Category: Anachronism

  • Dinosaurs During Adam’s Time

    Dinosaurs During Adam’s Time

    Do we hear of Dinosaurs in the Bible?

    Many have collected dinosaur remains all over and they have no lingering doubt concerning their reality. Thousands of specimens have been found and excavated. However, simply because we acknowledge the existence of dinosaurs does not mean we must accept that it took millions of years for their appearance/disappearance. Many people see the dinosaur bones, but feel there is no direct Biblical supporting evidence for their creation. I think the existence of dinosaurs is very plausible and even supported in the Bible. The word “Dinosaur” does not even appear in the KJV of the Bible and that makes perfect sense. Because In 1842, the English naturalist Sir Richard Owen coined the term Dinosauria, derived from the Greek deinos, meaning “fearfully great,” and sauros, meaning “lizard.” I believe the Dinosaur lived during the time of Adam, as he named all animals.

    “Gen 1:24-25 “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.”

    Among the beasts of the Earth, there were animals of all sizes, great and small, including those we know today as dinosaurs. We know they were here because we see their remains, but where did they go? Intermittent extinction of animals is ongoing, but the greatest mass-extinction event to occur on the Earth, the global, Universal Flood, witnessed the sudden end of 75% of all land species, including plants and animals, and 95% of all marine species. When this transpired about 4,400 years ago, tens, even hundreds-of-millions of animals perished, most obliterated by the forces of the great Deluge, but some remains survived because of a very unique, perfectly balanced environment of heat, pressure, water, and ocean chemistry, known as a hypretherm. Those fossil remains show us that the continents were all once connected, that all dinosaurs died in a flood environment (worldwide, all dinosaur fossils are found in flood sediment), and that the extinction event happened in the springtime. In fact, fossilization of dead animals is not happening today; it only happened during the Great Flood.” Russ Barlow, editor of the Universal Model, New Millennial Science


    Sir Richard Owen
    BRITISH ANATOMIST AND PALEONTOLOGIST WRITTEN BY: The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

    Sir Richard Owen

    “Sir Richard Owen, (born July 20, 1804, Lancaster, Lancashire, Eng.—died Dec. 18, 1892, London), British anatomist and paleontologist who is remembered for his contributions to the study of fossil animals, especially dinosaurs. He was the first to recognize them as different from today’s reptiles; in 1842 he classified them in a group he called Dinosauria. Owen was also noted for his strong opposition to the views of Charles Darwin.

    Owen was educated at Lancaster Grammar School and was apprenticed in 1820 to a group of Lancaster surgeons. In 1824 he went to Edinburgh to continue medical training, but in 1825 he transferred to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London. He was admitted to the Royal College of Surgeons of England, where he was engaged as curator of the Hunterian Collections (made by John Hunter, the renowned anatomist) and set up in medical practice. In 1830 he met Georges Cuvier, a celebrated French paleontologist, and the following year visited him in Paris, where he studied specimens in the National Museum of Natural History. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1834, in 1836 Owen became Hunterian professor at the Royal College of Surgeons and in 1837 its professor of anatomy and physiology, as well as Fullerian professor of comparative anatomy and physiology at the Royal Institution. Leaving medical practice and devoting himself to research, he was appointed superintendent of the natural history departments of the British Museum in 1856. From then until his retirement in 1884 he was largely occupied with the development of the British Museum (Natural History) in South Kensington, London. On retirement he was created a knight of the Order of the Bath.

    Among Owen’s earliest publications were the Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Physiological Series of Comparative Anatomy Contained in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London (1833), which enabled him to acquire a considerable knowledge of comparative anatomy. His Memoir on the Pearly Nautilus (1832) was a classic, and he became a highly respected anatomist. By 1859, the year of the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, however, Owen’s judgment was muddied by his sense that his own preeminence in biology was about to be lost, and he set about to discredit Darwin, who had been a good friend and colleague for 20 years. Owen wrote a very long anonymous review of the book (The Edinburgh Review, 1860), on which Darwin commented:

    “It is extremely malignant, clever, and I fear will be very damaging. . . . It requires much study to appreciate all the bitter spite of many of the remarks against me. . . . He misquotes some passages, altering words within inverted commas. . . .”

    Owen is also said to have coached Bishop Wilberforce in his debate against Thomas Huxley, one of Darwin’s chief defenders. As Darwin’s thesis began to become more accepted in the scientific community, Owen shifted his position somewhat; although he denied Darwinian doctrine, he admitted the accuracy of its basis, claiming to have been the first to have pointed out the truth of the principle on which it was founded.”


    God Is the Supreme Scientist, Says Curator of BYU’s Museum of Paleontology

    Contributed By Jason Swensen, Church News associate editor

    “That’s the beauty of the Church—it’s one of the reasons why I joined the Church,” he said. “The Church is looking for truth, and we don’t find truth only in the scriptures. There’s truth all around us; we just have to search for it.” Rod Scheetz

    (Quote from article link above)”He [Scheetz] eventually enrolled at BYU, joined the Church, and continued his paleontology studies under Jensen. Some on campus were suspicious of science, prompting debates over, say, creationism and evolution. But Scheetz never picked sides between his scientific learning and his burgeoning gospel testimony. No need, he said—the Creator is also the supreme Scientist.”

    What does the Church believe about dinosaurs?

    “Did dinosaurs live and die on this earth long before man came along? There have been no revelations on this question, and the scientific evidence says yes. (You can learn more about it by studying paleontology if you like, even at Church-owned schools.)

    The details of what happened on this planet before Adam and Eve aren’t a huge doctrinal concern of ours. The accounts of the Creation in the scriptures are not meant to provide a literal, scientific explanation of the specific processes, time periods, or events involved. What matters to us is that as part of His plan for us, God created the earth and then created Adam and Eve, who were our first parents and were instrumental in bringing about the Fall, which enabled us to be born on earth and participate in God’s plan.” (See Jeffrey R. Holland, “Where Justice, Love, and Mercy Meet,” Ensign, May 2015, 105.)

    How do dinosaurs fit into the creation? By Ask Gramps

    “…a comment on carbon dating, which may be used for only rather recent geological time estimates. There is a radioactive isotope of carbon, called carbon 14, (14C). It has a half-life of 5100 years. That means that for any given amount of 14C, half of it will have dissipated in 5100 years, another half in another 5100, etc.. 14C is produced by neutron bombardment of nitrogen (14N) in the atmosphere, and unites with oxygen to form carbon dioxide, (CO2). Only an extremely small amount of the carbon in the atmosphere consists of the isotope 14. CO2 from the atmosphere is absorbed into the structure of plants through their leaves. Scientists can determine the ratio of the radioactive isotope, 14C, to the stable isotope, 12C, and from the known rate of decay of 14C, they can estimate how long ago the plant material was living and absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere.

    The question is, how accurate are the estimates? In the first place, the cosmic ray flux into the earth’s atmosphere is known to vary. Over the last few thousand years it has fluctuated a number of times by at least ten percent. Secondly, the scientists assume that the relative concentrations of the atmospheric constituents have been constant over the geological time periods of interest. A number of factors can occur that would alter the atmospheric composition, such as atmospheric pollution from volcanic eruptions, which would in turn affect the accuracy of 14C dating. So, beyond 5000 years or so, I would not give much confidence to the time estimates based on carbon dating. Full Article Here

    Woolly Mammoths Survived on Alaska Island Until Just 5,600 Years Ago, New Study Shows

    They are perhaps the most iconic animals of the Ice Age. But woolly mammoths survived in North America an astonishing 6,000 years after the Ice Age ended, scientists say. Entire article Here:


    Do the revelations teach a 7,000 year temporal existence of the earth? Can the scriptures and writings of the presidents of the church be harmonized with the scientific principle of Uniformitarianism?

    “The scriptures are very clear that the earth has a temporal or mortal existence of 7000 years. John the Revelator saw by revelation the history of this earth. This history was divided into 1000 year increments or seven seals. The Prophet Joseph Smith was given a revelation explaining the teachings of John the Revelator concerning the seven seals spoken of in his work. Part of this explanation explains that the Lord created the earth in 6 days on His time, resting on the seventh, and that this earth will likewise continue for a 7000 year temporal existence.

    “. . . as God made the world in six days, and on the seventh day he finished his work, and sanctified it, and also formed man out of the dust of the earth, even so, in the beginning of the seventh thousand years will the Lord God sanctify the earth, and complete the salvation of man . . .” D&C 77:12

    Additionally, the Lord explained that the book, which John saw, which was sealed on the back with seven seals represents:

    “. . . the revealed will, mysteries, and the works of God; the hidden things of his economy concerning this earth during the seven thousand years of its continuance, or it temporal existence.” D&C 77:6

    The seven thousand years of this earth’s temporal existence? This scripture is very clear and definite as to the continuance of this earth. Some however, have suggested that it does not mean what it clearly says. What is the proper scriptural interpretation of this phrase? President Joseph Fielding Smith in explanation of Doctrine and Covenants 77 taught:

    “Here is a definite statement by revelation to us that this earth will go through 7,000 years of temporal existence. Temporal, by all interpretations, means passing, temporary or mortal. This, then, has reference to the earth in its fallen state, for the earth was cursed when Adam . . . transgressed the law. Before that time this earth was not mortal any more than Adam was.” Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, 1:79-80

    Mortality, with death, blood and sin will only continue on this earth for a time of 7000 years. These teachings differ significantly from those suggested by most modern scientists. President Smith explained:

    “. . . we can hardly be justified in trying to harmonize the days of creation with the extended periods of millions of years according to the reckoning of so-called scientists.” Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, 1:80 

    There was no death, reproduction or sin prior to the Fall of Adam for man and all animal life. Therefore, as the scriptures teach, there was no change and all things existed in a state of peace until Adam brought death into the world. See 2 Nephi 2:22″ Read the rest at the Joseph Smith Foundation Here!

    Dinosaurs & Dragon Legends Documentary on ZionTube Here:


    Great audio discussion below with researcher Jeremy Michel. He has been a frequent speaker at our Firm Foundation Conferences.

    Jeremy Michel: Dinosaurs Survived the Flood (Audio)
    Jeremy’s facebook page is here: https://www.facebook.com/ldsyoungearthcreationism/
    YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@jeremymichel3042


    Dinosaurs—Part of God’s Creation By Eric Hovind

    “The Bible begins with a statement that is so simple a child can understand it, yet so inexhaustibly profound: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” —Dr. Jeremy Lyon, “Genesis: Paradise Lost.”

    It is the most dramatic and important opening of any chapter of any book. Given as a declaration of fact, the first verse of Genesis covers the creation of time, space, and matter in a single sentence; a solitary breath. Thus began the world and everything in it.

    Genesis 1:24 “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: And it was so.”

    Today, we continue to discover physical evidence of many creatures that no longer exist, including reptiles known as dinosaurs. Their skeletal remains give us a glimpse into the structure and size of these remarkable animals. Yet the controversy rages: Did these creatures evolve into existence and eventually become extinct millions of years before humanity stepped onto the scene of world history? Or were humans and dinosaurs created by God; co-existing for centuries before saurian extinction?

    Part of the Original Creation?

    In the Book of Exodus, as God gives His perfect law to Moses on Mount Sinai, He reiterates the plain reading of the Creation Story from Genesis chapter one:

    Exodus 20:11 “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.” [Emphasis added]

    If God created everything in six days, with land animals and humans both coming into existence on the sixth day (Genesis 1:24-31), then humans and dinosaurs did occupy the same world at the same time. So what happened?

    What Happened to the Perfect World?

    Initially, God’s creation was perfect, with all animals and humans living in harmony, all feasting on plants, trees and their fruit. Everything was vegetarian in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 1:30). Sometime after the original creation, man sinned and this perfect world was corrupted in many ways. Eventually, God saw fit to punish the wickedness that had overtaken the world. But he spared Noah, “a just man, and perfect among his generations and Noah walked with God.” (Genesis 6:9)

    Dinosaurs on the Ark?

    The story of Noah saving the animals on the ark is not exclusive to those of Judeo-Christian descent. Over 277 cultures worldwide share a common story about a man who saved humanity and animals from extinction by building a vessel to survive a catastrophic deluge. Of course, scoffers reject the notion that anyone from ancient times could build a boat large enough and sturdy enough to hold all of the animals, especially the dinosaurs. However, it is logical to assume that the same God who created the world, and warned Noah of the upcoming disaster, could also provide him with the exact specifications he needed to build a seaworthy vessel. These specifications, recorded for us in Genesis 6:14-16, have been modeled, tested, and found to be sound by a number of scientific studies. Similar studies have shown that Noah needed to bring less than 8,000 animals on board the ark, in order to fulfill his mission. Some of them were dinosaurs; not the biggest and the meanest he could find, but smaller members of the saurian family who could preserve the population.

    Why Aren’t Dinosaurs Mentioned in the Bible?

    If dinosaurs were part of the original creation and taken on board Noah’s ark with the rest of the land dwelling animals, why aren’t they mentioned in the Bible?

    Since the word “dinosaur” wasn’t actually coined until 1841, the creatures we now refer to as dinosaurs were simply called dragons throughout most of history. Not only does the Bible use the word “dragon” repeatedly, 21 times in the Old Testament and 12 times in the Book of Revelations, the Book of Job describes creatures called Behemoth and Leviathan, which seem to indicate large, reptilian beasts, like dinosaurs. (See the Book of Job, chapters 40 and 41.)

    Job 40:15-19 “Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox.
    Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly.
    He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together.
    His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron.
    He is the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can make his sword to approach 
    unto him.”

    In Hebrew, the word “Behemoth” translates as “gigantic beast.” For this animal to be described by God as “the chief,” it must surely have been a huge and magnificent sight!

    What Happened to the Dinosaurs?

    Throughout history, dragons have been a huge part of folklore, each culture replete with legends of flying reptiles, as well as monsters of land and sea. Notable historians such as Herodotus, Strabo, Dio, and Josephus have documented accounts with enormous creatures called dragons. In the journals of Alexander the Great and Marco Polo, there have been found additional references to these creatures, some large enough and scary enough to terrify the most stalwart of soldiers. Ancient writings have been discovered containing recipes which call for dragon parts like their bones, blood, and saliva. It seems that ancient man did not believe dinosaurs were a thing of the past, but a veritable threat to their present and future.

    By the Middle Ages, dragon sightings had become rare. Those who did show themselves were instantly hunted for sport, food, or medicine. Yet the sightings continued. Today we continue to discover and unearth drawings and artwork with depictions of these monsters. From pottery, stones, and statues, to detailed carvings on an 800 year old temple in Cambodia, archaeology is abounding with pictures of the creatures we now call dinosaurs. So why is there a concerted effort to deny the co-existence of these creatures with humanity?

