say that favorite example of mine is from December 2023,
in the. So backing up my story beginning of 2023,
the YouTube team had come to me saying, hey, this
Native American content gets viewed a lot. It seems to
scratch an itch can give us more. So we spent
part of 2023 releasing more videos in which I would
(37:45):
end the video saying, and if you're Native American would
like to participate in future research, please contact me. So
I've had in total. Now I think I have about
contacts in maybe 25 to 35 different nations, many of
them professing Christians. But there are also others who are not.
And there are other people who have contacted me saying,
I can't stand that Bible stuff, but I think you're
on to something. So it's definitely reaching beyond the answers
(38:07):
in Genesis creationist bounds. And the highlight then of this
was I got contacted in the fall of 2023 by
the executive director for the Lakota Treaty Council conference. So
the Lakota Sioux of, I guess, for many of us,
Wild West fame, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, same tribe. And uh,
it was an interesting interaction. One of his first comments was,
(38:27):
my job is to prove the white white man wrong.
I thought, oh, I guess I'll be treading very carefully
in our conversations. But then by the second meeting we
were meeting over zoom, he said, um, now we're friends.
Would you like to come speak at our conference? I thought, oh, okay.
All right. So came, uh, three day conference, very traditional.
So and just to say from the outset, so traditional
(38:49):
and at times anti-Christian that I almost had to pinch
myself saying, what am I doing here is an open creationist.
As a Christian, I'm one of the very few Caucasians there.
They had a sacred pipe ceremony to begin the whole
conference saying, uh, we believe everything that's spoken in this
room goes through the pipe up to the ears of
the Great Spirit and all that anti-colonial rhetoric from the
(39:11):
front and so on. They invited me to speak on
DNA and indigenous histories. That was the reason they came.
They said, please come. And essentially what I concluded was, again,
the evolutionary community has has dismissed their accounts of migration.
So the Lakota and their relatives, the language family that
they're part of is the Sioux and Catawba. And so
(39:32):
it includes people like the Osage, uh, Kansa, Kappa. I'm
trying to think of who else? Dakota, of course. Assiniboine. Anyway,
there's a whole group of them. Catawba is on the
East Coast, but they all say, I should say that
grouping of tribes say we came from the East Coast,
near where Washington, D.C. is, and that we were there
around the late Eight hundreds. So this would be right
(39:55):
after that Hunnic group came in. They said we were
on the east coast and then migrated westward. And I
think the Lakota themselves were in Minnesota until about the
1600s and then moved on to the Plains. My contention is,
I think all that is true, and that you'll find
the echo of this in DNA. If you have the
biblical time frame. And the evolutionary community dismisses those histories
(40:15):
by and large, and only gives tacit acknowledgement. And so
what was so unusual, I guess, about this invitation was
they invited me as the scientific expert, which, of course,
it's unheard of in creationist circles where the were the
butt of the jokes. We don't know what we're doing.
We're the anti-scientific people. And so no, no, we trust
you to give us insights as to what's going on.
(40:37):
Even though, again, outside of this question, we probably have
nothing to do with each other. Then again, in many
senses being anti-Christian. But here is the the one scientific framework,
it seems, that is returning Earning dignity and value to
them and their ancestors. And they wanted to be able
to learn from that. So I've seen this repeated over
(40:58):
and over again. I mean, there's there's plenty. I've learned
the hard way doing things the wrong way and then
being corrected. But and part of that, that little section
about word to my Native American friends, is heavily influenced
by the mistakes, the trial and error. Uh, but but
that was also after this Lakota meeting. And, um, I've
been very pleased by the response and been surprised by it.
(41:18):
And I should say so. I think you had mentioned
earlier about the book title and subtitle sounding almost secular.
And part of that, in a sense, is a posture
of we're now on the offensive.
S1 (41:29):
Yes. Amen.
S6 (41:30):
So apologetics, of course, is is defensive answers in Genesis
in itself. The name is defensive because that's where we've been.
It's been a good place to start. You push back
against evolution. But now we've we've matured as a movement
so much. We're breaking news. We're now the ones rewriting
the textbooks saying, hey, we made a discovery. Which of course,
this is what the court decisions of the 1980s have
(41:51):
said creationists have to do to be able to get
back in the scientific classroom. So now we're meeting that
standard and exceeding it. And part of the reason for,
in a sense, having these YouTube views guide, what we
do is maybe we can produce a groundswell of support.
Maybe we can change public opinion this way. I think
I'd like to think of it in a sense as
the reverse Da Vinci Code. So if some guy can
write a good story but work in a bunch of heresy,
(42:13):
why can't we tell it? Meet, meet a felt need,
but work in the truth. And that's my hope for
this book, for this whole research project is no one
is offering the Native Americans answers. I was looking at
the textbooks. We're homeschooling our four kids, my wife and I,
and looked at the new history textbook. My oldest is
12 and I'm, of course turned to the Native American section.
What do they cover? Basically nothing about pre-European Americas. And
(42:36):
this is not a criticism criticism of the textbook. As
much as nobody has these answers. In a sense, it's
an evolutionary cold case. Now the now the creationists are
stepping in, putting the pieces together, advancing the ball, breaking news,
making new discoveries. And I think that forces people who
who would have nothing to do with us otherwise to
sit up and pay attention and say, I think you're
on to something. And my hope is this ultimately accomplishes
(42:59):
then much for the gospel.
S1 (43:01):
You know, you might have a PhD in cell and
developmental biology, but Nathaniel, you're a missionary at heart. This
is really a mission field for you to be able
to do this. You're breaking new ground. To be invited
to that Lakota conference, I think is absolutely thrilling, opening
new doors. First of all, you're an ambassador for Christ.
Second of all, it goes to exactly what you said before,
that you really and truly wanted people to understand that
(43:22):
your work is one of those rare examples of scientific
confirming of the indigenous histories. How precious to let these
indigenous people know that they have a history, that they
are important, that they matter, that they have dignity and worth.
