For four centuries the Lost Tribes theory explained native peoples worldwide.

Evidence

In the case of the Americas, over several centuries, first in the work of the Spanish historians and later in British, French, and North American accounts, the idea of Jewish origins for the indigenous peoples of the Americas was the dominant discourse and for much of the four hundred years between 1500 and 1900 commanded the attention of some of the greatest European and American thinkers. From the fifteenth century on the idea—often fiercely defended—that given peoples were derived from ancient Israel or from some specific tribe of the Lost Tribes of Israel became quite astonishingly widespread and was attached to just about every corner of the globe and to a wide variety of peoples from the Eskimos to the Australian aborigines. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 305

Categorization

• SHARE: A startling fact for anyone interested in colonial intellectual history or the Book of Mormon’s own reliance on the same Israelite-origins trope.