    Millions of Years Ago…

    We’ve heard it before, in numerous ways. Dinosaurs lived millions and millions of years ago. They died out before man came into existence and were not discovered until the early 1800’s. The proof for this is in the fossil evidence and extinction. In order for their bones to be fossilized, and then buried under miles of dirt, rock, and other bones, they must have been wiped out long before mankind existed. Whatever disaster destroyed the dinosaurs must have happened before our ancestors were crawling around on all fours, or they would have been destroyed too. Today, these assumptions are touted as fact, as indisputable as gravity.

    Scientifically, we have discovered that fossilization does not take millions of years. It just requires the right conditions. And the burial of millions of animals, plants, and marine life is explained quite easily by the worldwide flood recorded in the Book of Genesis. This wasn’t just a bit of rain that fell from the sky, but a worldwide catastrophe of epic proportions!

    Dinosaurs—Part of the Original Creation

    Through God’s Word, historical records, and evidence uncovered, we can see that dinosaurs were part of the original creation. Adam and Eve saw them in the Garden of Eden; Noah took them on the Ark; and mankind has interacted with them and been fascinated by them for over 6,000 years. It is only in recent times that there has been a concerted effort to assert their extinction before the dawn of humanity. This error has led many to question the Word of God and thereby to deny the reality of Creation, the Flood, and the Coming Judgment. Yet, over the centuries, science has proven to be like shifting sand. Only God’s Word is steadfast.

    Genesis 1: 31 “And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good.”

    see https://creationtoday.org/dinosaurs-in-the-bible/

    About the Author: Eric Hovind

    Eric Hovind grew up immersed in the world of apologetics and following college graduation in 1999, he began full-time ministry. President and Founder of Pensacola-based organization, Creation Today, Eric’s passion to reach people with the life-changing message of the Gospel has driven him to speak in five foreign countries and all fifty states. He lives in Pensacola, Florida with his wife Tanya and three children and remains excited about the tremendous opportunity to lead an apologetics ministry in the war against evolution and humanism.


    Behemoth

    “Apparently the intensive plural of behemah, meaning “beast.” A large river animal (possibly the hippopotamus), described in Job 40:15–24.” LDS Bible Dictionary.

    “(/bɪˈhiːməθ, ˈbiːə-/; Hebrew: בהמות‎, behemot) is a beast mentioned in Job 40:15–24. Suggested identities range from a mythological creature to an elephant, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, or buffalo.[1] Metaphorically, the name has come to be used for any extremely large or powerful entity.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behemoth

    Antichrist on Leviathan, Liber floridus, 1120

    Leviathan

    “Any great sea or land monster, such as the crocodile, either as an actual creature (Job 41:1) or as symbolic of a nation (Ps. 74:14); a large serpent (Isa. 27:1).” LDS Bible Dictionary

    “(/lɪˈvaɪ.əθən/; Hebrew: לִוְיָתָן, Livyatan) is a creature with the form of a sea monster from Jewish belief, referenced in the Hebrew Bible in the Book of Job, Psalms, the Book of Isaiah, and the Book of Amos.

    The Leviathan of the Book of Job is a reflection of the older Canaanite Lotan, a primeval monster defeated by the god Hadad. Parallels to the role of Mesopotamian Tiamat defeated by Marduk have long been drawn in comparative mythology, as have been wider comparisons to dragon and world serpent narratives such as Indra slaying Vrtra or Thor slaying Jörmungandr,[1] but Leviathan already figures in the Hebrew Bible as a metaphor for a powerful enemy, notably Babylon (Isaiah 27:1), and some scholars have pragmatically interpreted it as referring to large aquatic creatures, such as the crocodile.[2] The word later came to be used as a term for “great whale” as well as of sea monsters in general.” Wikipedia Levianthan


    Dragon/Leviathan

    “The Lord points to His power in the leviathan—All things under the whole heaven are the Lord’s.” Chapter 41 Job Heading.

    “19 Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out. 20 Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or caldron. 21 His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth. 22 In his neck remaineth strength, and sorrow is turned into joy before him. 31 He maketh the deep to boil like a pot: he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment. 32 He maketh a path to shine after him; one would think the deep to be hoary.” Job 41:19-22, 31-32

    “Two Hebrew words are thus rendered though they are sometimes translated whale, serpent, jackal, or sea-monster. Probably a large snake or snakelike animal in Deut. 32:33; Ps. 74:1391:13. A jackal in Job 30:29Isa. 13:2227:1; 34:13; 35:7; 43:20; 51:9; Jer. 9:1110:22; 51:34; Mal. 1:3. Used figuratively in Ezek. 29:3. In the New Testament it is always used figuratively, as in Rev. 12:3, 7, 9, 13, 1613:2, 4, 1116:13; 20:2; see also Mosiah 20:11Alma 43:44.” LDS Bible Dictionary


    Fiery serpents

    “Snakes marked with flamelike spots, or whose bite caused acute inflammation (Num. 21:6). The Lord sent these upon the children of Israel to “straiten them,” and He prepared a way that those who were bitten might be healed by looking at the serpent of brass that Moses raised up before them, which was a symbol of the Redeemer being lifted upon the cross (John 3:14–15). The event is confirmed in latter-day revelation (1 Ne. 17:41; 2 Ne. 25:20). See also Serpent, brazen.” LDS Bible Dictionary


    Cureloms and Cumoms

    Moroni briefly mentions beasts called “cureloms and cumoms” in Ether 9:19, mentioning that they are “useful unto man.” While they only make a brief appearance in the Book of Mormon, these unknown beasts might as well be mythical creatures to most scholars. But to some these may also be the Mammoth or Mastodon or even a larger beast like a Dinosaur. Remember much about mythology is a copying of real depictions of things.


    Animal

    Beasts and wild beasts are mentioned many places in the scriptures. In the LDS Bible Dictionary it gives the following list of some of the terms titled as Beasts.

    Manti Temple. 1886-87, Carl Christian Anton Christensen (usually CCA Christensen, 1831-1912) painted a 4.9-meter-high mural stretching completely around the Creation Room of the Manti Temple. The mural shows elements of creation up to, but not including, humans.

    Beast

  • Mastodon Jaw Unearthed in New York-More BofM Evidence?

    Mastodon Jaw Unearthed in New York-More BofM Evidence?

    WHY NEW YORK?

    New York is one of the most archaeologically rich sites in America. Human bones, battles, artifacts, copper, steel, pearls, roads, forts, mounds, and a bloddy hill. The incredible amount of animal bones including Mastodons and Mammoths I discuss below, match up with the Book of Mormon timeline and are also very abundant as shown below in this map, taken from “Distribution of Pleistocene Mammals in New york State” Fisher 1955, and “The Archaeology of New York State” William A. Ritchie 1965.

    ANCIENT NEPHITE-LAMANITE BATTLEGROUNDS

    “The battles in described as often having culminated in the destruction of previous, superior Native cultures which had taken final refuge in forts at the tops of hills, including the general region of the hill known to Mormons as Cumorah. In the town of Camillus, in the same county of Onondaga . . . there are two ancient forts . . . One is on a very high hill, and its area covers about three acres. . . . The ditch was deep and the eastern wall ten feet high. In the centre was a large lime stone of an irregular shape.”
    A Memoir on the Antiquities of the Western Parts of the State of New-York, Addressed to the Honourable Samuel L. Mitchill, a Vice-President of the Literary and Philosophical Society of New York . . . by Dewitt Clinton . . . Read Before the Society November 13th, 1817 De Witt Clinton (1769-1828)

    Bloody Hill NY

    “Pompey in Onondaga County, a town covering upwards of five hundred acres must have contained a population greatly transcending all our ideas of credibility . . . This town was on elevated ground, . . . and was well calculated for defense. . . . There are three old forts distant about eight miles from each other, and forming a triangle which encloses the town; . . . and they were, in all probability, erected to cover the town and to protect the inhabitants from the attacks of an enemy. . . . On the line of the north side, the town was probably stormed. There are graves on each side close to the precipice; sometimes five or six persons were thrown promiscuously into the same grave. If the invaders had been repulsed, the inhabitants would have interred the killed in the usual places; but from the circumstance of there being graves near the ravine and in the village, I am induced to believe that the town was taken. (noting ‘gun barrels, axes, hoes and swords . . . all over these grounds’) The traditions of the Indians agree in some measure with the French relations. They represent that their forefathers had several bloody battles with the French . . . There is a hill in Pompey, which the Indians will not visit, and which they call Bloody Hill. . . . The old fortifications were erected previous to European intercourse. The Indians are ignorant by whom they were made; and in the wars which took place in this country, it is probable that they were occupied as strong holds by the belligerents; and it is likely that the ruins of European works of a different construction may be found… it is remarkable that our ancient forts resemble the old British and Danish. The Bloody Hill site dated by modern archaeology to ca. 1420 A.D. has been excavated carefully in modern times, yielding comparatively superior ceramic artifacts. Significantly more Native sites are now recognized in Pompey, beyond the few which [DeWitt] Clinton knew or was able to visit.” (James A. Tuck, 104-119) Mormon Parallels: A Bibliographic Source 2014 Rick Grunder page 403. Map from “Onondaga Iroquois Pre History A Study in Settlement Archaeology” James A. Tuck 1971 page 20

    Onondaga, Joseph Smith’s Indians?

    “Onondaga was a name that Joseph would have heard frequently in the Indian lore which B. H. Roberts felt must have influenced Joseph during his early days in Palmyra… Indeed, in order to reach Palmyra in company with Lucy Mack Smith and his siblings when they emigrated from Vermont, Joseph had to traverse the important township of Onondaga, through which the original Genesee and Seneca Turnpikes still run today…” Mormon Parallels: A Bibliographic Source 2014 Rick Grunder pg 1125

    LAMANITE SETTLEMENTS

    I share 5 mounds dated from 700 to 1100 AD called SACKETT, GENEVA, LAWSON, MORROW, & VINE VALLEY Mounds. These are a few of the mounds around the Cumorah area that show the Lamanites settlements were possible after the final battles could be all around this location. See above map.

    For many more details of Ancient battles and archaeology in New York, see my blog here titled, “Pompey, Onondaga County New York, Near Palmyra and Cumorah


    Complete mastodon jaw unearthed in New York after homeowner spots teeth in backyard

    The Stockton, New York, homeowner initially spotted two teeth hidden in the fronds of a plant on their property and proceeded to uncover two more teeth buried inches underground, the New York State Museum said. Staff from the museum, which is based in Albany and has an archaeological research department, and SUNY Orange launched an investigation at the property.

    mastodonteeth02.jpg
    A complete mastodon jaw was unearthed from the yard of a home in New York state.New York State Museum

    Their excavation unearthed additional fossils, including a full, well-preserved adult jaw and fragments of rib and toe bones that once belonged to a mastodon — ancient giants that existed during the Ice Age and became extinct some 10,000 years ago. The term refers to a group of massive elephant-like species, like the mammoth.

    “When I found the teeth and examined them in my hands, I knew they were something special and decided to call in the experts,” said the homeowner in a statement to the New York State Museum. “I’m thrilled that our property has yielded such an important find for the scientific community.”

    mastodonteeth01.jpg
    Excavators discovered fragments of the mastodon’s toe and rib bones in addition to the jaw.New York State Museum

    Remnants of mastodons have been discovered in New York before. According to the museum, more than 150 fossils of these prehistoric creatures have been documented to date statewide, with around one-third of them coming from Orange County, where the latest bones were found.

    But experts said the findings offer an opportunity to learn something new.

    “This discovery is a testament to the rich paleontological history of New York and the ongoing efforts to understand its past,” said Robert Feranec, a research director and curator at the New York State Museum whose work centers on ice age animals, in a statement. “Fossils are resources that provide remarkable snapshots of the past, allowing us to not only reconstruct ancient ecosystems but also provide us with better context and understanding of the current world around us.”

    The mastodon fossils will undergo carbon dating and analysis to determine the creature’s age, diet and habitat while it was alive, the museum said. After that analysis and subsequent preservation work are complete, the bones will be featured on public display in 2025.”


    See additional information titled, Elephants, Cureloms, & Cumoms (Mammoths?) in North America

    A mastodon tusk discovered in a sinkhole in the Aucilla River shows clear signs of human contact, according to a new analysis.

  • Mastodons, Mound Builders, and Dickeson–Pioneering American Archaeologist

    Mastodons, Mound Builders, and Dickeson–Pioneering American Archaeologist

    The following information is from The Annotated Book of Mormon by David Hocking and Rod Meldrum, pages 472-474. Order here.

    “An interesting study on ‘Men and Elephants in America’ (Ludwell H. Johnson, “Men and Elephants in America,” The Scientific Monthly 75 (1952), 220-221] . . . concludes: ‘Archaeology has proved that the American Indian hunted and killed elephants; it has also strongly indicated that these elephants have been extinct for several thousand years. This means that the traditions of the Indians recalling these animals have retained their historical validity for great stretches of time. . . Probably the minimum is three thousand years,’ . . . which would place [the elephant’s] extinction about a thousand years B.C., when the Jaredite culture was already very old and Lehi’s people were not to appear on the scene for some centuries. . . Here, then, is a strong argument for Jaredite survivors among the Indians” – Hugh Nibley, “The Prophetic Book of Mormon,” Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, Volume 8, Deseret Book Company [1989], 111.

    Mastodons (Mammut) are a type of ancient elephant ancestor. They were similar in appearance to modern elephants. Like modern elephants, they had trunks. They also had tusks, although mastodons had shorter tusks than modern elephants or mammoths. Their front and back legs were similar in height (e.g., Haynes, 1993). A full-grown adult male mastodon, would have averaged 9.5 ft (2.9 m) at the shoulder, while male African elephants, average 10.5 ft (3.2 m) at the shoulder. Mastodons, however, were stockier (more robust) and heavier, than modern elephants (Larramendi, 2015). https://www.uky.edu/KGS/fossils/fossil-month-11-2021-mastodon-teeth.php


    Mastodons, Mound Builders, and Montroville Wilson Dickeson–Pioneering American Archaeologist

    egan_panorama
     Figure 1. Section of panorama painted ca. 1850 by John Egan from Montroville Dickeson’s field notes depicting, somewhat fancifully, mounds at Cado Parish, Louisiana. From John Egan, Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley. Reproduced by permission of the St. Louis Museum of Art.
     

    The history of archaeology is populated by a varied cast of scholars. showmen, adventurers. and charlatans. This article exam­ines the career of a little-known pioneer of American archaeology. Montroville Wilson Dickeson (1810-1882). Dickeson, a Philadel­phia physician, conducted extensive excavations of archaeological sites in Louisiana and Mis­sissippi in the 1840s (Figs. 1. 2), amassing a collection of thousands of artifacts. He also acquired. through purchase or trade, material from seventeen other states or territories. More importantly, he contributed to the two great questions debated in 19th-century archaeology: When did the first people arrive in the New World? and, Who had constructed the enor­mous prehistoric earthworks found along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers?