And you're able to point back to the science that
says who they were in those pre-European days. You know,
I have to tell you, Nathaniel, I rued the fact
(43:44):
that I didn't even scratch the surface a thimble. Thimble
is too big. I didn't even get in a teaspoonful
of information that's in this book. It is absolutely fascinating.
But I think, you know, the Bible says out of
the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. This is
fire in Nathaniel's bones. I absolutely love it. And God
has given this man a brain. Nathaniel, you're far too modest,
I think, going on the offensive. God needed to raise
(44:06):
up warriors who could be offensive warriors. And that's exactly
who you are. You spoke with Grace, you spoke with salt.
You spoke with truth. And I think it's a reason
for us again, never to be ashamed of the gospel
of Jesus Christ. May God use this book in a
powerful way to encourage the indigenous people. Not only that,
but for people to understand that God is exactly who
he said he was and did exactly what he said
it did in His Word. And that science now again confirms,
(44:30):
confirms and confirms science was never designed to rebuke God
is to it is to affirm God. And in so
doing we are without excuse. Nathaniel. Thank you. What a
fabulous conversation and a great book. We'll see you next time, friends.
Hi friend, thank you so much for downloading this podcast
and I truly hope you hear something that encourages edifies, equips, enlightens,
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It's Ray Comfort's book. Why? Jesus? If you listen to
(00:22):
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He is bold, unashamed of the gospel. And yet in
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the book Why Jesus? To Teach You How to Walk Through,
by examples and through real conversations he's had on how
to share the gospel in exactly the same way. Listen,
(00:43):
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opt out clause. That's where we're supposed to go. And
in truth, how can we keep this good news to ourselves?
So I want you to have Why Jesus as this
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(01:45):
with Janet Parshall. Now please enjoy the broadcast.
S2 (01:51):
Here are some of the news headlines we're watching.
S3 (01:53):
The conference was over. The president won a pledge.
S4 (01:55):
Americans worshiping government over God. gone.
S5 (01:57):
Extremely rare safety move by a major 17 years.
S4 (02:01):
The Palestinians and Israelis negotiated.
S5 (02:04):
This is not. The answer.
S1 (02:18):
Hi friends. Welcome to In the Market with Janet Parshall.
I am so glad you're going to spend the hour
with me. Listen, if you are the least bit interested
in science or anthropology or social science or the creation
evolution debate, this hour is going to absolutely entranced you.
This is an important question. I had never thought about
it before. Maybe you have. So let me just put
(02:40):
it out there on the table as a way of
starting our conversation. When we talk about Native Americans, the
implication there is that they were native to American, not
that they were natives, but that they were native to America. Right.
Different tribes all across the United States of America. Well,
did they spring up ex nihilo and suddenly just show
up in the United States, or did they migrate from
(03:01):
somewhere else? And if they did, does that somehow speak
into the creation evolution debate? That is what we're going
to talk about this hour, but we're going to go
a whole lot deeper with the doctor, Nathaniel Jensen. He
has a PhD in cell and developmental biology from Harvard University. Yep.
Take out those thinking caps. This is where you get
to renew your mind as well as having your heart transformed.
(03:24):
He served as a research biologist, author, and speaker with
answers in Genesis. Formerly conducted research with the Institute for
Creation Research. When he was at Harvard, he was actively
involved in adult stem cell research and published several peer
reviewed papers. Those are the best kind in secular journals
in his field. His current research involves using DNA comparisons
to understand the true origin of species and to understand
(03:48):
human origins and human history. See where this is going
with Native Americans. He has published Groundbreaking results on this question.
In addition, he's contributed to several books, including The Design
and Complexity of the Cell and Creation Basics and Beyond.
He has the. He has authored The Lost Treasures of Genesis,
Replacing Darwin. The New Origin of Species, replacing Darwin made
(04:10):
simple and traced human DNA human DNA's big surprise. He
recently has published the book we're going to talk about today,
and I've got it listed right on my website. It's
called They Had Names, and there's this beautiful Indian headdress
on the front of the cover. You'll see it when
you go to our information page. And the subtitle gives
you a hint of where we're going, tracing the history
(04:31):
of the North American indigenous people. Now, Nathaniel, I have
to tell you, right out of the gate, people would go, oh,
we're listening to NPR. We're, you know, following the indigenous peoples.
I would not had I not known you and the publicists,
I would have thought, this is an interesting pitch. This
is a markedly secular book. And then I got into
it and I thought, oh, no, no, no, this is
entirely different approach. This goes right to the core of
(04:53):
where you're now finding passion in your bones, which is
the origin of people groups. But I got to turn
back the time a little bit. So you started out
at Parkside in Wisconsin. That's where you got your undergrad
in molecular biology and bioinformatics. Are you a wisconsinite by birth?
S6 (05:10):
I am a was born in Milwaukee, born and raised
so born Milwaukee but raised in Racine and Fairweather Packer
fan fair.
S1 (05:17):
Oh okay. I was with you until you got to
the fair weather part. I lived in Waukesha for years,
so I'm a die hard Packer fan. Let me just
make that clear. So thank you. Now, between between the
bachelor's and the. Did you get a master's in something?
S6 (05:32):
My original plan was to get a master's. My dad
was a dentist, and he had advised me early on
saying if I wanted to go into science and make
decent money or at least be able to support a family, well,
he said you needed an advanced degree. Parkside had a
three plus two program which said you could get your
bachelor's and master's in five years total. I learned early
on that Masters was not really a stepping stone for PhD.
(05:55):
That the PhD duration was the same regardless of whether
you had one or not, and you could actually skip
the Masters if you did enough research. So I tried
to do enough research so I could skip it and
just go directly to PhD, which I was able to do.
S1 (06:05):
Wow. Well, now, Nathaniel, they don't let just anybody into Harvard.
So you have to have a lot of smarts, as
my dad used to say. So. But your passion for
biology goes back to your undergrad work, right? Has this
always been a passion for you? And is it your
dad was a dentist. So did you talk science around
the dinner table?
