Daris Howard has written a new book on the Jaredites called, The Book of Mormon: The Jaredites (Insights into the Scriptures).
I had just finished an Education Week class on the Jaredites when a lady approached me.
“Brother Howard, I have a question,” she said. “I loved your presentation, but it left me with a big question. Do you have any idea what the Jaredites looked like?”
“Well, we know that Moroni used the word ‘fair’ to describe the people,” I replied.
“True,” the woman said. “But if they came through Asia, and possibly left people there as you suggested, would that mean the Jaredites were of an Asian complexion? Would those people be considered fair?”
I couldn’t answer either of those questions. “Fair” might mean something different to different people according to the dictionary definition. It might mean light skin and hair, or it could mean that they were pretty or handsome.
I had never considered the question of what the Jaredites might have looked like before, and it gave me something to think about. The reason I had never pondered it at great length was because I thought there was no way of knowing. I thought more about her question, and the Jaredites coming through Asia and wondered if that might be a key to learn what they looked like. With this in mind, I started my search and began coming across some things that might give us some insights.
In a previous part of my book, I cover the ideas that the Jaredites were probably not all destroyed, but were destroyed as a nation. God said he would destroy Israel, and yet we know many of them survived, but not as a nation.
So, what does the Jaredites among the Nephites have to do with what they might have looked like? As previously mentioned, Moroni, or Moroni taking from the words of Ether, tells us they were fair. Speaking of Coriantumr, the scripture says:
Ether 13:17 – But he repented not, neither his fair sons nor daughters; neither the fair sons and daughters of Cohor; neither the fair sons and daughters of Corihor; and in fine, there were none of the fair sons and daughters upon the face of the whole earth who repented of their sins.
Nibley tells us the word “earth” and “land” are almost always used interchangeably [5]. So, this is probably referring to the land, or country, of the Jaredites.
In an earlier part of my book, I discuss the idea that the most likely scenario for the Jaredite travel would be across Siberia to China, as mentioned by the woman from my Education Week presentation. I don’t have room here to discuss the reasons many, including myself, believe that, but will use it for a premise in this article for what the Jaredites might have looked like.
An important scripture opens up some information that can help us on the search.
Ether 2:5 And it came to pass that the Lord commanded them that they should go forth into the wilderness, yea, into that quarter where there never had man been.
This would mean that if they traveled through Asia, they were the first ones there, at least after the flood. When the Lord takes a people through an unpopulated land, it seems he has at least some of them stay there to multiply and replenish the earth in that region. In addition, when a person considers that Jared kept asking his brother to request of the Lord that more people could join them, their group may have been large. This could mean that the Jaredite party was likely too large to all travel across the sea in the barges, especially with animals and supplies for nearly a year-long voyage.
So, if they were the first people in the region where they traveled, and that area was in Asia, could this give clues about what the Jaredites looked like? Could archeology add anything to the scriptures in this area? The answer is only if we could find out the physical characteristics of the most ancient inhabitants of that land.
That might be difficult, because even in looking at old human remains that could be found, usually only skeletal fragments existed. A person wouldn’t know hair color or complexion by them. Of course, today modern DNA testing might help, but if there was intermingling of nationalities, it could be convoluted. Another question is, could the people who are in Asia now be their descendants?
These were tough questions to answer, especially since people have often been conquered, destroyed, or driven out of lands they first inhabited. That could have happened here. Tracing back to the first inhabitants would be difficult, and just looking at the people who live there now would be insufficient.
This all boils down to two things: Is there any way to find out what the first people of Asia looked like? And is there any way to prove whether or not the people living there now are descendants of those first people?
As I considered this, I thought of some things I had read from Thor Heyerdahl. He became increasingly interested in some hieroglyphics in Azerbaijan that he felt connected the Azerbaijanis to the Norwegian people [48]. He talked about how legends from Norway, where he was from, said that a man named Odin was the one who led people there.
A quick read of Mythopedia tells us that Odin was considered a god in the Norse legend and was also a wanderer [49][WL]. You may not be as familiar with him as with Thor, the hammer-wielding deity. In some sources, Thor and Odin are brothers, and in others, Thor is Odin’s son. But Heyerdahl believed Odin was real man, a tribal leader who led his people to the northern regions, and later his descendants created legends that raised him to the level of deity. Legends of Odin are not confined just to Norse folklore, either, but are also found extensively in Germanic folklore. He also appears frequently in stories from other lands. If he was a real person who led a people to those lands, the question was, where did they come from?