    In 1899 the newly formed Free Museum of Science and Art (now the University of Penn­sylvania Museum) acquired Dickeson’s extensive artifact collections, as well as his notes and a massive panoramic painting documenting high­lights of his fieldwork. Today. artifacts from these collections remain important components of the American Section’s holdings. They have the potential to inform us about both the prehistory of the southeastern United States and the history of American archaeology. Dickeson research, however, has received little recent attention.

    The Early Years of American Archaeology

    montroville_dickeson
    Figure 2. Montroville Wilson Dickeson. Lithograph portrait from his American Numismatic Manual (1859). Courtesy of Annenberg Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania 

    Dickeson was not alone in his interest in North American archaeology. Thomas Jefferson is generally credited with being the first American archaeologist. In 1784, the sage of Monticello conducted excavations at a small prehistoric burial mound or barrow near Charlottesville. Virginia. Jefferson was interested in determining the age of the mound. In his words, That they were reposi­tories of the dead. has been obvious to all; but on what particular occasion constructed, was a matter of doubt” ( Jefferson 1787[1982]; 160).

    Other researchers shared Jefferson’s interest. The 19th century saw a growing fascination with America’s prehistoric past. As settlers crossed the Appalachians and headed for the fertile bottomlands of the Midwest. they encountered spectacular earthworks of varied forms. Few of these pioneers were willing to attribute these structures to Native Americans, past or present. The tribes they were familiar with, particularly in the Northeast, were not known to build earthen mounds. Moreover, many Native American peo­ples were in social disarray, reeling from years of warfare, and their populations were much reduced by disease and poverty. To some observ­ers, they seemed hardly capable of constructing the massive mounds.

    Thus there was rampant speculation regard­ing the identities of the so-called Mound Builders. Phoenicians, Israelites, Vikings Irish Monks, Toltecs from Mexico, and even the conquistador Hernando De Soto were all put forward as possibilities (Silverberg 1968; Wil­liams 1991). Some scholars were, however, more circumspect in their interpretations. Historian Roger Kennedy notes that “…Jefferson, Gallatin, and Washington simply assumed that the people they found in the [Ohio] Valley had been pre­ceded by other Indians who had known more effulgent circumstances. ‘a more populous peo­ple’ but not a different one” (1994:236). One other researcher who was willing to attribute these monumental earthworks to indigenous peoples was Montroville Wilson Dickeson.

    Young Dickeson

    Montroville Wilson Dickeson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1810. He was raised in Gloucester County. New Jersey, where his family owned a farm in Woodbury (Veit 1997). Even as a youth he had a great interest in the natural sciences and was an inveterate col­lector, accumulating “rocks, insects, reptiles, and shells” (W. Dickeson 18g9:1). As a teenager he discovered several unique fossils in the Creta­ceous marl beds of southern New Jersey. These finds brought him to the attention of the local scientific community. Philadelphia. at the time, was the intellectual center of the young United States. The scholarly institutions in the city included the American Philosophical Society, the Franklin Institute, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. the Academy of Natural Sciences, the University of Pennsylvania. and Peale’s Museum—America’s first commercially successful museum.

    Dickeson studied medicine with Dr. Joseph Parrish in Philadelphia. Parrish was both a dis­tinguished physician and, according to contem­porary accounts, an “extraordinarily popular” lecturer on chemistry (Simpson 1859). After completing his studies, Dickeson practiced at the Philadelphia Dispensary. Although he was appar­ently a successful physician, he decided, after only one or two years of practice, to pursue his other interest—archaeology. His brother William, the author of a posthumous biographical sketch, wrote “[Medicine] was not the only object of his life, the passion for research in the new field of American Archaeology took him to the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi where for seven years or from 1837 to 1844 he was a constant traveler” (1899:2-3). Montroville’s own notes indicate that he might better have been described as a constant excavator! Moreover, he was appar­ently in Mississippi as late as July 1847, for in that year he was excavating on one of John A. Quitman’s plantations, Springfield. There he “found a large Indian mound which contained immense quantities of skulls and bones of natives who he estimated had inhabited the area a thousand years earl ier….News of the archaeological find… soon appeared in several newspapers, one as far away as Houston, Texas” (May 1985:130).

    mississippi_river_drawing
    Figure 3. Map of the Mississippi River around Natchez, Mississippi, hand-drawn ca. 1837-44 by Dickeson showing mounds in the vicinity. UPM Archives, Dickeson Coll., Special Colls.; Oversize maps, plans, and drawings. UPM neg. 58-142136.

    Despite the fact that he was active over 150 years ago. a variety of sources survive which can cast light on Dickeson’s research. One is the pre­viously mentioned sketch written by his brother, who was also a physician and naturalist. Mon­troville himself penned a series of short articles for the Philadelphia literary magazine The Lotus (Veit 1997:112). In these he presented his con­clusions to a public audience, something too few archaeologists find the time to do. However, the most important surviving sources are Dickeson’s original notebook (1848) and an accompanying artifact catalog (n.d.) curated in the University of Pennsylvania Museum Archives. A large and fairly detailed map of Natchez, Mississippi, show­ing many of the mound groups with which he was familiar, is also held by the Museum (Fig. 3).

    According to Dickeson’s notes, he spent seven years in “investigation of the Southern Mound Builders relics in which upward of one thousand tumuli of that long lost and unhistori­cal people were opened” (1848 : 1). Although he was an archaeological pioneer and might even be described as an archaeological visionary, his reported numbers are often contradictory and may well be exaggerated. For instance, the num­ber of mounds investigated is open to debate. As noted above, one source claims more than one thousand; his best-known publication, the American Numismatic Manual, claims “ten hun­dred and forty three” mounds (1859:44); and his artifact catalog lists closer to 40 mound groups. While these discrepancies are rather spectacular, there is no question that the hyperbole-prone doctor was actively excavating prehistoric earthworks.

    Dickeson- Archaeologist or Antiquarian?

    cross_sectioned_mound
    Figure 4. An unidentified mound in Louisiana or Mississippi cross-sectioned. From Dickeson’s notes, drawn ca. 1843. Each stratigraphic layer is individually described. UPM neg. S4-141982

    Dickeson was active in an era when there was a resurgence of interest in the ancient past. In northern Europe, by the 18th century, the grand tour had become the capstone of many young gentlemen’s education. The ideas and musings on classical civilization and architecture they brought home from Greece and Rome, as well as the sculptures and other antiquities they decamped with, helped shape architectural design, clothing fashions, and political thought on both sides of the Atlantic. Archaeological excavations at Pom­peii had begun in 1738 and have continued unabated to the present day. Goethe, who visited the site in 1787, stated, “Many a calamity has happened in the world, but never one that has caused so much entertainment to posterity” (quoted in Bahn 1996:59). The past was much on the minds of intellectuals in the early 19th century.

    Although Dickeson was clearly influenced by the romantic movement, he differed from con­temporary antiquarians: he hoped to address spe­cific questions about the societal evolution and history of prehistoric people. The following pas­sage highlights both his romantic sensibilities and his feelings on the importance of archaeology:

    the beautiful frescoes of Herculaneum and Pompeii, around them time has indeed flung the silvery mantle of old while he has swept them with decay; but their years may be enumerated; and their circumstances, their authors and the purpose of their origins, together with the incidents of their ruin are chiseled on history’s pages for coming ages. But who shall tell the era of the origin of these venerable earth heaps!—the race of their builders, the purpose of their erection, the thousand circum­stances attending their rise, history, and desertion—why now so lonely and deso­late? (Dickeson 1848:4)

    Dickeson clearly separates the earthen mounds of the Americas from classical ruins. The for­mer, as he notes, are much more enigmatic and cannot be tied to historical records as can Greek and Roman ruins.

    egan_panorama_section
    Figure 5. Section from Egan’s panorama showing the 1843 excavation of a mound on the plantation of william Feriday, Concordia Parish, Louisiana. Dickeson, always the showman, appears twice in the painting; once on the left sketching the mound, and again in the center taking notes.

    Dickeson carried out extensive excavations in an effort to solve the questions he posed. His techniques were fairly sophisticated for the time. Like Jefferson before him, he advocated using trenches to section mounds, a technique that would remain popular well into the 20th cen­tury. More importantly, he took detailed notes on stratigraphy. At a time when many archaeolo­gists saw soil as an impediment to be removed, Dickeson was aware of the importance of soil lay­ers for interpreting the development of sites.

    One of the most interesting documents found among his papers is a cross-section of an uniden­tified mound in Louisiana or Mississippi, with the various layers of soil carefully delineated and described, along with accompanying artifacts (Fig. 4.). A painting done from Dickeson field notes showing a mound with distinct soil strata (Fig. 5) is a common illustration in archaeological texts.

    Although his notes are not detailed enough to let us know whether he excavated stratigraphically or simply recognized the importance of strata, his excavations nonetheless predate by some fifty years those of the recognized progenitors of American stratigraphic excavations—W.H. Dail, Max Uhle, and Alfred Kidder. In terms of artifacts, Dickeson had wide-ranging interests. He collected pottery, stone tools, historic artifacts, human skeletal remains, and fossils (Figs. 6 and 7; also see Fig. to). Unlike many of his contemporaries, he noted the waste flakes or debitage generated during the manufacture of stone tools.

    Frequently we found a great pile of their chippings among which we find a number of similar pieces and not a single piece that has been finished. This fact led us to suppose that at this place they were chipped into this primitive form, and then by other parties advanced further to the secondary stage, and by more delicate hands finished. (Dickeson 1848 45)

    This passage is also noteworthy because it details the stages of stone tool manufacture. Although Dickeson may have been incorrect in assigning the chippings to different workers, his idea that the tools went through several stages of manufac­ture is shared by modern scholars.

    The Mound Builders

    dinosaur_bones_sulfur_springs
    Figure 8. Discovery of Dinosaur Bones at Sulfur Springs, 1839. This frame from the panorama shows one of the instances in which Dickeson and his assistants excavated the bones of an extinct animal. From John Egan, Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley. Reproduced by permission of the St. Louis Museum of Art.

    As previously noted, Dickeson was active at the height of the mound builder controversy. How did he participate? When describing arti­facts, he made repeated references to the Egyp­tians. Greeks, and Romans. In most cases, he did not argue explicitly for transatlantic contact; he simply noted similarities between artifacts. If anything, his writings can be seen as highlighting the accomplishments of Native Americans. not belittling them. Furthermore, he used his obser­vations of Native Americans to provide analogies for the prehistoric features he was uncovering. “The history of our American Aborigines we fear is a sealed book and all that we can judge from at present is analogy” (Dickeson 1848:191).

    His writings do allude to one dubious aspect of the mound builder controversy. A facet of the myth that had grown up around these people concerned their supposedly gigantic stat­ure (Silverberg 1968). On occasion Dickeson made reference to large skeletons in the mounds he excavated, statements which could be con­strued as reflecting the myth. He also referred to the people who constructed the mounds as a lost and forgotten race. This, however, does not necessarily mean that he perceived them as phys­ically different from other Native Americans, just culturally different. Many English writers of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries considered their Scottish, Irish, and Welsh neighbors a dif­ferent “race.” Dickeson apparently did not sub­scribe to the idea that later “savage tribes” had decimated the mound builders, an idea that was popular with apologists for national expansion.

    anthropomorphic_tobacco_pipe
    Figure 7. A large anthropomorphic tobacco pipe, carved of sandstone in the form of a warrior holding a pipe bowl. Dickeson excavated it at the Ferguson Mounds in Jefferson County, Mississippi. In 1905, a very similar pipe was excavated by Clarence B. Moore at the late Mississippian site of Moundville (ca. AD 1200-1500), near Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Museum Object Number: 14328, Neg. S8-41147

    sandstone_tobacco_pipe
    Figure 6. On one of his collecting expeditions Dickeson attempted to purchase a highly unusual Native American tobacco pipe carved out of fine-grained sandstone. The owner would not part with it, however, and Dickeson had this curious reproduction made in plaster. Museum Object Number: 14308 Neg. T35-2175

    If this had been the case, then historic Native American populations were as much usurpers on these coveted lands as the colonists. Instead, Dickeson felt that war. disease, and famine had probably led to the demise of the prehistoric societies (1848).

    Today, with better excavation and particu­larly more accurate dating techniques, archae­ologists recognize that the mounds reflect not one, but several distinct prehistoric cultural tra­ditions stretching from roughly 2000 BC to AD 1500. They include the Aden a and Hopewell mortuary complexes, as well as the widespread Mississippian culture. Some of the mounds served as burial sepulchers, while many sup­ported temples and still others may have had astronomical functions.

    Mastodons

    One of Dickeson’s excavations clearly dealt with an occupation predating the mound builders. Excavating near Natchez, Dickeson uncovered a fossilized human pelvis in a stratum of clay under­lying the bones of several extinct animals (Fig. 8). The find, which was subsequently known as the Natchez Pelvis, seemed to indicate the great antiquity of human occupation in the New World. Scientists from as far afield as Great Britain visited the site where it was found. Sir Charles Lyell, the father of modern geology, was not convinced by what he saw (Lyell 1873:108). However, later scholars who reexamined the bones concluded that the pelvis and the associated fossils were “substan­tially oft he same antiquity” (Wilson 1895:725).

    In 1926 and 1927, excavations at Clovis, New Mexico, carried out under Jesse Figgens, director of the Colorado Museum of Natural History, recovered fluted spear points in association with extinct bison bones. These finds posthumously vindicated Dickeson belief in the contempora­neity of prehistoric people and the long-extinct animals of the Pleistocene.

    Dickeson The Professor

    By 1848 Dickeson was back in Philadelphia and seems to have stopped excavating archaeo­logical sites. Perhaps he had generated such a backlog of artifacts that there was no point in excavating more. According to his brother Wil­liam, “At the old home of his parents, No. 211 Lombard St., the upper story and garret was stuffed with the treasures from the mounds from time to time sent home from his explorations” (W. Dikeson 1899:4.).

    dickeson_lecture_series
    Figure 9. Handbill advertisement for Dr. Dickeson’s lecture series, ca. 1850. On file at and reproduced courtesy of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia
     

    During this time, Montroville returned to his work as a physician and gained a reputation for successful treatments during the cholera epidemics which swept the city in 1848 and 1850 (W. Dickeson 1899). Although no longer actively excavating, he remained deeply interested in archaeology. He commissioned an enormous painting, known as “The Mississippi [or Egan] Panorama,” depicting his excavations and some of the more spectacular sites he had visited. John Egan, an itinerant Irish artist, made the painting from Dickeson Field notes (Veit 1997). Some scenes, such as the opening of a mound on the Feriday Plantation in Louisiana, are quite detailed (see Fig. 5). At the time, panoramas were a popular form of entertainment; they provided a way of recording and sharing particularly inter­esting journeys or dramatic events. While a half dozen panoramas of the Mississippi were painted between 1845 and 1850, Dickeson’s “The Missis­sippi Panorama” is the only one which survives (collections of the St. Louis Museum of Art: see City Art Museum of St. Louis 1949).