S6 (06:25):
I've always had an interest in science, and even though
my dad was a dentist, I never liked blood. And
I still turn away when people take my own. So
I thought, medicine is not for me. And I remember
in high school I went to a small Christian high school.
We had Bob Jones textbooks, and there was an insect section,
and I'd always jump every time I saw the caterpillar
or some other squishy thing. And so I thought, well,
I don't know if I'm going to go into biology.
(06:46):
And my undergraduate was actually molecular biology, so I thought, okay,
it has some some rigor of chemistry but has some
real world applications. I thought maybe this kind of satisfies
all those constraints, which it did and eventually got interested
in cancer research at that time, which again, if you
can avoid the blood. Well, I should add finish the story.
The irony is I went to graduate school, worked on
blood stem cells of all stem cells that just sustains
(07:08):
your body, your bloodstream. And it killed probably about 2000 mice.
Take out their blood, take out their bones, and eventually,
you know, just learn to not think about what I
was doing. But that was the circuitous path to get
to my PhD.
S1 (07:20):
And it reminds us God has a sense of humor. Right.
You don't like this here. This is where I'm going
to take you. So I think that's interesting. Okay, so
here's a word I've not heard before bioinformatics. What is that?
S6 (07:32):
That was something I had to learn to that was
added to the program when I started my undergraduate. And
it was basic. So this is let's see here. I
graduated from high school in 1999. So I was at
Parkside 1999 to 2003. And that was right when this
idea of using computers to study biology was becoming hot.
So just for context, the human genome is the complete
(07:52):
sequence of our human DNA was announced, I think about 2001.
I think Clinton was president, Francis Collins was head of NIH.
Craig Venter was another guy who was working on the project.
So that was met with a lot of fanfare. And
that was really the first big push to have human DNA.
And after that was then getting DNA from people around
the globe. And so databases with tons and tons of
(08:13):
information have exploded. And just I guess for reference, then
a human genome is going to have 3.2 or so
billion DNA letters. So you think of how is that
encoded in a piece of computer information. It just reams
and reams of data that you can't you can spend
a lifetime just running your finger over it. It's impossible
to analyze by eye, essentially any sort of reasonable amount
(08:35):
of time. So to be able to use computers to
crunch the numbers, align DNA sequences, compare them, that's that's
really what the field is. Can we use computers to
simplify our tasks in biology because we're producing data at
a rate that's too fast for human beings on their
own to analyze. And so what it amounted to was
I took one computer science course. There was there was
(08:56):
actually there was two. One was a really lousy one.
Another was the weed out course for the computer scientist folks.
I complained, of course, to my professor saying, what's the
point of this? But he said, well, you'll be able
to speak to the computer scientists, which I was. So
it was a success.
S1 (09:07):
So this is going to be a great interview, and
we haven't even gotten to the core of the book.
And I want to find out why this idea of
the origin of species understanding human origins and human history
is really so important to you, and how this does
step right into the creation evolution debate. Doctor Nathaniel Jensen
is with us. He's written a brand new. I find
(09:29):
personally fascinating book called They Had Names. Tracing the history
of the North American indigenous people. More with Nathaniel right
after this. Are you intimidated when sharing your faith? Many
(09:56):
believers struggle with fear when it comes to evangelism, and
that's why I've chosen Why Jesus by Ray comfort as
this month's truth tool. Learn through Ray's real life conversations
that will show you how to overcome fear and trust
in God's faithfulness. As for your copy of Why Jesus,
when you give a gift of any amount in the market,
call 877 Janet 58. That's 877 Janet 58 or go
(10:16):
to in the market with Janet Parshall. Doctor Nathaniel Jensen
is with us, has his PhD in cell and developmental
biology from Harvard University and is the author of the book.
They had names tracing the history of the North American
Indigenous people. I'm going to dive into this in a bit,
but Nathaniel, you're such an interesting person. So I know
(10:38):
there are people listening all across the country who would
have me ask you. You talked about going to a
Christian high school, you talked about Parkside in Wisconsin, and
then you went to Harvard. Obviously, the presupposition on my
part is, if you want your Christian high school, I'm
assuming you had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. If
the answer to that question is yes. When you were
at Harvard, were there personal challenges to your faith, or
(10:58):
were there times where you questioned your faith, given the
crowd that you ran with at Harvard?
S6 (11:04):
I'd say I have a convoluted answer to both those questions.
I grew up in a Christian home, prayed the sinner's
prayer many times growing up, always struggled with assurance of salvation,
in part because I was living in sin. So, I mean,
for me, it was pornography. It's hard to get your
hands on pornography in the pre-internet age and in a
Christian home, but I still found ways to satisfy my
lusts and tell myself the whole time. Of course, almost
(11:25):
got baptized during this time. Tell myself that I was
still fine, that I didn't have a problem, all that
sort of thing. And so I don't know that I
really had a transformation where. So for me, being a Protestant,
I'm like, I know that believing in Jesus is supposed
to produce a desire for godliness, for holiness, for purity.
But something's not clicking. So in a sense, for me,
the gospel, of course, meaning good news was old news.
(11:48):
I had heard it all my life and it just
something didn't connect. And it was in graduate school again.
I attended church faithfully this whole time. Externally was a
model child. That's not a brag. As much as I
was able to hide my sin very well. And it
was sitting with the book of Hebrews, read through the
whole book one night and asking questions of so what
is the connection between saving faith and godly living? Where
(12:11):
I'd say the gospel went from old news to good news,
where it's exciting, where? Oh, wait a minute. The Bible
actually teaches that holiness is objectively beautiful. We think of
beauty as something subjective, but the Bible teaches it's objective.
God himself is objectively, gloriously beautiful because he is holiness.
That's the standard that he holds us to. And so
that's where it lit a new fire under me. In
a sense. So was I born again then? I don't know,
(12:32):
but that's that's when career paths changed to or career ambitions,
I should say. And there was a second part to
your question that I've forgotten, getting caught up in my
own story. But.
S1 (12:41):
Oh, no. Yes, yes.