Azerbaijan is in the Caucasus region near the Black Sea and is on the edge of Asia. But Heyerdahl believed there could have been groups traveling west, north, and south who were connected to Odin. Much of his work, and the work of others, say they feel Odin’s people traveled from eastern lands on their journeys to their new home or homes [48].
It is possible that instead of coming from the Caucasus region or even just east of the Caucasus region, as Heyerdahl proposed, the people of Odin came from even farther to the east and spread themselves from Azerbaijan to Norway and beyond. But why did they leave their homes and travel to new ones? That is another discussion which I won’t address here, but it could be they were driven out by others who supplanted them.
I wondered whether Odin might have led people out of Asia to European countries. In particular, could the Jaredite descendants be the forebears of the Scandinavians, Azerbaijanis, Germans, and other European people? If so, we would know a lot about what they might have looked like by considering their descendants today. However, even though legend can be a basis for the beginning of an idea, a person needs more to create a foundation for a convincing argument toward a particular conclusion.
We do have Moroni’s account that the Jaredites were a “fair” people. But does that necessarily mean they were possibly the red-headed or blond people we now find in many of these countries? “Fair” is a personal interpretation, as previously mentioned, and could mean many things, including simply that they were beautiful. I felt I needed more information to really consider this as a feasible idea.
I started searching for material about archeology work in Asia, but nothing I found related to people as far back as the time of the Jaredites. And further, the features of being “fair” relate primarily to skin or hair. These characteristics decay and cannot be distinguished on skeletal remains.
Then I came across some fascinating material. In the first part of the nineteen hundreds, explorers came across mummies in the Tarim Basin, a desert where conditions existed that left the skin and hair of the mummies intact. Aurel Stein was one of the best-known of these explorers [50].
What made the mummies unique was that they were often tall. These mummies in the Tarim Basin are among the oldest ones found in China. In addition, the arid, hot sandy conditions there lent themselves to preserving skin and hair, probably better than the best embalming techniques of any ancient culture. The ancient Egyptians knew that salt was an anti-bacterial agent, and a preservative, and used it heavily in embalming. The Tarim Basin has a naturally salty atmosphere, providing natural protection to the bodies.
What was striking about these well-preserved mummies was the color of their hair and skin. Some of them were blond or red-haired and fair-skinned. Some could probably be 6 feet tall or more [51][WL], though some question that. The dating techniques put them as far back as 2000 BC. The Jaredites and the Tower of Babel were probably around 2400-2000 BC. Interestingly, the mummies at the lower levels, the oldest ones, are more of the type that were tall and red-headed or blond. Those on the higher levels, which would be from more recent centuries, look more like those who live in Asia now.
In his book The Early Empires of Central Asia, published in 1939, McGovern claims from his research, and in-depth knowledge of the Chinese people, that the Indo-Europeans came from central Asia [52][WL]. Breasted, in his book Ancient Times, a History of the Early World, published in 1916, claims that these Indo-Europeans were the Scythians “the great white race” [53]. The idea of the Asian lands having white people seems to be common in many early books, but as we move further into the 1900s, the idea of a white race preceding those who are there now faded.
Though books were making this claim, and though the discovery of the mummies was groundbreaking, at that time, men like Stein had other things to draw their interest. Little attention was paid to the mummies until 1988 when Victor Mair, a sinologist (expert in Chinese language, literature, history, society, etc.), came across some of these mummies in a backroom of a museum. His fascination and writing about them opened doors, and soon, others became interested in these mummies.
Besides their light skin and the color of their hair being unusual for that area, some of their clothes were as well. Their clothing included kilts with weaves that are like those in Scotland. Some experts believe these clothes hint at a migration from the steppe lands toward Europe, and not the other way around. According to textile experts, such as Elizabeth Barber, these textiles show that the people of Europe and their ideas, such as woven fabric, came from a people moving from the East to the West [50]. The weave is almost identical to cloth from Scotland, and weaves are unique and strong indicators of culture.