    Dickeson also wrote about and lectured on his excavations (Fig. 9). His collection was dis­played at the City Museum in Philadelphia, where he was designated the “Professor of Natu rail Sciences.” Later the artifacts were displayed at the Swain Building, also in Philadelphia, and eventually at the Centennial Exposition in the same city (Fig. 10). They would remain on dis­play in the Exposition’s Memorial Hall from 1876 to 1885 (Mason 1942).

    In 1882, following a short illness, Montroville Dickeson died. No obituary notices from Philadelphia newspapers have been found. Two of his sisters inherited the collection, which was-sold in 1899 by his brother William to Stewart Cumin, Director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum. It was an important acquisition and Culin published a description of it in 1900. Since then it has seen only sporadic study and Dickeson himself has lapsed into archaeological obscurity. In 1953. the Mississippi Panorama was transferred to the St. Louis Museum of Art, but the rest of the collection remains at the Univer­sity of Pennsylvania.

    The Invisible Archaeologist

    dickeson_collection_centennial_exposition
    Figure 10. Part of Dickeson’s extensive collection on display in Memorial Hall, Philadelphia, at the 1876 Centennial Exposition. UPM neg. S4-142053.

    Despite amassing an incredible collection of thousands of artifacts, providing above-average documentation on his excavations, and lecturing widely, Dickeson has been forgotten. Why? His contemporaries Ephraim Squire and Edwin Davis had summed up their research in Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, (Smithsonian Institution 1848), a well-illustrated monograph that remains widely read today. Dickeson, however, only published his findings locally in serialized form. His one well-known publication, The Ameri­can Numismatic Manual, is full of conjectures and surmises, particularly regarding Native Ameri­cans’ use of stone, clay, and metal tokens as money. It stands in stark contrast with his thoughtful private notebook. He was fond of exaggeration; in fact, at times he seems more showman than scientist. Several of the items in his collection may be frauds, including a galena crystal inscribed with an ankh, the ancient Egyp­tian sign for life (Fig. II). One must recognize. however, that in the museum field Dickeson was competing with the likes of P.T. Barnum. then the theatrical proprietor of the American Museum in New York City. Dickeson exaggerations seem tame in comparison with Barnum’s famous hokum.

    Conclusions

    numismatic_manual
    Figure 11. Plate IV from Dickeson’s American Numismatic Manual (1859). The artifacts shown here were described as coins and tokens of the NAtive Americans. Note particularly item no. 11, an ankh-inscribed galena crystal. In retrospect, it is unlikely that these artifacts were used as currency. In fact, several of them, including the crystal, may be frauds passed off on the unsuspecting Dickeson. Courtesy of Annenberg Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania.

    Montroville Dickeson was an innovative and skillful early archaeologist, who recognized and described stratigraphy, noted the stages of stone tool manufacture, and used ethnographic analo­gies to interpret his sites. His work contributed to the debates on when people initially arrived in the New World. their possible contemporane­ity with extinct animals such as mastodons, and the origins and final fate of the mound builders. Many of his hypotheses were right: the first Native American pioneers did arrive in the New World at a time when it was populated by several species of large mammals (known collectively as Pleistocene megafauna), many of which would subsequently become extinct. And yes. later NativeAmericans were responsible for building the earthworks which dotted the central and southeastern portion of the country.

    About his brother’s work William Dickeson wrote:

    In forming [his] collection he was ani­mated not by an eye for curios—he looked upon antique objects with the eyes of a scholar and the knowledge of a scientist, and in their aggregation deduced many lessons of value to himself and those who came after him, as illustrating the manners and customs of ancient peoples. (1899:5)

    His collection and papers, as well as other collec­tions acquired by the University of Pennsylvania Museum in its earlier days, still have much to offer researchers. In the case of Dickeson, they also illustrate the story of one of the more inter­esting characters in archaeology’s family tree.

    Cite This Article

    Veit, Richard. “Mastodons, Mound Builders, and Montroville Wilson Dickeson–Pioneering American Archaeologist.” Expedition Magazine 41, no. 3 (November, 1999): -. Accessed September 27, 2024. https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/mastodons-mound-builders-and-montroville-wilson-dickeson-pioneering-american-archaeologist/

    Originally Published in 1999 VIEW PDF

  • Ancient Race of White Giants Described in Native Legends

    Ancient Race of White Giants Described in Native Legends

    In my opinion the following two articles are possible verification of my thesis that the Jaredites landed near Seattle Washington. From Seattle the Jaredites who did have the Priesthood among them as they had the Adamic language, consisted of the mixed lineages of Ham, Shem and Japeth from the Tower of Babel, likely migrated west, north and south accordingly.

    I also believe the Nephites with Lehi landed near Florida where the historical Hopewell Culture began in 600 bc. The Hopewell culture also ended abruptly in NY at about 400 ad. Sound familiar? I believe the Nephites are the Hopewell and the Jaredites are the Adena or Archaic people.

    To see more about the Nephites landing in florida see my blog here: https://bookofmormonevidence.org/lehis-first-landing-hopewells-first-beginning-not-a-coincidence/

    Shem (Priesthood Lineage) migrated principally west on the Columbia, Missouri and Ohio rivers to be a logical descendents of the Jaredites whose lives ended at Ramah or Cumorah in NY.

    Japeth (Asian Lineage) likely migrated north from Seatle into northern Canada and Alaska and then into more central Canada:

    Ham (Egyption and African Lineage) likely mirgrated south of Seattle and they were the leaneage of the Olmecs (1500 BC), the Atecs and Incas and Mayans.

    To read more, see my blog and video here> bookofmormonevidence.org/jaredites.


    Ancient Race of White Giants Described in Native Legends From Many Tribes

    By Tara MacIsaac, Epoch Times

    Several Native American tribes have passed down legends of a race of white giants who were wiped out. We’ll take a look at a few such legends, including those among the Choctaw and the Comanches of the United States down to the Manta of Peru.

    Choctaw

    Horatio Bardwell Cushman wrote in his 1899 book “History of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Natchez Indians”: “The tradition of the Choctaws . . . told of a race of giants that once inhabited the now State of Tennessee, and with whom their ancestors fought when they arrived in Mississippi in their migration from the west. … Their tradition states the Nahullo (race of giants) was of wonderful stature.”

    A Choctaw stick-ball player, depicted by George Catlin in 1834.

    A Choctaw stick-ball player, depicted by George Catlin in 1834. (Public Domain)

    Cushman said “Nahullo” came to be used to describe all white people, but it originally referred specifically to a giant white race with whom the Choctaw came into contact when they first crossed the Mississippi River. The Nahullo were said to be cannibals whom the Choctaw killed whenever the opportunity arose.

    Comanches

    Chief Rolling Thunder of the Comanches, a tribe from the Great Plains, gave the following account of an ancient race of white giants in 1857: “Innumerable moons ago, a race of white men, 10 feet high, and far more rich and powerful than any white people now living, here inhabited a large range of country, extending from the rising to the setting sun. Their fortifications crowned the summits of the mountains, protecting their populous cities situated in the intervening valleys.

    https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/ancient-race-white-giants-described-native-legends-many-tribes-005774

    Choctaw Traditions – The Council Fire, The Nahullo
    https://accessgenealogy.com/alabama/choctaw-traditions-council-fire-nahullo.htm

    The faces of the Choctaw and Chickasaw men of sixty years ago were as smooth as a woman’s, in fact they had no beard. Sometimes there might be seen a few tine hairs (if hairs they might be called) here and there upon the face, but they were few and far between, and extracted with a pair of small tweezers whenever discovered. Oft have I seen a Choctaw warrior standing before a mirror seeking with untiring perseverance and unwearied eyes, as he turned his face at different angles to the glass, if by chance a hair could be found lurking there, which, if discovered, was instantly removed as an unwelcome intruder. Even today, a full blood Choctaw or Chickasaw with a heavy beard is never seen. I have seen a few, here and there, with a little patch of beard upon their chins, but it was thin and short, and with good reasons to suspect that white blood flowed in their veins.

    It is a truth but little known among the whites, that the North American Indians of untarnished blood have no hair upon any part of the body except the head. My knowledge of this peculiarity was confined, however, to the Choctaws and Chickasaws alone. But in conversation with an aged Choctaw friend upon this subject, and inquiring” if this peculiarity extended to all Indians, he replied; “To all, I believe. I have been among the Comanche’sKiowa’s and other western Indians, and have often seen them bathing, men and women, promiscuously together, in the rivers of their country, and found it was the same with them, their heads alone were adorned with hair.”

    In conversation soon after with a Creek friend upon the subject in regard to the full-blood Creeks, he said, “They have no hair whatever upon the body, except that of the head, and the same is the case with all full-bloods that I have seen of other tribes.” It is also the testimony of all the early explorers of this continent.

    The Council of Fire

    Choctaw Village near the Chefuncte, The women appear to be making dye to color the strips of cane beside them, by François Bernard, 1869
    Choctaw Village near the Chefuncte, The women appear to be making dye to color the strips of cane beside them, by François Bernard, 1869

    In their ancient councils and great national assemblies, the Choctaws always observed the utmost order arid decorum, which, however, is universally characteristic of the Indians everywhere. In those grave and imposing deliberations of years ago convened at night, all sat on the ground in a circle around a blazing fire called “The Council Fire.” The aged, who from decrepitude had long retired from the scenes of active life, the war-path and the chase, formed the inner circle; the middle aged warriors, the next and the young warriors, the outer circle. The women and children were always excluded from all their national assemblies. The old men, beginning with the oldest patriarch, would then in regular succession state to the attentive audience all that had been told them by their fathers, and what they themselves had learned in the experience of an eventful life the past history of their nation; their vicissitudes and changes; what difficulties they had encountered, and how overcome; their various successes in war and their defeats; the character and kind of enemies whom they had defeated and by whom they had been defeated, the mighty deeds of their renowned chiefs and famous warriors in days past, together with their own achievements both in war and the chase; their nation’s days of prosperity and adversity; in short; all of their traditions and legends handed down to them through: the successive generations of ages past; and when those old seers and patriarchs, oracles of the past, had in their turn gone to dwell with their fathers in the Spirit Land, and their voices were no longer heard in wise counsel, the next oldest occupied the chairs of state, and in turn rehearsed to their young braves the traditions of the past, as related to them by the former sages of their tribe, together with their own knowledge; and thus were handed down through a long line of successive generations, and with much accuracy and truth, the events of their past history; and when we consider the extent to which all Indians cultivated that one faculty, memory, their connections in the history of the past is not so astonishing. I will here relate a little incident (frequently published) in the life of the famous Indian chief, Red Jacket, as an evidence of strength and correctness of the Indian s memory. It is said of Red Jacket, that he never forgot any thing he once learned. On a certain occasion, a dispute arose in a council with his tribe and the whites, concerning the stipulations made and agreed upon in a certain treaty. “You have forgotten,” said the agent, “we have it written on paper.” “The paper then tells a lie,” replied Red Jacket. “I have it written down here,” he added, placing his hand with great dignity on his brow. “This is the book the Great Spirit has given the Indian; it does not lie.” A reference was immediately made to the treaty in question, when, to the astonishment of all present, the document confirmed every word the unlettered warrior and statesman had uttered. There can be little doubt but that a large majority of their traditions are based upon truth; though passing as they have through so long a period of time, it is reasonable to suppose that many errors have crept in.

    But one has given his opinion, on page 92 of his “History of the Indian Tribes of North America,” in the following positive and presumptuous assertion, though his apparent ignorance of all the characteristics (well known to the thousands of the White Race who have lived among them and studied them a long life-time) of the North American Indians so plainly manifested throughout his entire work, entitles his assumed learned opinion regarding the truth or untruth of the traditions of the North American Indians, or anything else concerning that people, to but little, if any, credit. He boldly asserts, with a seemingly great indifference as regards its truth, that “Nothing can be more uncertain, and more unworthy, we will not say of credit, but of consideration, than their (the Indians) earlier traditions; and probably there is not a single fact in all their history, supported by satisfactory evidence, which occurred half a century previous to the establishment of the Europeans.” Though all admit that the voices of tradition coming from all Nations even from our own ancestors, the Britons are enshrouded, to a greater or less extent, in dense and dubious fogs, and become more dim and distant as we go further back into the past. Yet that does not necessarily bring even the traditions of the North American Indians under his edict, “Nothing can be more uncertain, and more unworthy, we will not say of credit, but of consideration, than their traditions, “as here comes to our aid modern Oriental Discovery, with records engraved on rocks and stamped on bricks records contemporary with the events, and in all cases independent of the modern authority since the records have been hidden from the eyes of both the believer and disbeliever. Inscriptions are disclosed, in languages now dead, in characters long-forgotten, and to which every key had been apparently lost. Ancient cities and countries, Thebes, Ninevah, Pompeii, Balbee, Babylon, Jerusalem and Egypt rise to testify and confirm the credit of many of the traditions, fables and legends of the Old World. And so also, from the buried past of the New World, hundreds of witnesses have already been summoned, and are still being summoned, that confirm the credit of the traditions and legends of the North American Indians, and to which they pointed back through the long vista of ages past, ere the Indians were known to the White Race, and give the merited contradiction to the assertion that their traditions “merit not even consideration.”

    Mammoths & Nahullo

    Mastodon
    As the climate warmed during the last part of the Ice Age, large mammal such as the Mastodon migrated into the Shenandoah Valley. Source: VR image by Richard Thornton

    An ancient Choctaw tradition attributes the origin of the prairies along the western banks of the Tombigbee River, to some huge animals (mammoths) that existed there at the advent of their ancestors from the west to Mississippi. Their tradition also states that the Nahullo, (Supernatural) a race of giant people, also inhabited the same country, with whom their forefathers oft came in hostile contact. These mighty animals broke off the low limbs of the trees in eating the leaves, and also gnawed the bark off the trees, which, in the course of time, caused them to wither and die; that they roamed in different bands, which engaged in desperate battles whenever and wherever they met, and thus caused them to rapidly decrease in numbers; and that, in the course of years all had perished but two large males, who, separate and alone, wandered about for several years each confining himself to the solitude of the forest many miles from the other. Finally, in their wanderings they met, and at once engaged in terrible conflict in which one was killed. The survivor, now monarch of the forests, strolled about for a few years wrapped in the solitude of his own reflections and independence then died, and with him the race became extinct.

