Is there any religious explanation to the origins of Native Americans?

If all you want was an explanation, then you shouldn’t be making remarks like the two I quoted.

I am not aware of any such legends in South America. Supposedly the Aztecs initially welcomed Cortes because they identified him with the returning deity Quetzalcoatl (who was reputed to be white-skinned and bearded), but this may be a post-Conquest fabrication.

I dont have to agree with the explanation, i just want to know about one. And none did explain it to me.

Or you say there is no explanation?

There may be personal beliefs or a church or sect writing (maybe even an official doctrine), but there will be no Biblical verse to point to for support. At least, as far as I know. There is always the possibility of someone taking something vague in the Bible and interpreting it to fit their view. But a specific biblical chapter and verse explicitly stating it? Not that I am aware of.

Again, YMMV. Some people’s mileage may vary wildly.

OK, got it, you’re not actually asking if the various Indian tribes have their own origin myths, because they do. The Choctaw tradition, for instance, claims they emerged from the Nanih Wayah mound in Mississippi sometime back in the dreamtime. I understand there’ve been anthropological studies that conclude factual histories die out in about two hundred years in a people with only oral transmission. Anyway, you won’t find anything more useful than those myths about something that happened ten thousand years ago.

No, you’re asking how the hell people can maintain a religious belief against all factual evidence. Got no answer for ya there, sorry.

There is no “explanation” in the meaning you are using it. For Young Earth Creationists, the “explanation” comes from denying the science, not in trying to reconcile the Biblical account with science.

Just addressing your OP, there would not be anything intrinsically impossible in people from the Middle East migrating to the New World in a few decades, let alone thousands of years. People who do “round the world” walks do so in a matter of years. Presumably they would still know how to build boats, so the Bering Strait would not be a barrier.

Of course, this presupposes that Biblical literalists think that the colonization of the New World took place according to the route that science currently recognizes. There is no reason they would necessarily do so. The Book of Mormon says it took place by ship across the Atlantic. Other Biblical literalists might envision a similar route, despite the fact this is incompatible with genetic and linguistic evidence.

As I said above, the actual development of American civilizations fits comfortably within the time period available, so no explanation is needed for them.

There is nothing in the writings of the Abrahamic religions that shows any special knowledge above what you would expect a minor regional late bronze age tribal society to know.

The writers believed the sky was a solid dome of stone, that is what the tower of babel was trying to reach.

Yeah, in the OP, he mentioned the Tower of Babel story, so I figured he was wondering about Bible believers’ thoughts.

If we branch out into ANY religious thought, we might have more to talk about. (I wonder what Scientology has to say about this …?)
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A solid dome of stone, eh? That’s what old-timey Jews thought the sky was? That’s really interesting, didn’t know that. Got a cite, and/or recommendations for further reading on the subject?

That’s highly optimistic of anthropologists, considering observed data in societies with more than oral transmission. See: Ronald Reagan worship :stuck_out_tongue:

@Colibri: thanks for the correction !
(I have to say, as a translator I get a kick out of the idea of Moctezuma being all sarcastic and basically trolling Cortez, and the latter’s interpreters either completely missing the cultural point or pointedly avoiding mentioning it :slight_smile: )

The “firmament” was the Volgate’s translation of “Stereoma” from the Greek Septuagint.
that which has been made firm
the firmament, the arch of the sky, which in early times was thought to be solid
a fortified place that which furnishes a foundation on which a thing rests firmly,

You can find out more even in typical basic religious studies classes but it is very well known.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06079b.htm

the Catholic Church has a good writeup of their view.

There is very little ways to explain the origins of Natives that are parallel to the Bible because simply the timelines will not match.

Natives were originally from Asia that had crossed through the northeastern part of Asia into Alaska using the “Bering land bridge.” Then they migrated further throughout America.

You can only believe this piece of information if you believe in carbon-dating and evolution. There are various physical traits and dialect that shows great similarities to Asians from northwestern Asia. There are other possible theories of where Natives came from but the Asia->America is the best bet.

EDIT:
You can search Beringia for more information on the geographical info. This is assuming you believe at one point the continents were connected; which makes a lot of sense. Middle-east was where the Fertile Crescent was; the supposed beginning of civilization or at least the first civilization to produce a book (Gilgamesh). I’m not exactly sure how closely related Babylon and Uruk was… but I do believe all Christians, Catholics, Jewish, Muslims beliefs’ originate from the middle-east.

Uhhh a few decades? It took the clovis hunters 2000 years to expand into the tip of south america. Real life is not a video game. You dont leave your ancestral home into unexplored lands filled with dangerous predators just because you “Want to explore”. With the short lived life expectancy and the 4 year wait time between births in the nomad lifetime, it would take some time for an area to be enough densely populated(in terms of living off the land) for a landlass “young wave” to try to strike fortune in unkown lands.

Even just before 500 years the expeditions made by the most enlightened nations were made for money from opening new trade routes. Babel refugees wont go to america because they can. They will go because they must, and the “must” necessity takes time.

Oh, and those “walks that take years” are in our current time, with modern medicine to counter tropical disease. In ancient times, leaving your home climate, or just going to any tropical area meant death.

“Religous” does not equal biblical literalist or YE Creationist. Most “religious” explanations for Native Americans involve indigenous peoples crossing the Bering land bridge 30-50,000 years ago, just like the “non-religious” explanations.

I grew up as a Mormon believing that the world was 6,000 years old and that the Native Americans are descendants of people who came over from acient Israel (and were bad, so they were were cursed with a dark skin).

If you can swallow the rest of the koolaid, believing that the Americans were populated with people from the Middle East is nothing. God does wonderful things.

I guess I don’t understand the OP very well.

For starters, you say “religious” but seem to only mean Judeo-Christian.

But it’s the trouble you have with the timeline I don’t get:

I certainly don’t understand why anyone would have a problem with the timeline you present. Science currently believes that all societies that built pyramids did so within 5270 years or less of being founded/settled. Science believes that North and South America were settled from tip to tip in 1,000 years or less (at least that’s Jared Diamond’s estimate, at what he calls a very “conservative” pace of migration. I know others have differed.)

Furthermore, why do you assume people would spread out and only afterward develop political structures and technology? Several different technological and social advances , and several different migrations, could be occurring at the same time.

Furthermore, I don’t understand why you think 5270 years to go from building a large stone tower to building a large stone pyramid would trouble anyone’s belief, scientific or religious. Seems to me that the tower might even be more sophisticated than a pyramid, but still, I can imagine any society that built one soon stumbling upon the other; no 5270-year period necessary.

Diamond says agricultural knowledge spread very fast, at least east-west if not north-south. The pace of advance of settled farming communities is quite rapid.

A lot of your claims here seem pretty broadly speculative.

Clovis hunters did not “expand into the tip of south america.” South America was colonized well before the origin of Clovis culture.

Standarduser, you keep trying to apply logic and common sense to the problem. These are not the methods used by Biblical literalists. If a literal reading of the Bible compels Noah to take a pair of “all living creatures” into the Ark, then that’s what happened regardless of the physical impossibility. If the New World had to be colonized within a few centuries after the Tower of Babel, then that’s what must have happened, regardless of any practical considerations.

If you’re trying to refute Biblical literalism by finding contradictions with reality, it’s easy enough to do. The peopling of the New World just isn’t a particularly hard one to explain. Unlike many other things such as the Great Flood, it presents no physical impossibilities, just practical ones.