S6 (12:43):
I feel like on the apologetics side, being raised in
a Christian home, I was well equipped, so I was
homeschooled through eighth grade. I remember going I found my
notes in the past couple of years going to Ken
Ham Seminar, Worldview Weekend, and I think in Waukesha, actually
in eighth grade and eighth grade and notes from there.
And have you been evolutionized? And so we had books
in our home and read those voraciously. It was exciting.
(13:05):
So that when I got to undergraduate, I commuted Parkside
is a, I think 80% or was 80% commuter campus.
I really didn't find much that was challenging in the
sense of I had already heard it. Good creationist apologetics
teach you evolution so that you know what it is
and know how to respond to it. And so there
really weren't any surprises in class that I think was critical.
(13:28):
And I think also a piece of advice I'd read,
I think it was Marvin Olasky some years ago, drawing
on his experience teaching at UT Austin, I think liberal bastion,
and saying his advice to incoming students was to expect
to read double, which I think that's great advice, he said.
Whatever discipline you're in doesn't have to be biology. It
can be English. You're going to hear the secular worldview
(13:49):
in class. You have to expect, if you want to
walk away with Christian worldview, to read just as much
outside of class as in it. Now, of course, any
college student knows if you're a full time, there's constant classwork.
How are you going to do that? And so I
strongly advise parents, grandparents, incoming students, do as much apologetics
before you get to college as you can. In a sense,
(14:09):
do that double ahead of time, kind of pre inoculate yourself,
because it'll be a whole lot easier if you're not
scrambling with an existential crisis in the middle of biology class.
And I heard that everybody oh he's made that assumption.
Oh he misinterpreted that that sort of thing. It was
a whole lot easier. Uh, and I should say that
the last factor, I think, in all this is a
(14:29):
strong supporting church. So at Parkside, I still attended my
home church. There was a very faithful, supportive group. Older
Saints prayed for me. Even going off to college, there
was a I attended a small kind of a college church.
They were all college aged students, basically, but very transparent.
Held you accountable, so lived with other Christians, which I
think was critical. Uh, that was the first time moving
(14:51):
away from home, then living with other people. So all
those factors together, I think, were were critical in not
just surviving but thriving. So I don't I don't feel
like there was a, an existential crisis of Is Christianity
true or not? In undergraduate or graduate school, there was
a time I was suicidal, I think, because I thought
I'd found something wrong with the theology I just discovered, which,
you know, if you think you found the good news,
then it's not good news. Of course, that's that's a
(15:12):
big deal. But by the grace of God made it through.
Then through that, and again, thanks to the support of
local church. So all those, all those things I think
were key factors in, in doing what I was able
to do, uh, come out for the glory of God
on the other side.
S1 (15:27):
Amen. I'm so glad I asked you that question. And
what wise counsel do your homework on the apologetics so
you prepared ahead of time. I think that's absolutely fabulous.
So while you're at Harvard, you graduate with Harvard. You
work at a time with answers in Genesis, and you
serve as a research biologist and author and a speaker.
So that again, portends, obviously, your interest in creation and
(15:48):
the evolutionary debate. How a is that true? B why
was that of interest to you, and how does that
tie back into cell and developmental biology?
S6 (15:59):
I had a passing thought going into graduate school of
working in creation apologetics at the time. So back up,
I guess, to my high school days. I read a
I read a book about a theory of cancer. Actually,
it turns out to be a quack idea, but I
swallowed it hook, line and sinker and thought, well, I'm
just going to go to school, get the credentials, and
then prove to the world this idea is correct. You
learn a lot of lessons along the way. But that
(16:19):
was my ambition early on. Was cure cancer, win the
Nobel Prize, all that sort of thing. Actually, I think
it was when cure cancer, win the Nobel Prize, then
have a platform to preach the gospel in theory. Noble,
but easily contaminated.
S1 (16:31):
Yes, but where there is no vision, the people perish.
So I love this.
S6 (16:35):
Okay. And got into it. So the connection to stem
cells was 2003, 2004, which is when I was finding
a lab in graduate school. The connection between stem cells
and cancer was just getting hot. And so this was
cutting edge stuff. It was really heady stuff because at Harvard,
they poached from other schools, they picked the brightest and
best people, bringing, of course, in millions of dollars of
(16:57):
grant money, working on the best questions. And so it
is possible you can you can wake up every day,
walk into lab saying, I might make a Nobel Prize
winning discovery today. It fills your mind with dreams and
ambition and selfishness and pride to and all that. All
that changed. This goes back to my testimony then middle
of graduate school, kind of discovering good news of the gospel.
(17:18):
And so then I began to say, well, how can
I use or abuse my training for the kingdom more directly?
And that's eventually what led to creation research.
S1 (17:26):
Wow, what a great place to take a break. But
what a fascinating story, Nathaniel. Doctor Nathaniel Jensen is with.
Jensen is with us. I'll slow down so I can
say it correctly. He's the author of a brand new
book called. They Had Names tracing the history of the
North American Indigenous people. Much more to discuss right after this.
(17:51):
They had names. The new book by Doctor Nathaniel Jensen,
the subtitle Tracing the History of the North American Indigenous People. Previously,
by the way, Nathaniel has written Replacing Darwin The New
Origin of the species, and traced human DNA's big surprise. So, Nathaniel, again,
because the overwhelming majority of people in the audience don't
(18:13):
have a PhD in cell or developmental biology. Walk this
through at a primer level. Okay. Primary school level so
we can understand this. My first question to you is
this is your passion. You really do love to study
human origins and human history. So how does understanding the
origins of the Native American people in this country tie
(18:36):
back at all into the question of creation versus evolution?