    That the Choctaw traditions of both the mammoth and great men, was based on truth as to their former existence in the southern and western parts of this continent is satisfactorily established by the many mammoth skeletons of both men and beasts and fragments of huge bones that have been, and are continually being found in different parts of the country, and all of whom, according to their tradition were contemporary with the ancient fathers of the present Indian race. It is well known that the ancient existence of those giants and mammoth was wholly unknown to the White Race, until the excavation of their bones proved their former existence; yet were known to the Indians to have existed and so declared; but which was regarded by the whites as only an Indian fable, unworthy of belief or even a second thought. A huge skeleton of one of those ancient animals was found in March 1877, four miles east of the town of Greenville, Hunt County, Texas. I secured a fragment of the skeleton, evidently a part of the femoral bone, which measured twenty-one inches in circumference. A tooth measured three inches in width, five inches in length along the surface of the jawbone and five inches in depth into the jaw, and weighed the seemingly incredible weight of eleven pounds. The teeth proved the monster herbaceous, the animal of which was in a perfect state of preservation. The greater part of the frame crumbled to dust, as soon as exposed to the action of the air.

    Here then it had found a burial place, among others of the prehistoric population of the various animals which held possession of this continent before, perhaps, the advent of man, rising up before us like some old granite dome, weather-beaten and darkened by the lapse of ages past. But death came to it, as to its predecessors, whose cemeteries time has opened here and there, and revealed to the scrutiny of the curious, the testimony of vanished age. Many citizens of the immediate neighborhood visited the place of disinterment, and viewed the solitary grave and looked with wondering interest upon this stranger of hoary antiquity arising from his forest tomb where he has so long slept in silence, unknown and unsung; whose history, as that of his mighty race, is wrapped in the eternal silence of the unknown past. Yet, to one who seeks to muse over the mysteries of the unwritten long ago, this fossil tells a story of the mystic days of yore and of the multiplied thousands of years since old Mother Earth commenced to bear and then destroy her children.

    Ah, could the records of the ages to which they point be restored, how many doubts and problems would be solved? But they only tantalize us by their near approach and undiminished inscrutableness, while imagination shrinks from the contemplation of the intervening years between. Yet, from those relics of the ages past, an unlimited field for the imagination is open to view, which many thinkers have attempted to explore only to find themselves utterly lost.

    “Hupimmi hattak tikba a mintih hushi aiokatula” (our, forefathers came from the west), declare the ancient Choctaws through their tradition, and they saw the mighty beasts of the forests, whose tread shook the earth; but our forefathers ancestry came from the northwest beyond the big water.”

    “Tis but the tradition of the ignorant Indian a foolish fable,” responded he of the pale-face, of boasted historical attainments when lo! Accident unearths the long hidden monster of traditional record, and the truth of the rejected declaration of the despised Indian is established, and with equal truth establishing the fact that, mid all our boasted ancient pedigree, theirs is more ancient, and perhaps more honorable, reaching back through the vista of pre-historic times to the” dim and hazy regions of ages past and unknown.

    Also of the tradition of the Choctaws which told of a race of giants that once inhabited the now State of Tennessee, and with whom their ancestors fought when they arrived in Mississippi in their migration from the west, doubtless Old Mexico. Their tradition states the Nahullo (race of giants) was of wonderful stature; but, as their tradition of the mastodon, so this was also considered to be but a foolish fable, the creature of a wild imagination, when lo! Their exhumed bones again prove the truth of the Choctaws tradition. In the fall of 1880, Mr. William Bevtrly, an old gentle man 84 years of age living near Piano, Collin County, Texas, and who was born in west Tennessee and there live d to man hood, stated to me that near his father’s house on a small creek were twenty-one mounds in consecutive order forming a crescent, each distant from the other about fifty feet and each with a base of seventy-five or eighty feet in diameter, and rising to an average height of forty feet; that he, when a boy twelve years of age, was present with his father, when an excavation was made in one of the mound in which human bones of enormous size were found, the femoral bones being five inches longer than the ordinary length, and the jaw bones were so large as to slip over the face of a man with ease. This statement was confirmed by Rev. Mr. Rudolph of McKinney, Texas, and several others, all men of undoubted veracity, which places the truth of the former existence of the mounds, their excavations and results, as well as the Choctaw tradition, beyond all doubt and even controversy.

    In regard to the race of giants that once occupied the now State of Tennessee and mentioned in the tradition of the ancient Choctaws, Mr. H. S. Halbert, an esteemed friend, says in a letter to me, January 22, 1878, “I will give you some facts which modern researches have thrown upon the ancient occupancy of this continent, on the Atlantic seaboard of the United States stretching from the coast of North Carolina up to and through New England. I refer particularly to the seaboard .

    “I am satisfied that the Indian race were in occupancy of this seaboard region only about 200 years before the discovery of America in 1492, I give the reasons:

    About the year 1000, A. D. (I quote the date from memory, not having the authorities before me) the Northmen discovered America and made some settlements on the New England coast. All this, as you know, is historical. The Northmen there came in contact with a people whom they called Skrellings. Now these Skrellings, from the description given by them were not Indians, but Esquimaux. They were the same kind of people the Northmen had previously met in Greenland and whom they called also Skrellings, or rather Skraellinger. This is plain proof that 500 years before Columbus, the Esquimaux race inhabited the seaboard of New England and not the Indians.

    “Again, the Tuscarora Indians, now living in Canada, but formerly from North Carolina, state in their traditions that they came from the west and settled on the North Carolina seaboard about the year A. D. 1300. Their traditions also state that they came in contact with a people of short stature, ignorant of maize and eaters of raw flesh.

    “Now to whom does this description apply but to the Esquimaux? Thirdly, relics have been discovered implements of various kinds, along the seaboard exactly similar to those used by the Esquimaux of the present day. All this is plain proof to my mind, that the Esquimaux once inhabited the Atlantic seaboard as far south as North Carolina, and that they were pushed northward by the influx of the incoming Indian tribes; and that- the Indian had not been settled but for comparatively a short period in this seaboard at the time of Columbus discovery. The Mound Builders seemed to have never occupied this seaboard stretching from North Carolina upward. Now as to the Delaware tradition.

    “The Delawares, or Leni Lenape as they style themselves in their native tongue, have a tradition that they came from the west. When they came to the Great River, perhaps, somewhere in the latitude of St. Louis, they found a people of tall stature, and living in towns. This people the Delawares called Allegewi. They asked the Allegewi for permission to cross the river, which was granted. The Allegewi, however, seeing the Indians constantly coming from the west in such large numbers, and fearing they would ultimately dispossess them of their country, commenced war upon them. After years of fighting, the Allegewi were defeated and driven out of their country retreating southward, and the Delawares and other tribes took possession of their country. Now these Allegewi are without doubt the same stock of people spoken of in Choctaw tradition as the Nahoolo.”

    The word Nahoolo is a corruption of the Choctaw word Nahullo and is now applied to the entire White Race, but anciently it referred to a giant race with which they came in contact when they first crossed the Mississippi river. These giants, says their tradition, as related to the missionaries occupied the northern part of the now States of Mississippi and Alabama and the western part of Tennessee. The true signification of the word Nahullo is a superhuman or super natural being, and the true words for white man are Hattak-tohbi. The Nahullo were of white complexion, according to Choctaw tradition, and were still an existing people at the time of the advent of the Choctaws to Mississippi; that they were a hunting people and also cannibals, who killed and ate the Indians whenever they could capture them, consequently the Nahullo were held in great dread by the Indians and were killed by them whenever an opportunity was presented; by what means they finally became extinct, tradition is silent.

    “Chemical analysis of the bones of this giant race in Tennessee and elsewhere,” says Mr. H. S. Halbert, in a letter of January 3rd, 1878, “indicate the ravages of one of the most terrible diseases to which flesh is heir. Bones exhumed from these ancient cemeteries indicate with painful certainty that syphilis was, at least, one cause of the extinct ion of this ancient people. 1 It was long supposed that syphilis was imported into this continent by the European race. That may have been the case, in the historical period, but I have no doubt it prevailed with awful fatality among that ancient people, who -dominated a large portion of this continent before the advent of the Indian race.

    “Mr. Grant Lincicum, (Dr. Gideon Lincicum, with whom I was personally acquainted, was an educated white man, who came to the Choctaw Nation after the advent of the missionaries, and settled at Columbus, then a small place, and afterwards wrote a MS. of the Choctaw habits, customs, traditions and legends, which has been lost)” stated that they (the Mound Builders) were, according to the Choctaw tradition, a hunting-people. He certainly must be in error on this point. (Not so; Lincicum used the pronoun “they” with reference to the Nahullo, and not to the Mound Builders, of whom their traditions never spoke). Now I believe that the Mound Builders were of much fairer complexion than the Indian, perhaps almost, if not quite, as fair as we, and were an agricultural people also. Disease and war no doubt were the main causes of their extinction. Detached off shoots of them may have amalgamated with the Indian tribes, and thus lost their physical peculiarities, but at the same time kept up with their tribal organization. The Mandan Indians (now extinct) are supposed to have been a degenerate and amalgamated offshoot of the Mound Builders. In their manners and customs they were strikingly different from the other Indians. I have no doubt but the researches of antiquarians in some manner, to us yet unknown, will throw much light upon the early occupants of this continent.”

    Be that as it may, I still believe in the Choctaw traditions that the Nahulio who inhabited North Mississippi and Alabama, and West Tennessee, were “a hunting people,” as they have left no trace whatever of having been agriculturists, ad the unbroken forests of majestic trees of ages growth, that covered the land everywhere at the advent the of the Europeans, evidently prove.

    Still I admit, with friend Halbert, that, possibly the Allegewi of Delaware tradition may be the Nahulio of Choctaw tradition, if they were of white complexion, as the word Nahulio is emphatically applied to the white race and no other. If white, may they not be of the Northmen, who, it is said, established a few colonies upon the Atlantic coast A. D. 1000?” Then, if the North American Indians are not the Mound builders, (which has not yet been satisfactorily proved) may not the Northmen be?

    Some have believed that the Nahulio were the Carib Indians, as they were said to be of gigantic stature and also cannibals, and who once inhabited our Gulf coast. They were found by Columbus in the West Indies, and they are still found in the isles of the Caribbean Sea and Venezuela. The early French writers of Louisiana called the Caribs by their Indian name Attakapas, and Attakapas Parish in Louisiana took its name from that tribe. The French translated Attakapas, Man-eater. Attakapas is a corruption of the Choctaw words Hattakapa, (man eatable) which they (the French), no doubt, got from the Choctows, who gave the tribe that name. I am inclined to believe that the Nahulio of the Choctaw tradition were not regular cannibals, but that they sacrificed human victims in their religious ceremonies, which in extreme cases may, perhaps, have required their officiates to eat a portion also of the victim’s flesh. The same also of the Caribs, hence Hattakapa, (man eatable) instead of Hattakupa, eater.

  • 4-Rivers of Eden are the Rivers of the Nephites

    4-Rivers of Eden are the Rivers of the Nephites

    4-Main US Rivers:
    Lower Mississippi, Upper Mississippi, Ohio/Allegheny, Missouri.

    “Mississippi can be translated as “Father of Waters”

    The Ohio River begins at Pittsburg as the Allegheny River flows south from Gold, PA to the Ohio. The Missouri has a confluence with the Mississippi near St Louis, MO

    There are actually two main rivers in North America that probably are the 4 rivers of the Garden of Eden. What do I mean?

    “Temporarily, we call it America. But it began with the single, primeval continent of Genesis, and the miracle of millennial healing will bring that unity again.” A Promised Land by Jeffrey R. Holland June 1976 Ensign

    ”And Enos lived ninety years, and begat Cainan. And Enos and the residue of the people of God came out from the land, which was called Shulon, and dwelt in a land of promise, which he called after his own son, whom he had named Cainan.” Moses 6:17

    This is a 2D version of the Earth not the real version which would be round.

    The First land of Promise was right where Adam was placed, the Garden of Eden in the area of Missouri. Back then the land was whole and not broken apart and the Ocean was surrounding the earth. As you can see in the map above, the distance from what we call Missouri to what we call today of Jerusalem is much shorter of a distance than with the Atlantic ocean between them.

    The [False, in my opinion] Historical Location of the Garden of Eden below.

    Where do historical researchers say the Garden of Eden is located?

    The Garden of Eden is the first location mentioned in the Bible (Genesis 2), and is the backdrop for one of the most iconic histories of the Bible: The lives of Adam and Eve and their fall from grace. Whether or not you believe this to be true history or a purely symbolic or legendary account, it seems undeniable that the Bible itself treats the Garden as a real place.

    The Garden is said to have been located in the land called Eden, which was in the East. The Bible names four rivers that watered the garden known as the Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates (Genesis 2:10-14), the other lands that these rivers flowed to and even what some of those lands were famous for. This Garden in Eden had a real location. So where is it?

    “A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters.”

    GENESIS 2:10
    There are two basic ways that interpreters have dealt with these physical descriptors:

    “The first takes the text seriously and uses the Tigris and Euphrates rivers today as a place to begin. These rivers maintain their ancient names, and by and large still follow the same course beginning in the mountains of Turkey, joining together in modern Iraq and then emptying into the Persian Gulf. In this scenario the location of Garden of Eden is believed to be in the now flooded northern section of the Persian Gulf. Genesis 2:10 says, “A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters.” This is interpreted as meaning that four rivers joined into one and then that one river flowed through the Garden and emptied into the Gulf. Interestingly there are candidates for the other two rivers.

     
     
    The Gihon is identified with the Dez and Karun rivers that flow through Western Iran and still meet up with the Tigris and Euphrates.[1] Genesis links this Gihon river with the land of Cush, which in this view is tied to the Kassites (it is also noted that Nimrod son of Kush reigned in Mesopotamia in Genesis 10 – so there may have been a few lands named “Cush” in ancient times).[2]

    In 1994 satellite radar images of northern Arabia revealed a long dried river that provides evidence for a possible Pishon river.[3] In Genesis this river Pishon is connected to the land of Havilah, and its abundant gold. This dried up river flowed from western Arabia that had ancient gold connections and may be identifiable as Havilah, it flowed east towards the Tigris and Euphrates whom it joined before flowing into the Persian Gulf.[4]

     
    The second view also takes the text seriously, but interprets Genesis 2 in light of (Genesis 6-8) Noah’s Flood.[5] If the Bible is accurate, and this flood was a global event then the landscape in which the Garden of Eden existed is no more. There’s no real way of telling how much the geography of the world changed. Are mountains, canyons, rivers and gulfs now how they were before the Flood? It is unknown. How then does this theory account for the Tigris and Euphrates still existing? The survivors of the Flood rebuilt, and named their new surroundings after what once was.” Corie Bobechko | January 1, 2020 – 9:33 AM EST

    The
    [False in my opinion] Four Rivers of Eden
    Introduction

    “When we read the book of Genesis we see that there was one river that entered the garden in order to water it, but then, while inside the garden, that river would be split into the heads of four rivers. These four rivers would then leave the garden to water four major places on earth.