Early DNA testing showed that these mummies have strong tendencies toward matches with Europeans [50]. In other words, these more ancient mummies tend to match the appearance of the people of Europe, such as Germany or Scandinavia, and their DNA shows they are more closely related to the people of Europe than they are to the people who more commonly inhabit Asia now.
An even more recent analysis is also interesting. An article in a recent National Geographic magazine says that the people of Europe had three different migrations. Through DNA testing of ancient human remains from other areas and comparing them to Europe, scientists have discovered the three waves of European immigrants [54][WL]. The first one has been talked about much in science. That is that the first people came out of Africa and spread to all lands. According to scientists, the second wave was from the Middle East. But the final wave, which DNA science puts as in the last 5,000 years, has DNA matching remains in Russia and farther to the east. This would put this migration around 3,000 BC. (Note that the Jaredites would have been around 2,500 BC.) This would also mean that the remains of many in Asia whose hair and skin were not preserved likely had hair and skin colors matching the Europeans, based on DNA.
What is my final analysis of what the Jaredites looked like? If the Jaredites were the first people in Asia, then it appears likely that if there were those of the Jaredites left behind to populate those lands, they likely were the predecessors of modern-day northern Europeans. That would mean the Jaredite descendants later became those people. From allof this analysis, I feel that the Jaredites looked much like the Vikings, Scandinavians, Germans, and those of the British Isles. We, of course, do not know this for sure, but there is a lot of evidence that it could be the case.
This leads us to one last question. If they were first in Asia, what forced the Jaredite descendants out of those lands? Hugh Nibley discusses events causing great migrations [5]. He says that great cataclysmic events often caused people to move. They would take over the lands of those who stood in their way, and those people would then move, encroaching on the lands of others, eventually forcing them out or destroying them.
Such an event, and this type of chain reaction, could have forced the Mongols or the Huns, as we know much of the people of Asia today, to move east. This could have forced those in the east to move north and west. This would match what the legend of Odin says, as well as what much of the DNA and archeology suggest as possibilities.
With books from the early 1900s taken from Chinese manuscripts, such as by Breasted [53] and McGovern [52], stating that central Asia was where the white race came from, why were the mummies such a surprise? During the 1900s, especially with World War II occupations of China, and other strife, there were many upheavals in the societies of Asia. This seemed to have created nationalism and pride in their past and their culture. According to Mallory, Mair [50], and others, promoting ideas that other civilizations had preceded the current inhabitants of these lands had to be treated carefully to not antagonize the people and the government leaders.
But it is quite clear from the manuscripts, modern day findings, and technology, that the possibility of a white race preceding the current inhabitants in the Orient is not only plausible but likely.
I, by no means, feel this analysis is exhaustive on the subject. But I do hope that it gives the reader a basis for doing their own research and coming to their own conclusions.
(Note: An interesting documentary, which includes information on the Tarim mummies, is the Lost Treasures of the Silk Road by Xterra. This can be found in the documentary section of Amazon videos.)
Bibliography
[5] H. Nibley, “The World of the Jaredites,” in The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley Volume 5, Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Company, 1988, pp. 153–282.
[48] T. Heyerdahl, “The Azerbaijan connection Challenging Euro-centric theories of migration,” Azerbaijan International, vol. 3.1, no. Spring, pp. 60–61, 1995, [Online]. Available: http://azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/31_folder/31_articles/31_thorazerconn.html
[49] T. Apel, “Odin.” Accessed: Apr. 22, 2023. [Online]. Available: https://mythopedia.com/topics/odin
[50] J. P. Mallory and V. H. Mair, The Tarim Mummies. New York, New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000.
[51] C. Coonan, “A meeting of civilizations: The mystery of China’s Celtic mummies.” http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/a-meeting-of-civilisations-the-mystery-of-chinas-celtic-mummies-5330366.html (accessed Jul. 25, 2022).
[52] W. M. McGovern, The Early Empires of Central Asia. The University of North Carolina Press, 1939. [Online]. Available: https://ia801601.us.archive.org/25/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.535974/2015.535974.early-empires.pdf
[53] J. H. Breasted, Ancient Times a History of the Early World. Ginn and Company, 1916.
[54] A. Curry, “Genetic testing reveals that Europe is a melting pot, made of immigrants,” National Geographic, 2019. [Online]. Available: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/first-europeans-immigrants-genetic-testing-feature