S6 (18:41):
Yes, that's a great question. And the answer comes, in
a sense, from the background I had growing up going
to Christian worldview conferences, watching debates. We had VHS tapes
of Duane Gish and debating evolutionists, and was familiar then
with the other side and what they had demanded of
us for 40 years. Familiar, I think, with the court
(19:01):
decisions in the 1980s that kicked creation science out of
the public schools. So when I started at the Institute
for Creation Research in 2009, the then CEO, which was
Henry Morris, the third, said to me that my task
was to develop a biology research program. So my thought
was applying sort of what I learned in graduate school,
which in God's grace, then I was able to then
(19:22):
apply what skills I learned in graduate school for for
a kingdom, kingdom or kingdom application Occasion was okay. What
questions are unanswered? What questions do we need to develop more? Secondly,
what are the tools? And then it's basically been for
the past 15 years a process of following the evidence
wherever it leads. And so I started off saying, well,
if we're going to go in biology, what's the big
(19:43):
biological question? Well, Darwin's question was the origin of species.
Let's start there. What do we know about the origin
of species? Okay, here's the things we don't know. Now
how do we answer these questions? What are the tools
that we have? Oh, we've got tons of genetic data.
Let's go there. And this is kind of where it
transfers then to the to the human side. The annual
research budget of the National Institutes of Health, the NIH,
(20:04):
that's probably the biggest funding body for scientific research in
the United States. So Institutes of Health is going to
fund human health research, human research there, aside from some bacteria,
humans are probably the best studied species genetically on the planet.
Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of DNA sequences from
(20:24):
people all around the globe are publicly available. So if
you ask the question or if you're doing a program
and saying, here's the important questions. Now, what tools do
we have? The lowest hanging fruit, in a sense, is
let's go chase the human questions, because there's just so
much you can go exploring with it. And that's part
of the reason I got into the human history field.
The second reason was humans have, in terms of biblical record,
(20:47):
the most detail. So yes, we have in Genesis chapter one,
God talks about creating kinds, and Noah brings to a
very kind and board the ark. But for humans we
have God creates two people, Adam and Eve, and then
we have God saves eight people Noah, his wife, his sons,
and their wives and board the ark. Then we have
a list. And this became especially critical three years ago.
(21:09):
In Genesis chapter ten, we have a genealogy of around
70 men. Why is that important? Because one of the
one of the types of DNA for which we have
hundreds of thousands of sequences is the male inherited Y-chromosome.
And much to my surprise and shock, we eventually discovered
at the genetic level the echo the mirror image. You
(21:30):
can find the Genesis ten genealogy. Count off the generations
basically point to spots in a DNA based family tree.
There's there's Shem, there's Ham, there's Japheth. Or to summarize
it in simple terms, any male who takes a Y-chromosome
DNA test and these are commercially available. We can now
trace that family line back to specific sons of Noah.
(21:52):
So wow. I guess to summarize then how I got
into this, it was what are the questions? And then
where's the tools. So we've got a lot of data
for humans in terms of genetics. We've got a lot
of biblical data that we can use to to frame
our questions. And then we had success. That's that's what's
so wild about it, is that I'm not some brilliant guy.
(22:12):
It's it's me and a handful of others. We don't
have billions of dollars of NIH research money coming at us.
But but the Bible is true. And so at some
point it kind of becomes shooting fish in a barrel.
And the answers emerge. And it's exciting because then you
can see real history come out of this. And then to,
I guess, kind of finish how how, how how do
we get to Native Americans after the book traced came out?
(22:36):
So that was 2022. That's where I announced, hey, we
found the echo of Genesis chapter ten. It's really a
history of civilization with DNA. We started doing videos on YouTube.
So after of course, after Covid 2020, we started doing
more online. And it just blossomed from there. I did
about one video per region of the globe, one region
for East Asia, for the Pacific, for Europe, for Africa,
(22:57):
and so on, and of course, one for Native Americans.
The YouTube team came back to me and said, hey,
that Native American stuff does really well. Give us more.
I thought, okay, well, if there's if if there's an
appetite for it, let's keep going. Of course you keep going.
If you can make discoveries. You can't just keep saying
the same thing over and over again. And we did
make discoveries. So that was beginning of 2023. And that
(23:19):
was really the impetus then for sinking my teeth into
this project on the pre-European history of the Americas, it's.
We've been having so much success. There was data available
and the pieces kept coming together. So, so, so this
book actually represents multiple disciplines. It's not just genetics. It's
one of the biggest discoveries was the DNA within a
young Earth framework is lining up with what the peoples
(23:40):
themselves say. Some of it's oral history, some of it's
been written down. A lot of it's been rejected by
the evolutionary community. And to make another long story short, uh,
this synthesis where. Oh, look here, the DNA I'm doing,
DNA research I'm doing is lining up with what the
natives themselves say has opened doors to Native American communities
that would never be open otherwise, because the biblical worldview
(24:03):
is giving back to them. History that's been taken away.
S1 (24:06):
Yes. Yes, yes. Wow. Okay. When we get back, I
want to get into some of the particulars about this,
because this is fascinating. By the way, in the book
they had names. Nathaniel has all kinds of maps and
graphs and charts. It is it is a beautiful book,
just in content, but in presentation as well. It's fabulous.
I've got a link to my information page in the
market with Janet Parshall, under the synopsis of each of
(24:27):
the two hours we do every day, there's a red box.
It says program details and audio. Click that on takes
you to the information page. You're going to see Nathaniel's
handsome face. You're going to see a link to his
Facebook and his X account. And on the right hand side,
his brand new book. They had names much more after this.