    Genesis 2:10-14 (WEB)

    10 A river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it was parted, and became the source of four rivers.

    11 The name of the first is Pishon: it flows through the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;
    12 and the gold of that land is good. Bdellium and onyx stone are also there.
    13 The name of the second river is Gihon. It is the same river that flows through the whole land of Cush.
    14 The name of the third river is Hiddekel. This is the one which flows in front of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates.


    The First shall be Last and the Last shall be First

    The Lord has said, the first shall be last and the last shall be first. It makes sense that our life will begin and end at the same location, and this life also includes the events of the Book of Mormon happening in that same area. This is not a coincidence. The Lord has planned out our existence and life, before, during and after. Missouri is an important place in the Lord’s plans. This is so obvious that those who believe in other geography theories are in a great and spacious building. You just need common sense and the scriptures to determine that as Elder L. Tom Perry said, “The United States is the promised land foretold in the Book of Mormon—a place where divine guidance directed inspired men to create the conditions necessary for the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” Elder L. Tom Perry Ensign Dec. 2012


    When I type in a google search for, Where is the Garden of Eden? This is the first result:

    Mesopotamia

    The Garden of Eden is considered to be mythological by most scholars. [Wow this is how some of the same scholars feel about the Book of Mormon]. Among those who consider it to have been real, there have been various suggestions for its location: at the head of the Persian Gulf, in southern Mesopotamia (now Iraq) where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers run into the sea; and in Armenia.

    Most Bible commentaries state that the site of the Garden of Eden was in the Middle East, situated somewhere near where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers are today. This is to easy as the bible mentions the name Euphrates so I assume most scholars think it must be where that river named Euphrates is located today. We know that is silly to assume as their is Place in Lebanon called Sidon and the same as a River Sidon in the Book of Mormon. Names alone don’t tell location. Did you know there was an ancient of Memphis in Egypt and today there is a city not so ancient named Memphis, TN?

    “The word Nephi may come from the Egyptian city of N-ph, transliterated into Hebrew as Noph, which appears in the Old Testament in several places, and translated into English as Memphis. Actually, Hebrew in Nephi’s day (600 BC) was written without vowels, so it would be nph in Egyptian letters transliterated into nph in Hebrew letters when the Egyptian city we now call Memphis was referred to in the Old Testament.” Smith’s Bible Dictionary

    This is based on the description given in Genesis 2:8–14:The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden. . . . Now a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it parted and became four riverheads. The name of the first is Pishon . . . . The name of the second river is Gihon. . . . The name of the third river is Hiddekel [Tigris].  ;. . . The fourth river is the Euphrates.

    Mississippi 3- River Divisions

    The importance of the Mississippi river in the history of the Native Americans goes without saying. It could be called three different rivers as explained below and it could be the four rivers described in Genesis flowing out of Eden. (More below)

    The Mississippi River can be divided into three sections: the Upper Mississippi, the river from its headwaters to the confluence with the Missouri River; the Middle Mississippi, which is downriver from the Missouri to the Ohio River; and the Lower Mississippi, which flows from the Ohio to the Gulf of Mexico. Source

    Named by Algonkian-speaking Indians, Mississippi can be translated as “Father of Waters.” The river, the largest in North America, drains 31 states and 2 Canadian provinces, and runs 2,350 miles from its source to the Gulf of Mexico. The Mississippi River is truly one of the great forces that has shaped the United States into the country it is today. Although its role has changed over the past few centuries, the Mississippi has always been important to those who lived along its banks.

    Indigenous peoples fished its waters and depended on the waterway for transportation. Explorers and traders traveled the river in hopes of conquering more land and obtaining wealth for their countries. Settlers moved close to take advantage of the rich farmland the river provided. All of these pursuits resulted in a trade industry [Map Below] that brought about a social and economic transformation, when news and goods made their way downriver and livelihoods were provided. In fact, the Mississippi River’s economic and strategic value was so important that when Ulysses S. Grant won the siege of Vicksburg and control of the river during the Civil War, the Confederacy was dealt a serious blow. Today, although still used to transport goods, the river has taken on yet another identity: that of entertainer. Literature, pleasure boats, and floating casinos all showcase a new dimension of this magnificent river. https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/Products/9780738507453

    Give these Four Rivers some thought:
    The Maps below seems logical.

    We know by revelation that the New Jerusalem and Adam-Ondi-Ahman are in Missouri. Before the earth was divided it existed together with no Atlantic Ocean between. It would make sense that if Adam was placed in Missouri that the 4-rivers spoken of in Genesis could be in or near Missouri. See the Map below as it shows the Head of Sidon near St. Louis, MO which very well could be this area in Genesis 2:10 that says, ““And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted and became into four heads.” These four rivers could be any of the ones shown below, Upper Mississippi, Lower Mississippi, Ohio/Allegheny, or the Missouri. It makes a lot of sense. I would rather find commonality in the Land of Missouri where we know by revelation it’s existence of Adam, and we have no idea about Mesopotamia, except by the commonality of the name Euphrates in the Bible and in Iraq today.

    THE MOST MISUNDERSTOOD QUOTE BY MESOAMERICAN THEORISTS-

    Here is the misquoted scripture from Joseph Smith. “You know there has been great discussion in relation to Zion–where it is, and where the gathering of the dispensation is, and which I am now going to tell you. The prophets have spoken and written upon it; but I will make a proclamation that will cover a broader ground. The whole of America is Zion itself from north to south.President Joseph Smith’s Remarks–The Whole of America Zion–April Conference, 1844 Section Six 1843-44, p.362

    Mesoamerican activists actually cite this above quote as evidence that the Book of Mormon took place in Central America. WRONG! The quote above does not mention North, South, or Central at all, but just “America.”

    The United States of America has been and is truly great. It is the Promised Land of the Book of Mormon. Today it is receiving relentless attacks from some very unpatriotic and evil people. We are in a World War 3 cyber battle, and it is time to stand up and applaud the goodness of these United States.

    We know this land will not be possessed by a disobedient people. We have time to save our land, but it is becoming a challenge. Prophets and Apostles have spoken of the Choice Land and the responsibility those of us who are citizens must act with more dignity, respect, honor, faith and righteousness than those living in any other country.

    Not because we are better people, but because far more is expected of us. The penalty for our sin and disobedience will be far greater than those who live in other countries, as more is expected of us. We welcome all into the United States that want to come here legally, and adopt our way of life which is freedom to choose right or wrong and be willing to accept the blessings or the cursings for disobedience. Love our neighbor as ourselves, and above all Love the Lord our God with all our Heart, Might, Mind and Strength.

    Eden, Garden of; LDS Bible Dictionary

    The home of our first parents, Adam and Eve (Gen. 2:8–3:244:16Isa. 51:32 Ne. 2:19–25Moses 3–4Abr. 5), designated as a garden, eastward in Eden. Latter-day revelation confirms the biblical account of the Garden of Eden and adds the important information that it was located on what is now the North American continent. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bd/eden-garden-of?lang=eng

    Missouri is Eden & New Jerusalem

    ”We must remember that the whole earth was paradisaical before the Fall. The Garden of Eden was a center place. After the Fall, there was no Garden of Eden or paradisaical status on earth. Yet relative to the locale of the site of the Garden of Eden, the Prophet Joseph Smith learned through revelation (D&C 57) that Jackson County was the location of a Zion to be and the New Jerusalem to come. The Prophet first visited Jackson County, Missouri, in the summer of 1831. The Prophet visited Jackson County again in April and May 1832. On one of the occasions, or perhaps both, the Prophet Joseph apparently instructed his close associates, and perhaps even a general Church gathering, that the ancient Garden of Eden was also located in Jackson County.” Bruce A. Van Orden, associate professor of Church history, Brigham Young University.

    Heartland and Mesoamericanist Agree! Lehi Left Oman near Khor Kharfot

    “When Lehi landed in the Promised land, it seems he found bounties of all kind, just as Adam and Eve had found in the garden of Eden. It makes sense that Lehi was upon the same land as Adam began his life, the area of the united States of America today.

    Lehi Leaves Jerusalem. Follow the Pink Line to Oman

    Both Mesoamericanists and Heartlanders believe the area of Khor Kharfot, Oman is the most likely place that Lehi came to the Land Bountiful on the Arabian Peninsula. See the list below of necessities this Khor Kharfot area has.

    East on Pacific or West around Africa?

    The place the Mesoamericanists and the Heartlanders disagree is the direction Lehi sailed from Khor Kharfot. Mesoamerican Theory says they traveled east around India and sailed across the great Pacific ocean. Our British Navy Captain Philip Beale of the Phoenicia Expedition says they could have gone the Pacific route, but it would take 18 months and there wouldn’t be any survivors on the ship.

    Here are other reasons why Lehi would have gone around Africa and not towards the Pacific. 

    WHY APALACHICOLA FLORIDA IS PLAUSIBLE FOR THE LAND OF LEHI’S LANDING

    Navigational Evidence: Phoenicia 2009 and 2020 Expedition (Proof its possible to said a 600 BC ship from Oman to Florida). Length of voyage: 4-6 months vs. 14-18 months around the Pacific.
    Time of Year: Leave in Sept or Oct. Land in March or April?
    Archaeology: 500-700 BC Mounds and Relics at Tallahassee Florida. This is the location the Hopewell Civilization began, in Florida according to Historical Facts.
    Bees and Honey: Apalachicola, FL, is one of the only places in the world for Tupelo Honey. Lehi and Jaredites brought Bees and used them in America.
    Similar Latitude: Seeds would grow is similar latitudes of Jerusalem not in Mexico
    30° 26′ 17″ N (Tallahassee, FL)
    30° 04’42” N (Cairo, Egypt)
    31° 46′ 48″ N  (Jerusalem) 
    19° 43’ 26” N (Mexico City)
    15° 30′ 0″ N (Guatemala)
    Mostly Unoccupied Area: 2 Nephi 1:8/Not overrun. Nephi=King. If Nephi was in a highly populated area that had already been established, he would be a foreigner and not a king.
    Wind Currents: Leaving Oman in Sept (honey & fruit ripe), wind currents flow toward horn of Africa. Jan to March wind would be towards India and the Pacific.
    Promised Land: Book of Mormon speaks of a Land of Liberty. (36 others) USA, not Mesoamerica. No kings upon the land, a place of a Marvelous Work etc.
    Abundance of Food: Oman and Florida both called “A” Land Bountiful
    Same Land as Jaredites: [Cumorah and Ramah]
    Food prehistoric people needed: Deer, small mammals, Turtles. Bison, Mammoths, Bear, Elk further north. What to eat in Mesoamerica? Monkeys, Llamas, lizards, Jaguar?
    Signs of Hebrew writing or relics: Bat Creek Stone, Holy Stones, Hebrew Earthworks, Egyptian names of people and places. 
    Access to Rivers: Chattahoochee only river source brings ice into the gulf from Tennessee area. Rivers were the highways of the Nephites, not the jungle rivers.

    The Heartland Theory say they sailed along the east coast of Africa and around the tip of Africa and the currents took Lehi’s ship directly towards Florida in about 3-5 months time.

    Captain Beale of the Phoenicia Expedition in 2009 sailed a replica built Phoenician 600 BC ship in the route above. They got within 400 miles of Florida and could have landed where we feel Lehi did.

    Janne Mattson Sjödahl

    Janne Mattson Sjödahl (29 November 1853 – 23 June 1939) was a Swedish convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and was the author of influential commentaries on LDS Church scriptures. Sjödahl was among the first commentators to advance a “limited geography model” for the theorized geography of the Book of Mormon.

    In 1874, Sjödahl moved to England and enrolled in Spurgeon’s College in London, where he graduated with a degree in divinity in 1876. While in England, Sjödahl mastered English and also specialized in Greek and Hebrew. In addition to knowing Swedish and Norwegian from his childhood, Sjödahl would also master the German, Icelandic, and Arabic languages…

    On 8 June 1886, Sjödahl was excommunicated from the Baptist Church, possibly on charges of adultery.[1] Around the same time, Sjödahl became associated with Ferdinand Friis Hintze, a Danish missionary from the LDS Church. Following his excommunication, Sjödahl travelled to Utah Territory to further investigate Mormonism. On the sea journey, his son Janne Jr. died.

    After arriving in Utah Territory, Sjödahl settled in Sanpete County, where a large number of Scandinavian Latter-day Saints had settled. On 7 October 1886, Sjödahl was baptized into the LDS Church in Manti.

    Life in Manti

    Upon settling in Manti, Sjödahl became the editor of the Manti Sentinel newspaper.

    When the LDS Church’s Manti Utah Temple was completed in May 1888, Sjödahl became the first individual to receive his Endowment in the new temple. On 30 May 1888, Sjödahl and Christina Christofferson were married in the Manti Temple by Apostle Francis M. Lyman; they were the first couple married in the new temple. His second wife died in 1910.

    Church Translator and Missionary

    In 1888, Sjödahl completed a church-approved translation of the LDS Church’s Doctrine and Covenants into Swedish. In 1927, Sjödahl translated the Pearl of Great Price into Swedish, and in 1935 he completed the third revised translation of the Book of Mormon into Swedish.

    Upon the completion of the translation, Sjödahl was asked by church president Wilford Woodruff to go on a mission to Palestine. In January 1889. Sjödahl arrived in Jaffa. He learned to speak Arabic and preached in Palestine for one year, organizing a branch of the church in Jaffa.[3] In January 1890, Sjödahl was asked to go to Bern, Switzerland to complete his mission. He arrived back in Utah Territory in July 1890.

    Newspaper Editor and Publications

    Upon returning to Utah, Sjödahl became employed by the Deseret News newspaper in Salt Lake City. From 1906 to 1914, Sjödahl was the chief editor of the newspaper. In 1914, Sjödahl returned to England and became an editor of the LDS Church’s Millennial Star in Liverpool.

    In 1917, Sjödahl and LDS Church Apsotle Hyrum M. Smith, who was the president of the church’s European Mission, together worked on A Commentary on the Doctrine and Covenants. While Sjödahl wrote most of the text, it was reviewed and approved by Smith. When Doctrine and Covenants Commentary was first published in 1919 in Liverpool, it was a church-approved publication and only Smith was listed as an author. However, subsequent publication of Doctrine and Covenants Commentary have acknowledged Sjödahl as its coauthor. Doctrine and Covenants Commentary is still cited frequently by Latter-day Saint authors and commentators.

