According to the Book of Mormon, the Nephites () are one of four groups (along with the Lamanites, Jaredites, and Mulekites) to have settled in the ancient Americas. The term is used throughout the Book of Mormon to describe the religious, political, and cultural traditions of the group of settlers. The Nephites are described as a group of people that descended from or were associated with Nephi, the son of the prophet Lehi, who left Jerusalem at the urging of God in about 600 BC and traveled with his family to the Western Hemisphere and arrived to the Americas in about 589 BC. The Book of Mormon notes them as initially righteous people who eventually "had fallen into a state of unbelief and awful wickedness" and were destroyed by the Lamanites in about AD 385. Some scholars of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) state that the ancestors of the Nephites settled somewhere in present-day Central America after they had left Jerusalem. However, both the Smithsonian Institution and the National Geographic Society have issued statements that they have seen no evidence to support the Book of Mormon as a historical account. Archaeology The existence of the Nephites is part of the Mormon belief system. The Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS), part of Brigham Young University, has performed extensive archaeological research in the area, and publications on the subject and other historical topics are issued regularly by FARMS. This research is disputed by many researchers, including Michael Coe, a scholar in pre-Columbian Mesoamerican history, as well as the Smithsonian Institution. In 1973, Coe addressed the issue in an article for Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought: In 1996, the Smithsonian Institution issued a statement that addressed claims made in the Book of Mormon by stating that the text is primarily a religious text and that archeologists affiliated with the Institution found "no direct connection between the archeology of the New World and the subject matter of the book." The statement further says that there is genetic evidence that the Native American Indians are closely related to peoples of Asia and that archaeological evidence indicates that the Native Americans migrated from Asia over a land bridge over the Bering Strait in prehistoric times. The statement said that there was no credible evidence of contact between Ancient Egyptian or Hebrew peoples and the New World, as