(24:53):
As a Christian, how do you digest the cultural issues
of our day and in the market? We believe that
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When you become a partial partner, your monthly gift ensures
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calling 877 Janet 58 or go to in the market
(25:14):
with Janet Parshall. We're having an absolutely fascinating conversation with
Doctor Nathaniel Jeanson. He has a PhD in cell and
developmental biology from Harvard University. And he, by the way,
has written a couple of excellent books before. The one
we're talking about today, one is called Replacing Darwin The
New Origin of the species, and traced human DNA's big surprise,
(25:37):
and that DNA component factors greatly into the third book
that he's written called. They Had names tracing the history
of the North American indigenous people, where he says that
through his study of the DNA, through the Y chromosome,
it's dads that passed down that Y chromosome that has
given us the best historical record of North America. And
this goes right into the subject of creationism. And I
(25:58):
loved what you said, Nathaniel, before you see the ads
on TV. Well, we did, at least before China hacked
them and some of the companies went bankrupt. But either way,
you could find out about your DNA and see if
you were related to Erik the Red right by sending
in some of your DNA. But this is part of
the bioinformatics that we talked about earlier. So now we
have a plethora of information about DNA, which really is
(26:20):
the creationist friend, because it really does connect us back
in such an inarguable way. So you start out the
book by talking about the first Americans. And the time
stamp on this, I think, is very interesting, because you
go from 1000 BC to AD 3300 rather. So again,
like so many of us, I think our first response is, well,
they're Native American. They were always here. Well, that's not
(26:42):
even a logical thought when you think about it. They
had to come from somewhere. They didn't spring up out
of the ground. And what you write about in the
group is what the DNA tells us about where these
people groups came from, which is absolutely fascinating. So pick
out one group, for example, because you note that, uh,
in fact, that some of the Native Americans could be
(27:02):
connected to Attila the Hun. Now, that is an eye
opener in and of itself to talk to me about that.
S6 (27:09):
Yes. Eye opening for me too. If you if you
read mainstream sources, evolutionary sources, it's it's kind of an
odd story when you step back and think about it.
They say 15,000 years ago a single migration. So 15,000
years ago, incomprehensible amount of time, long before any sort
of civilization evolutionary timing would put the first civilizations like
Sumer and Egypt and the Nolans 5000 years ago, so
(27:30):
long before that people group comes over, they disperse rapidly,
and then they kind of just sit in place, hunter
and gatherer, for 11,000 years or so and no contact
with the outside world, no contact with the old world.
It just it's like the only people who grew up
on earth that does this. Everyone else has contact. There's fighting,
there's conquest, there's movements, they're migrations. And the Native Americans
(27:50):
just kind of sit here and do nothing.
S7 (27:52):
I mean.
S6 (27:53):
If you think about it says, well, it kind of
makes you scratch your head.
S7 (27:56):
Exactly.
S6 (27:57):
What the. Yeah. What the DNA is revealing. So I'll
tell you what I wrote in the book. And because
this is an ongoing research project, I'll tell you what
we just announced a few weeks ago because I just
made another discovery. So the 300 A.D., is that the
bookend to one of those? Uh, I guess calendars that
I have chapter headings in the book, because the 3
to 600 A.D. we see with this male inherited Y chromosome,
(28:22):
I should say that's that's the oldest date I can
go back to with genetics. I talk about in the book,
you can see plenty of archaeological evidence for people here.
You can see mounds and such mound builders going back.
You have Poverty Point in Louisiana that goes back to
1000 BC, but I've got no Y chromosome links to
these people. And so something must have happened that if
you put the pieces together, there must have been an
(28:43):
invasion around that time, just a few centuries after Christ,
that replaced all those male males who were here before.
And of course, you start to wonder, is that disease?
Is it warfare? What is it? Yeah. And I have
a better answer now, in a minute. But the Attila
the Hun connection is it first that the connections came
(29:04):
in my mind because I'm like, okay, what else is
going on? If this is coming over from the old world?
This is contemporary with the history of civilization. We know
what's going on in Europe. We know what's going on
in China. We have records. And of course, 400 AD
is when the Huns come marching into Europe and participate
in the downfall of the Roman Empire. And there's a
there's a similar kind of a parallel activity going on
(29:26):
in China. The Han dynasty spans the centuries around the
time of Christ. It's kind of like the Roman Empire
equivalent in China, and they fall around the same time
due to some sort of Central Asian invader. So this
period of history is known in secular history as the
it's a German word, the the völkerwanderung or the great
wandering of peoples. So that got me excited because I'm like, okay,
(29:48):
it kind of makes sense then that people would migrate
to they'd go from Central Asia west into Europe, east
into China, and then maybe even a little bit further
east into the Americas and with DNA. Now I can say, okay,
here's the Han lineage and oh, wow, look, these guys,
the Native Americans, this, this invader group, their direct relatives
of Attila the Hun. So we can connect these all
(30:10):
in a better cause and effect relationship. We can also
see with this same sort of Y chromosome male inherited
DNA research, another migration invasion in the 900 A.D. this
gives rise I can I can be much more precise
and specific with this. This gives rise to the Algic
or Algonquian people groups. If those don't ring a bell,
you might think of people like the Blackfeet, the Cheyenne,
(30:34):
the Delaware people, the Pilgrims Day, the Massachusett, Narragansett, Wampanoag peoples.
Those are those are all Algonquians. And so their time
in the Americas was actually rather short. And I think
it's in chapter four where I combined the genetics and
the linguistic, the language information and their own accounts to say,
we can say fairly precisely that the Wampanoag and their
(30:57):
relatives arrived in New England only about a century, a
century and a half before the pilgrims did so. It
puts the first Thanksgiving in a totally different light. Now,
all that's from the book the new discovery is, I
can now say that there were at least five settlings
of the Americas from Asia, and the new discovery is
looking at female inherited DNA. This is known as mitochondrial DNA.
(31:21):
I think the reason this preserves more history is because,
for one, the men are the warriors that tend to
get slaughtered and the women and children get taken. And secondly,
I think it also is just basically biological. So females
are limited in their reproductive capacity with a nine month
gestation period. So even if a woman is continuously pregnant
(31:41):
from puberty to menopause, she can have maybe 40 kids
if she has twins or triplets or more a man.
King Solomon can have 700 wives, 300 concubines and father
a thousand children a year. If he wants to. He
can have 30,000 children in his lifetime. So I think
the the male inherited DNA is much more volatile. That's
why I can only go back to the 300 A.D. with,
(32:03):
with genetics, whereas the female inherited DNA, I think is
much more stable and I can go back to 1000 BC.