    Upon returning to Utah in 1919, Sjödahl became an editor for the church’s Improvement Era magazine, in which he published more than 50 of his own articles. In 1920, Sjödahl worked with George F. Richards and James E. Talmage in revising the footnotes in the Book of Mormon; Sjödahl’s work was incorporated into the LDS Church’s 1920 English edition of that publication. In 1923 and 1924, he assisted Talmage in revising his church-approved book Articles of Faith.

    An Introduction to the Study of the Book of Mormon

    In 1927, Sjödahl published An Introduction to the Study of the Book of Mormon, an apologetic work and one of the founding works in the area of Book of Mormon studies. In this work, Sjödahl advanced an early version of the “limited geography model” of the Book of Mormon, one of the first authors to do so.

    Sjödahl was also the editor of the LDS Church’s German, Danish–Norwegian, Dutch, and Swedish newspapers in Salt Lake City from 1919 until they ceased publication in 1935.

    When Sjödahl died in 1939, he had partially completed an extensive commentary on the Book of Mormon. In 1955, Sjödahl’s material was taken by his son-in-law, Philip C. Reynolds, and combined with some materials by church general authority George Reynolds and published under their names the seven-volume Commentary on the Book of Mormon. In 1965, Philip Reynolds published under the same names Commentary on the Pearl of Great Price.

    Publications

    George Reynolds and Janne M. Sjödahl (1955) (Philip C. Reynolds, ed.). Commentary on the Book of Mormon (7 vols.) (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret News Press)—— and —— (1965) (Philip C. Reynolds, ed.). Commentary on the Pearl of Great Price (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret News Press)Janne M. Sjödahl (1927). An Introduction to the Study of the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret News Press)
    —— (1913). The Reign of Antichrist, or, The Great Falling Away: A Study in Ecclesiastical History (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret News Press)
    Hyrum M. Smith and Janne M. Sjödahl (1955, 2d ed.). The Doctrine and Covenants Containing Revelations Given to Joseph Smith Jr., the Prophet, with an Introduction and Historical and Exegetical Notes (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret News Press) [originally published in 1919 as A Commentary on the Doctrine and Covenants] source: Wikipedia

    In 1927, Janne M. Sjödahl a Swedish immigrant and convert to the LDS church, wrote a book on one of the founding works in the area of Book of Mormon studies. In his book he said; “The Onondagas: These have special interest… It appears from this, that this warrior, Zelph, was an Onondaga, as well as a “white” Lamanite, and that the Onondagas (of New York), consequently must be of Lamanite lineage. It also appears that at least some of the mounds in the Ohio Valley were erected by the descendants of Lehi” J.M. Sjodahl, An Introduction to the Study of the Book of Mormon.

    THE LATTER DAY SAINTS MILLENNIAL STAR  THURSDAY, JANUARY 4, 1917, Editorial by J.M. Sjodahl, CONFIRMING THE BOOK OF MORMON.

    “According to the belief of the Latter-day Saints, the American continents were inhabited before the Flood. Somewhere in America, they believe, Enoch built his marvelous city, which was taken from the earth before the deluge. Somewhere in that region, Noah built the ark, and preached the gospel of repentance, and from America he was carried across the mighty deep until the vessel in which he and his family had found safety rested on
    Mount Ararat.

    The Book of Mormon tells us that some of those who were engaged in the construction of the Tower of Babel and who were scattered over the face of the earth were brought to America. There they grew to become a mighty nation. In course of time, however, they became exceedingly wicked and destroyed each other. These people are known as the Jaredites.

    The sacred record mentioned also tells us that about six hundred years before our era, the Lord brought another colony of settlers to America. They came from Jerusalem. They also increased, prospered, and became wicked. Like the Jaredites, they destroyed each other, and but few remained after their sanguinary wars. From these the Red Indians have descended.

    The Book of Mormon teaches, then, that there has been communication between Asia and America during the past ages, and that the American ancient civilization, of which many marvelous monuments still remain, are of Semitic origin, influenced, however, by Egyptian culture. This is implied by Nephi, when he says that he makes his record in the language of his father, “which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians,” and, when the circumstances of the time in which Lehi lived before he emigrated from Jerusalem are considered, it is easily understood that the Egyptian influence must have been considerable upon the Hebrew mind and intellectual life generally. He lived at a time when Babylonia and Egypt were striving for supremacy in Palestine, and when the shortsighted leaders of the people favored the Egyptians in preference to the Chaldean’s, to such an extreme degree that many of them fled to Egypt, when the army of Nebuchadnezzar approached their beloved city. They even forced Jeremiah to accompany them to Egypt. Under the circumstances it is natural that Egyptian influence should have had a strong hold on the leading men among the Jews, as indicated in the Book of Mormon.

    Lately, scientists have been inclined to doubt our belief in this respect. They have tried to account for the similarity observed in the civilizations of the Old World and the New, by supposing that similar needs and circumstances in different parts of the world may well lead isolated groups of men to work out systems of civilization of the same type. How much this theory owes to a desire to disprove the Book of Mormon, no one knows. Even scientists may have their prejudices. It is all the more noteworthy that a recent contributor to Science (New York, August 11th. 1910), G. Elliot Smith, contends that the pre-columbian civilization of the Americas came from Egypt. He places the date of its exodus from that country at 900 B.C. A “cultural migration,” he thinks, took place at that time, which left its influence also in India, China, and Polynesia. On this theory the trek eastward from the Red Sea of Lehi and his company, would appear quite natural, though miraculously guided by divine power.” As quoted in the Literary Digest, September 9th, 1910, G. Elliot Smith writes” 

    “The proof of the reality of this great migration of culture, is provided, not merely by the identical geographical distribution of a very extensive series of curiously distinctive, and often utterly bizarre, customs and beliefs, the precise dates and circumstances of the origin of which are known in their parent countries, but by the fact that these strange ingredients are compounded in a definite and highly complex manner, to form an artificial cultural structure, which no theory of independent evolution can possibly explain, because chance played so large a part in building it up in its original home.

    “For instance, it is quite conceivable (though, I believe, utterly opposed to the evidence at our disposal) that different people might, independently the one or the other, have invented the practices of mummification, building megalithic monuments, circumcision, tattooing, and terraced irrigation; evolved the stories of the petrification of human beings, the strange adventures of the dead in the underworld, and the divine origin of kings ; and adopted sun-worship.

    But why should the people of America and Egypt who built megalithic monuments, build them in accordance with very definite plans compounded of Egyptian, Babylonian, Indian, and East Asiatic models ? And why should the same people who did so, also have their wives’ chins tattooed, their sons circumcised, their dead mummified ? Or why should it be the same people who worshiped the sun and adopted the curiously artificial winged-sun-and-serpent symbolism, who practiced terraced irrigation in precisely the same way, who made idols, and held similar beliefs regarding them, who had identical stories of the wanderings of the dead in the underworld?

    “If any theory of evolution of customs and beliefs is adequate to explain the independent origin of each item in the extensive repertoire, either of the New Empire Egyptian or the pre-Columbian American civilization (which I deny), it is utterly inconceivable that the fortuitous combination of hundreds of utterly incongruous and fantastic elements could possibly have happened twice. It is idle to deny the completeness of the demonstration which the existence of such a civilization in America supplies of the fact that it was derived from the late New Empire Egyptian civilization, modified by Ethiopian, Mediterranean, West Asiatic, Indian, Indonesian, East Asiatic, and Polynesian influences. * * *

    “All that I claim, then, is that the influence of Egypt was handed on from place to place ; that the links which all ethnologists recognize as genuine bonds of union can with equal certainty be joined up into a cultural chain uniting Egypt to America.

    “In almost every one of the focal points along this great migration route the folklore of today has preserved legends of the culture heroes who introduced some one or other of the elements of this peculiarly distinctive civilization. * * *

    “At every spot where they touched and tarried, whether on the coasts of Asia, the islands of the Pacific, or on the continent of America, the new culture took root and flourished in its own distinctive manner, as it was subjected to the influence of the aborigines or to that of later comers of other ideas and traditions ; and each place became a fresh focus from which the new knowledge continued to radiate for long ages after the primary inoculation.

    “The first great cultural wave (or the series of waves of which it was composed) continued to flow for several centuries. It must have begun some time after 900 B.C., because the initial equipment of the great wanderers included practices which were not invented in Egypt until that time. The last of the series of ripples in the great wave set out from India just after the practice of cremation made its appearance there, for at the end of the series the custom of incinerating the dead made its appearance in Indonesia, Polynesia, Mexico, and elsewhere.” J.M. Sjodahl, CONFIRMING THE BOOK OF MORMON.

  • LaFayette Lapham His Account of the Finding of the Sacred Plates” (1870)

    LaFayette Lapham His Account of the Finding of the Sacred Plates” (1870)

    Lost 116 Pages

    Remember the Interpreters came from the Brother of Jared when the Lord touched those two additional stones, (Ether 3:23) and they were sealed up and later Mosiah received them and possibly Lehi before and finally sealed up by Moroni before shown to Joseph Smith.

    A Passover Setting for Lehi’s Exodus

    Don Bradley Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 34 (2020): 119-142

    Abstract: Later in his life, former Palmyra resident Fayette Lapham recounted with sharp detail an 1830 interview he conducted with Joseph Smith Sr. about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. Among the details he reports that Lehi’s exodus from Jerusalem occurred during a “great feast.” This detail, not found in the published Book of Mormon, may reveal some of what Joseph Sr. knew from the lost 116 pages. By examining the small plates account of this narrative in 1 Nephi 1−5, we see not only that such a feast was possible, but that Lehi’s exodus and Nephi’s quest for the brass plates occurred at Passover. This Passover setting helps explain why Nephi killed Laban and other distinctive features of Lehi’s exodus. Read in its Passover context, the story of Lehi is not just the story of one man’s deliverance, but of the deliverance of humankind by the Lamb of God. The Passover setting in which it begins illuminates the meaning of the Book of Mormon as a whole.”

    [Editor’s Note: This article is an excerpt from Chapter 7 of the author’s book, The Lost 116 Pages: Reconstructing the Book of Mormon’s Lost Stories (Salt Lake City: Kofford Books, 2019).]

    This chapter examines the narrative of 1 Nephi 1−5 as a series of events occurring at the Passover season, beginning with Lehi’s theophany (vision of God) at the start of the Passover month of Nisan and culminating with Nephi’s slaying of Laban on the final day of the Jewish Passover celebration.1 Although this text comprises five chapters in the current Latter-day Saint edition of the Book of Mormon, it [Page 120]constitutes just one chapter — the original 1 Nephi Chapter I — in the first edition of the Book of Mormon and presents a single overarching narrative of the escape of Lehi’s family from destruction in Jerusalem and the beginning of their exodus to a new promised land. Read against the backdrop of the Passover season, the narrative of Lehi’s exodus is not merely a narrative of one family’s deliverance from temporal destruction but also a typological narrative of the redemption of humanity by the divine Lamb of God.

    Fayette Lapham’s Interview with Joseph Smith Sr.

    Joseph Smith Sr.

    In early 1830, shortly before the Book of Mormon came off the Grandin press, Palmyra businessman Fayette Lapham and his brother-in-law Jacob Ramsdell called at the Joseph Smith Sr. home in Manchester to get information on the forthcoming book.2 As Palmyra residents, Lapham and Ramsdell would have heard the considerable buzz in town about the Book of Mormon but were not yet able to satisfy their curiosity by reading its pages. Instead, the two young men enjoyed the rare privilege of hearing the Prophet’s father relate the story of the Book of Mormon’s emergence, and they were given an oral sneak preview of its contents. Four decades later, Lapham published an extensive account of this interview [Page 121]in an 1870 issue of The Historical Magazine.3 Despite the lapse of years and the account’s occasional garbling of fact, Lapham’s narration is filled with firsthand information that demonstrates his reliance on a primary source with knowledge of the actual information and events, indicating that he may have written his newspaper account from detailed notes of his interview with Joseph Sr.4 Whether Lapham’s source was interview notes or an extraordinary memory, his accuracy on many obscure but confirmable details, such as the order in which Joseph Smith translated Mormon’s abridgement and Nephi’s small plates after the manuscript loss, lends credence to additional, unique details he provides.5

    In relating Nephite history, Lapham’s account largely retells familiar Book of Mormon stories. Yet at key points it also adds to the existing narrative some story elements not found in the published Book of Mormon. These additional pieces of Nephite narrative, though new or unknown, fit remarkably well into the familiar, known narrative, suggesting that they are not errors but echoes of narrative from the lost pages. Surprisingly, the interview account gives nearly five times as much [Page 122] space to the period of the narrative covered by the lost pages as it does to the period that follows the lost portion. One wonders if the Prophet’s father, realizing his interviewers would not be able to read the fuller Nephite narrative given in the lost manuscript, attempted to provide more of that early narrative than the published book would provide. This seems to be the most probable explanation for the additional Nephite narrative given in Lapham’s account.

    Despite his intellectual interest, Lapham was never a believer in Joseph Jr. as a prophet and 

    appears to have never even read the Book of Mormon. In fact, Lapham came away from his interview with Joseph Sr. believing the Book of Mormon to be a hoax, which obviated his need to read it. Given this lack of familiarity with the book, and especially its missing pages, it is unlikely that Lapham could have identified what was missing from lost manuscript narrative and constructed elements that fill those gaps and fit the pattern of Book of Mormon narrative. Source


    Historical Magazine (second series) Volume 7 May 1870 Interview with the Father of Joseph Smith

    “Interview with the Father of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet, Forty Years Ago. His Account of the Finding of the Sacred Plates”  (1870)  [La]Fayette Lapham

    Republished in Vogel, Dan (1996), Early Mormon Documents, vol.1,Salt Lake City Signature Books, ISBN 1-56085-072-8.

    I think it was in the year 1830, I heard that some ancient records had been discovered that would throw some new light upon the subject of religion; being deeply interested in the matter, I concluded to go to the place and learn for myself the truth of the matter. Accompanied by a friend, Jacob Ramsdell, I set out to find the Smith family, then residing some three or four miles South of the village of Palmyra, Wayne county, New York, and near the line of the town of Manchester. Joseph, Junior, afterwards so well known, not being at home, we applied to his father for the information we wanted. This Joseph Smith, Senior, we soon learned, from his own lips, was a firm believer in witchcraft and other supernatural things; and had brought up his family in the same belief. He also believed that there was a vast amount of money buried somewhere in the country; that it would some day be found; that he himself had spent both time and money searching for it, with divining rods, but had not succeeded in finding any, though sure that he eventually would.” Lapham

    Editors note: With the previous description coming from someone who did not know Joseph Smith or his father well at all, his description of “witchcraft”, “supernatural”, and “buried money”, was likely Mr. Laphams bias against such things. Since the story of Joseph Smith was hard for many to explain at that time, it makes sense that many people made up stories and words about the explanation they heard from the Smiths. In the editors opinion witchcraft good also be explaines as a miracle, or a spiritual manifestation. Finding buried artifacts or valuable items was not unheard of in Palmyra at this time. I believe Mr. Laphams descriptions could explain a very spiritual occurrance as well as a possilbe withchcraft situation.

