AboutHannah Expertise I can answer questions concerning standard doctrines, scriptures, curiousities, Mormon culture and society. I will not respond to debates. I'm sorry, but there are some things that I simply will not answer, not because I don't want to, but there are some things that the LDS people do not discuss casually--it's only talked about within the temple. Though I am a member, I do not believe that anyone could convert anyone to a religion over something as impersonal as the internet. So I won't even try to.
Experience I have been a member of the LDS church for 8 years. Though I'm still a young person, I can answer most things about the church.
Question -
If we all have a common ancestory, does the Church have an explaination for the origin of the various races and their individual charcteristics such as skin color and physical features? eg. “Negroid”, “Asian,” as compared to Caucasian physical features?
My daughtor asked me and I honestly didn’t have the answer.
Thank you for your time.
Answer -
A very good question. I do not know if the Church has an official statement on this, but I can account for some of the races, using the Book of Mormon and Bible.
The African races are, as we know, descendants of Cain (though this does not make them cursed or whatnaught). This is explained partially in Genesis, and then it more fully explains the origin of the people of Egypt in Abraham 1 (The Egyptians are descendants of the Chaldeans).
Native American races, at least some of them, are the remnants of the people of the Book of Mormon, Lamanites for the most part.
The European races are most probably Israelites who branched away from the original families. (Though I'm afraid that's an assumption).
The following is a speculation, but it's a widely-believed one around the LDS church. A lot of Sunday school and seminary teachers canonize it. The Polynesian and Asian races, might have been a part of the people of Hagoth who left the Nephites in Alma 63. According to Alma 63:5, the people of Hagoth built a large ship, and launched into the west sea. The Nephites never heard from them again. In 63:8 there is an account of another ship leaving them that they did not know where it went. So, we could speculate that these people may have lived on Polynesian islands, and anthropologists agree that many of the Polynesian islands were immigrated to in the first place.
Asian people might have come also of those ships, or they could have come to pass exactly as the Europeans did.
As a linguistic person myself, I like to think that at the Tower of Babel, the people found other people who spoke their language, went off with them, and made new nations--thus the start of West European races, Asian races, Slavic races, etc. Perhaps I'm wrong. But I call that the origin of various languages.
So, long story short: a few races can be accounted for most unassuredly, but others you just have to believe what you believe.
Hope it helps.
Thanks Hannah,
I am pretty much in agreement with your research and answer as to where the various races may have originated. The stumper however, is the obvious physical charactoristics (bone structure, eye shape, etc.) that defines the differant groups. Is there any reasonable answer or speculation that addresses this question?
Answer Well, your guess is as good as mine. My guess would be a series of genetic mutations.
Skin color does have some things to do with marking. As we know, the Lamanites were given dark skin so that the Nephites could see that they were indeed Lamanites, and thus prone to trickery. The same is true of the descendants of Cain, so that the Lord's people could tell who they were.