So there was a settling, probably right after Babel. That's
the first settling. There was a settling about 1000 BC
that gives rise to the Mayans. So this brings in
some of Central America. There will be a new book,
hopefully in 2027. And then the another, another settling in
the hundreds BC, which gives rise to the greatest city
(32:25):
in all of the Americas, Teotihuacan in Mexico. And then
you have this Han relatives who come in in the
300 A.D. and then finally the objects in the nine hundreds.
And then, of course, Europeans come. So this to me
just makes much more sense. It's dynamic. There's connections. Why
why would why should the Americas be this isolated, different,
you know, other they're not like the rest of the world. No, no,
(32:46):
they're like the rest of the world, the relative. We're
all related through NOAA. And so why wouldn't there be
connections between the old world and the new multiple times over?
These people are not dumb. They're not brutes. They're not,
you know, half evolved apes. Noah could build a boat.
Why couldn't these people build a boat to go across
the Bering Strait or whatever it is? So to me,
it has this emotional satisfaction to or maybe even intellectual
(33:07):
satisfaction like this makes more sense.
S7 (33:10):
Yeah.
S1 (33:11):
Oh, there's so many reactions I have to what you're saying,
number one, this just has to drive the evolutionist bonkers
because you can't say, oh, you know, this is just
your close minded Christianity and you refuse to look at
the facts. Well, DNA is objective fact, right? John Adams
facts are stubborn things. So you simply look at the
DNA and it is inarguable. That's got to be shaking
(33:31):
Darwin's tree pretty bad, doesn't it?
S6 (33:35):
Yes, to a degree. What's been somewhat humorous or I
guess it's even a gift from the evolutionary community. So
first of all, I should say the vast majority of
evolutionists simply ignore what we're doing. It's a very effective strategy,
you know, marginalize your opposition, ignore.
S7 (33:49):
Them, and don't give.
S6 (33:50):
Them the platform. I do the same thing with some
of my opposition, so I understand it. And then once
they make enough noise, though, you have to say something.
So there's a handful of critics, one of whom the
most vocal has basically responded to all of this research
going back even to 2022, and said that I'm wrong
because I disagree with the textbooks. So these people who
(34:13):
criticize us for having a holy book that only its
most literal interpreters can follow when they get pressed with data,
they resort to a holy book, which is textbook only
its most literal interpreters. So they're basically doing everything they're
accusing us of doing, which I thought, well, thank you
very much for embodying exactly the the criticisms you've lobbied
(34:33):
against us. So I thank you to the evolutionists.
S1 (34:37):
Unbelievable. All right. So talk to me, because when you
start thinking about the different kinds of tribes, should that be?
And I know this is a grand, expansive time we're
talking about. So I'm asking these sort of broad brush questions,
but what about the anthropological argument? So let's just say
if there's a people group that comes to the United
States and somehow they're tied to Attila the Hun anthropologically,
(34:58):
would we see, excuse me any Could there be not?
Is there could there be any archaeological evidence that says, look,
this time stamps you as being associated with the Huns? Uh,
because of something that we see a pot or whatever,
something that would give an indication of the legitimacy vis
a vis the. And I know that's not your forte,
(35:19):
but do we see any archaeological substantiation?
S6 (35:23):
That's a good question. In terms of direct correlation to
Attila the Hun. I don't know that anyone has done
that yet. So let me transfer your question to a
different field, that of that of language. So we could
ask the same question. Are there any linguistic connections between
New World languages and Old World ones? And I would
say not being a linguist, but looking at the data, uh, the,
the Native American language groupings are ripe for reassessment. And
(35:46):
here's what I mean. My position. Let's let's bring in
Genesis ten here Scripture for a minute. My position is
that there was one language grouping, which makes sense. No
one has formally stepped off the Ark. They're all family.
They speak one language. God confuses the languages at the
Tower of Babel, Genesis 11, and I think the Genesis
ten men are the first ethno linguistic groups. It's about 70.
(36:07):
If you look at some of the missionary databases, there's
about 150 language families. Most of them are in the Americas.
So I think there's been an over classification, too much
division in the Americas. And my guess is if a
professional linguist stepped in and reanalyzed and asked these questions,
they would find links.
S1 (36:24):
Wow. Wow. Does this not make you just sit up
a little bolder and realize that we have every reason
to realize the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ? Never,
ever being ashamed. Thank you, God, for opening doors, giving
us evidence. So what Romans tells us we are really
without excuse. They had names tracing the history of the
North American indigenous people. Doctor Nathaniel Johnson, our guest back
(36:46):
after this. They had names tracing the history of North
American indigenous peoples, written by my guest, Doctor Nathaniel Jeanson.
And by the way, I really and truly appreciate so
what you said in the top of the book, you
talk about writing a word to your Native American friends
and you point out you don't take anything with the government.
(37:06):
This has nothing to do with the government, but you
recognize that there has been a sordid past between the U.S.
government and Native Americans. And I'm wondering at this point,
and I know the book is fairly new, have you
gotten response from any Native Americans on the book itself,
and if so, are they pleased with what you're writing?
S6 (37:25):
I'd say that favorite example of mine is from December 2023,
in the. So backing up my story beginning of 2023,
the YouTube team had come to me saying, hey, this
Native American content gets viewed a lot. It seems to
scratch an itch can give us more. So we spent
part of 2023 releasing more videos in which I would
(37:45):
end the video saying, and if you're Native American would
like to participate in future research, please contact me. So
I've had in total. Now I think I have about
contacts in maybe 25 to 35 different nations, many of
them professing Christians. But there are also others who are not.
And there are other people who have contacted me saying,
I can't stand that Bible stuff, but I think you're
on to something. So it's definitely reaching beyond the answers
(38:07):
in Genesis creationist bounds. And the highlight then of this
was I got contacted in the fall of 2023 by
the executive director for the Lakota Treaty Council conference. So
the Lakota Sioux of, I guess, for many of us,
Wild West fame, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, same tribe. And uh,
it was an interesting interaction. One of his first comments was,
(38:27):
my job is to prove the white white man wrong.
I thought, oh, I guess I'll be treading very carefully
in our conversations. But then by the second meeting we
were meeting over zoom, he said, um, now we're friends.
Would you like to come speak at our conference? I thought, oh, okay.
All right. So came, uh, three day conference, very traditional.
So and just to say from the outset, so traditional
(38:49):
and at times anti-Christian that I almost had to pinch
myself saying, what am I doing here is an open creationist.
As a Christian, I'm one of the very few Caucasians there.
They had a sacred pipe ceremony to begin the whole
conference saying, uh, we believe everything that's spoken in this
room goes through the pipe up to the ears of
the Great Spirit and all that anti-colonial rhetoric from the
(39:11):
front and so on. They invited me to speak on
DNA and indigenous histories. That was the reason they came.
They said, please come. And essentially what I concluded was, again,
the evolutionary community has has dismissed their accounts of migration.
So the Lakota and their relatives, the language family that
they're part of is the Sioux and Catawba. And so
(39:32):
it includes people like the Osage, uh, Kansa, Kappa. I'm
trying to think of who else? Dakota, of course. Assiniboine. Anyway,
there's a whole group of them. Catawba is on the
East Coast, but they all say, I should say that
grouping of tribes say we came from the East Coast,
near where Washington, D.C. is, and that we were there
around the late Eight hundreds. So this would be right
(39:55):
after that Hunnic group came in. They said we were
on the east coast and then migrated westward. And I
think the Lakota themselves were in Minnesota until about the
1600s and then moved on to the Plains. My contention is,
I think all that is true, and that you'll find
the echo of this in DNA. If you have the
biblical time frame. And the evolutionary community dismisses those histories
(40:15):
by and large, and only gives tacit acknowledgement. And so
what was so unusual, I guess, about this invitation was
they invited me as the scientific expert, which, of course,
it's unheard of in creationist circles where the were the
butt of the jokes. We don't know what we're doing.
We're the anti-scientific people. And so no, no, we trust
you to give us insights as to what's going on.
(40:37):
Even though, again, outside of this question, we probably have
nothing to do with each other. Then again, in many
senses being anti-Christian. But here is the the one scientific framework,
it seems, that is returning Earning dignity and value to
them and their ancestors. And they wanted to be able
to learn from that. So I've seen this repeated over
(40:58):
and over again. I mean, there's there's plenty. I've learned
the hard way doing things the wrong way and then
being corrected. But and part of that, that little section
about word to my Native American friends, is heavily influenced
by the mistakes, the trial and error. Uh, but but
that was also after this Lakota meeting. And, um, I've
been very pleased by the response and been surprised by it.
(41:18):
And I should say so. I think you had mentioned
earlier about the book title and subtitle sounding almost secular.
And part of that, in a sense, is a posture
of we're now on the offensive.
S1 (41:29):
Yes. Amen.
S6 (41:30):
So apologetics, of course, is is defensive answers in Genesis
in itself. The name is defensive because that's where we've been.
It's been a good place to start. You push back
against evolution. But now we've we've matured as a movement
so much. We're breaking news. We're now the ones rewriting
the textbooks saying, hey, we made a discovery. Which of course,
this is what the court decisions of the 1980s have
(41:51):
said creationists have to do to be able to get
back in the scientific classroom. So now we're meeting that
standard and exceeding it. And part of the reason for,
in a sense, having these YouTube views guide, what we
do is maybe we can produce a groundswell of support.
Maybe we can change public opinion this way. I think
I'd like to think of it in a sense as
the reverse Da Vinci Code. So if some guy can
write a good story but work in a bunch of heresy,
(42:13):
why can't we tell it? Meet, meet a felt need,
but work in the truth. And that's my hope for
this book, for this whole research project is no one
is offering the Native Americans answers. I was looking at
the textbooks. We're homeschooling our four kids, my wife and I,
and looked at the new history textbook. My oldest is
12 and I'm, of course turned to the Native American section.
What do they cover? Basically nothing about pre-European Americas. And
(42:36):
this is not a criticism criticism of the textbook. As
much as nobody has these answers. In a sense, it's
an evolutionary cold case. Now the now the creationists are
stepping in, putting the pieces together, advancing the ball, breaking news,
making new discoveries. And I think that forces people who
who would have nothing to do with us otherwise to
sit up and pay attention and say, I think you're
on to something. And my hope is this ultimately accomplishes
(42:59):
then much for the gospel.
S1 (43:01):
You know, you might have a PhD in cell and
developmental biology, but Nathaniel, you're a missionary at heart. This
is really a mission field for you to be able
to do this. You're breaking new ground. To be invited
to that Lakota conference, I think is absolutely thrilling, opening
new doors. First of all, you're an ambassador for Christ.
Second of all, it goes to exactly what you said before,
that you really and truly wanted people to understand that
(43:22):
your work is one of those rare examples of scientific
confirming of the indigenous histories. How precious to let these
indigenous people know that they have a history, that they
are important, that they matter, that they have dignity and worth.
And you're able to point back to the science that
says who they were in those pre-European days. You know,
I have to tell you, Nathaniel, I rued the fact
(43:44):
that I didn't even scratch the surface a thimble. Thimble
is too big. I didn't even get in a teaspoonful
of information that's in this book. It is absolutely fascinating.
But I think, you know, the Bible says out of
the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. This is
fire in Nathaniel's bones. I absolutely love it. And God
has given this man a brain. Nathaniel, you're far too modest,
I think, going on the offensive. God needed to raise
(44:06):
up warriors who could be offensive warriors. And that's exactly
who you are. You spoke with Grace, you spoke with salt.
You spoke with truth. And I think it's a reason
for us again, never to be ashamed of the gospel
of Jesus Christ. May God use this book in a
powerful way to encourage the indigenous people. Not only that,
but for people to understand that God is exactly who
he said he was and did exactly what he said
it did in His Word. And that science now again confirms,
(44:30):
confirms and confirms science was never designed to rebuke God
is to it is to affirm God. And in so
doing we are without excuse. Nathaniel. Thank you. What a
fabulous conversation and a great book. We'll see you next time, friends.
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