    Lapham continued. “In reply to our question, concerning the ancient records that had been found, he remarked that they had suffered a great deal of persecution on account of them; that many had been there for that purpose, and had made evil reports of them, intimating that perhaps we had come for a like purpose; but, becoming satisfied of our good intentions and that we only sought correct information, he gave us the following history, as near as I can repeat his words:

    His son Joseph, whom he called the illiterate, when about fourteen years of age, happened to be where a man was looking into a dark stone and telling people, therefrom, where to dig for money and other things. Joseph requested the privilege of looking into the stone, which he did by putting his face into the hat where the stone was. It proved to be not the right stone for him; but he could see some things, and, among them, he saw the stone, and where it was, in which he could see whatever he wished to see.

    Picture of Josephs Seer Stone from 2019 Ensign. Editor does not believe Josph used a stone in a hat to translate, he used the spectacles attached to a breastplaste. (JSH 1:35

    Smith claims and believes that there is a stone of this quality, somewhere, for every one. The place where he saw the stone was not far from their house; and, under pretense of digging a well, they found water and the stone at a depth of twenty or twenty-two feet. After this, Joseph spent about two years looking into this stone, telling fortunes, where to find lost things, and where to dig for money and other hidden treasure.”

    SEER STONE V. URIM & THUMMIM: BOOK OF MORMON TRANSLATION ON TRIAL (BOOK) $20.00 Seer Stone v. Urim and Thummim places the Book of Mormon translation on trial, presenting the latest research in one of the most comprehensive treatments of the translation process to date providing encouragement for Latter-day Saints who fear they have been “betrayed” by the translation history taught by the Church for over 190 years. Purchase Here

    Lapham continues. “About this time he became concerned as to his future state of existence, and was baptized, becoming thus a member of the Baptist Church. Soon after joining the Church, he had a very singular dream; but he did not tell his father of his dream, until about a year afterwards. He then told his father that, in his dream, a very large and tall man appeared to him, dressed in an ancient suit of clothes, and the clothes were bloody. And the man said to him that there was a valuable treasure, buried many years since, and not far from that place; and that he had now arrived for it to be brought to light, for the benefit of the world at large; and, if he would strictly follow his directions, he would direct him to the place where it was deposited, in such a manner that he could obtain it.

    He then said to him, that he would have to get a certain coverlid, which he described, and an old-fashioned suit of clothes, of the same color, and a napkin to put the treasure in; and go to a certain tree, not far distant, and when there, he would see other objects that he would take or keep in range and follow, until he was directed to stop, and there he would find the treasure that he was in pursuit of; and when he had obtained it, he must not lay it down until he placed it in the napkin. “And,” says Smith, “in the course of a year, I succeeded in finding all the articles, as directed; and one dark night Joseph mounted his horse, and, aided by some supernatural light, he succeeded in finding the starting point and the objects in range.” Following these, as far as he could with the horse without being directed to stop, he proceeded on foot, keeping the range in view, until he arrived at a large boulder, of several tons weight, when he was immediately impressed with the idea that the object of his pursuit was under that rock. Feeling around the edge, he found that the under side was fiat. Being a stout man, and aided by some super-natural power, he succeeded in turning the rock upon its edge, and under it he found a square block of masonry, in the centre of which were the articles referred to by the man seen in the dream. Taking up the first article, he saw others below; laying down the first, he endeavored to secure the others; but, before he could get hold of them, the one he had taken up slid back to the place he had taken it from, and, to his great surprise and terror, the rock immediately fell back to its former place, nearly crushing him in its descent. His first thought was that he had not properly secured the rock when it was turned up, and accordingly he again tried to lift it, but now in vain; he next tried with the aid of levers, but still without success. While thus engaged, he felt something strike him on the breast, which was repeated the third time, always with increased force, the last such as to lay him upon his back. As he lay there, he looked up and saw the same large man that had appeared in his dream, dressed in the same clothes. He said to him that, when the treasure was deposited there, he was sworn to take charge of and protect that property, until the time should arrive for it to be exhibited to the world of mankind; and, in order to prevent his making an improper disclosure, he was murdered or slain on the spot, and the treasure had been under his charge ever since.

    He said to him that he had not followed his directions; and, in consequence of laying the article down before putting it in the napkin, he could not have the article now; but that if he would come again, one year from that time, he could then have them. The year passed over before Joseph was aware of it, so time passed by; but he went to the place of deposit, where the same man appeared again, and said he had not been punctual in following his directions, and, in consequence, he could not have the article yet. Joseph asked when he could have them; and the answer was, “Come in one year from this time, and bring your oldest brother with you; then you may have them.” During that year, it so happened that his oldest brother died; but, at the end of the year, Joseph repaired to the place again, and was told by the man who still guarded the treasure, that, inasmuch as he could not bring his oldest brother, he could not have the treasure yet; but there would be another person appointed to come with him in one year from that time, when he could have it. Joseph asked, “How shall I know the person?” and was told that the person would be known to him at sight.

    Lost 116 Pages

    During that year, Joseph went to the town of Harmony, in the State of Pennsylvania, at the request of some one who wanted the assistance of his divining rod and stone in finding hidden treasure, supposed to have been deposited there by the Indians or others. While there, he fell in company with a young woman; and, when he first saw her, he was satisfied that she was the person appointed to go with him to get the treasure he had so often failed to secure. To insure success, he courted and married her. When his work was ended at Harmony, he returned with her to his father’s, in Wayne county; and, at the expiration of the year, he procured a horse and light wagon, with a small chest and a pillow-case, and proceeded, punctually, with his wife, to find the hidden treasure. When they had gone as far as they could with the wagon, Joseph took the pillow-case and started for the rock.

    Upon passing a fence, a host of devils began to screech and to scream, and made all sorts of hideous yells, for the purpose of terrifying him and preventing the attainment of his object; but Joseph was courageous, and pursued his way, in spite of them all. Arriving at the stone, he again lifted it, with the aid of superhuman power, as at first, and secured the first, or uppermost article, this time putting it carefully into the pillow-case, before laying it down. He now attempted to secure the remainder; but just then the same old man appeared, and said to him, that the time had not yet arrived for their exhibition to the world; but that when the proper time came he should have them, and exhibit them with the one he had now secured; until that time arrived, no one must be allowed to touch the one he had in his possession; for if they did, they would be knocked down by some superhuman power. Joseph ascertained that the remaining articles were a gold hilt and chain, and a gold ball with two pointers. The hilt and chain had once been part of a sword of unusual size; but the blade had rusted away and become useless. Joseph then turned the rock back, took the article in the pillow-case, and returned to the wagon; the devils, with more hideous yells than before, followed him to the fence; as he was getting over the fence, one of the devils struck him a blow on his side, where a black and blue spot remained three or four days; but Joseph persevered and brought the article safely home. “I weighed it,” said Mr. Smith, Senior, “and it weighed thirty pounds. continued

    No Sword of Laban or Liahona stored in the stone box at Cumorah. They were with all other records in the nearby Cave at Cumorah. See above.

    Two Depositories in Hill Cumorah

    “The hill Cumorah, with the surrounding vicinity, is distinguished as the great battlefield on which, and near which, two powerful nations were concentrated with all their forces. Men, women and children fought till hundreds of thousands on both sides were hewn down, and left to molder upon the ground. . . .

    These new plates were given to Moroni to finish the history. And all the ancient plates, Mormon deposited in Cumorah, about three hundred and eighty-four years after Christ. When Moroni, about thirty-six years after, made the deposit of the book entrusted to him, he was, without doubt, inspired to select a department of the hill separate from the great depository of the numerous volumes hid up by his father. The particular place in the hill where Moroni secreted the book, was revealed, by the angel, to the prophet Joseph Smith, to whom the volume was delivered in September, A.D. 1827. But the grand repository of all the numerous records of the ancient nations of the western continent, was located in another department of the hill, and it’s contents under the charge of holy angels, until the day should come for them to be transferred to the sacred temple of Zion.” 1866 Orson Pratt Millennial Star (28 (27): 417)

    Continued, “In answer to our question, as to what it was that Joseph had thus obtained, he said it consisted of a set of gold plates, about six inches wide, and nine or ten inches long. They were in the form of a book, half an inch thick, but were not bound at the back, like our books, but were held together by several gold rings, in such a way that the plates could be opened similar to a book. Under the first plate, or lid, he found a pair of spectacles, about one and a half inches longer than those used at the present day, the eyes not of glass, but of diamond. On the next page were representations of all the masonic implements, as used by masons at the present day. The remaining pages were closely written over in characters of some unknown tongue, the last containing the alphabet of this unknown language. Joseph, not being able to read the characters, made a copy of some of them, which he showed to some of the most learned men of the vicinity. All the clue he could obtain was from George Crane, who said he had seen a Pass that had been given to Luther Bradish, when traveling through the Turkish dominions; and he thought the characters resembled those of that Pass.

    Accordingly, Joseph went to Franklin-county, and saw Mr. Bradish, who could not read the strange characters, but advised him to return home and go into other business. But Joseph was not willing to give up the matter, without further trial; and from Franklin county he went to New York city, where the most learned man then in the city told him that, with few exceptions, the characters were Arabic, but not enough to make any thing out. Returning home, he one day tried the spectacles, and found that, by looking through them, he could see everything—past, present, and future—and could also read and understand the characters written on the plates. Before proceeding to translate the characters, Joseph was directed to choose twelve Apostles, who must be men who believed in the supernatural. He would not err in cho[o]sing them, as he would know the proper persons as soon as he saw them. One was to be a Scribe. After much opposition, Joseph succeeded in finding the requisite number of believers, among them Martin Harris, who was chosen Scribe. After having made these necessary arrangements, Joseph was directed not to make the translation where there was so much opposition; hence, after procuring the necessary materials, he and Martin went to Harmony, in Pennsylvania, where they would be less persecuted, and where Joseph, with spectacles on, translated the characters on the gold plates, and Harris recorded the result.

    After thus translating a number of plates, Harris wanted to return to Palmyra, taking a part of the writings with him; but the Lord objected, for fear that Harris would show them to unbelievers, who would make sport and derision of them. But Harris finally obtained leave to take them, on condition that he should let no one see them, except those who believed in them; in this he was indiscreet, and showed them to some one that he ought not to. When he next went to his drawer to get them, behold! they were not there; the Lord had taken them away.

    Interpreters

    Joseph and Harris returned to Harmony, and found the plates missing—the Lord had taken them also. Then Joseph put on the spectacles, and saw where the Lord had hid them, among the rocks, in the mountains. Though not allowed to get them, he could, by the help of the spectacles, read them where they were, as well as if they were before him. They were directed not to re-translate the part already gone over, for fear the new work would not correspond, in every particular, with the old; their enemies might take advantage of that circumstance, and condemn the whole. But they could begin where they left off, and translate until they were directed to stop; for, in consequence of their indiscretion, they would not be allowed to translate the whole, at present. At some future time, they would be allowed to translate the whole; and then their translation, the gold plates, the gold hilt, ball and pointers could all be circulated together, each a witness of the others.

    In answer to our question as to the subject of the translation, he said it was the record of a certain number of Jews, who, at the time of crossing the Red Sea, left the main body and went away by themselves; finally became a rich and prosperous nation; and, in the course of time, became so wicked that the Lord determined to destroy them from off the face of the earth. But there was one virtuous man among them, whom the Lord warned in a dream to take his family and depart, which he accordingly did; and, after traveling three days, he remembered that he had left some papers, in the office where he had been an officer, which he thought would be of use to him in his journeyings. He sent his son back to the city to get them; and when his son arrived in the city, it was night, and he found the citizens had been having a great feast, and were all drunk. When he went to the office to get his father’s papers he was told that the chief clerk was not in, and he must find [him] before he could have the papers. He then went into the street in search of him; but every body being drunk, he could get but little information of his whereabouts, but, after searching a long time, he found him lying in the street, dead drunk, clothed in his official habiliments, his sword having a gold hilt and chain, lying by his side—and this is the same that was found with the gold plates. Finding that he could do nothing with him in that situation, he drew the sword, cut off the officer’s head, cast off this own outer garments, and, assuming those of the officer, returned to the office where the papers were readily obtained, with which he returned to where his father was waiting for him.

    The family then moved on, for several days, when they were directed to stop and get materials to make brass plates upon which to keep a record of their journey; also to erect a tabernacle, wherein they could go and inquire whenever they became bewildered or at a loss what to do. After all things were ready, they started on their journey, in earnest; a gold ball went before them, having two pointers, one pointing steadily the way they should go, the other the way to where they could get provisions and other necessaries. After traveling many days, they came to a mountain, from which they were directed to get gold plates to keep their records upon, and to transfer to them those already on the brass plates. Finishing these, they resumed their journey; and, after traveling many days, came to a wide water, where they were directed to build a vessel. When this was completed, they set sail, still directed by the gold ball. After sailing a long time, they came to land, went on shore, and thence they traveled through boundless forests, until, at length, they came to a country where there were a great many lakes; which country had once been settled by a very large race of men, who were very rich, having a great deal of money. From some unknown cause, this nation had become extinct; “but that money,” said Smith, “is here, now, every dollar of it.” When they, the Jews, first beheld this country, they sent out spies to see what manner of country it was, who reported that the country appeared to have been settled by a very large race of men, and had been, to all appearances, a very rich agricultural and manufacturing nation. They also found something of which they did not know the use, but when they went into the tabernacle, a voice said, “What have you got in your hand, there?” They replied that they did not know, but had come to inquire; when the voice said, “Put it on your face, and put your face in a skin, and you will see what it is.” They did so, and could see everything of the past, present, and future; and it was the same spectacles that Joseph found with the gold plates.

    The gold ball stopped here and ceased to direct them any further; the family took possession of the country; their descendants became a great nation; among them were prophets who foretold the coming of Christ, and said that, as a sign of his coming, there would be three days in which there would be no night, for the light of day would continue during three days. In process of time the sign appeared as foretold by the prophets; and when Christ left Jerusalem he came to this nation; and, finding them much more perfect and harmonious in their religious views than the Jews were at Jerusalem, he was more particular in giving them instructions as to baptism, and said they must go down into the water, and be put under the water, and come up out of the water. But, after this, they became corrupt and wicked; enmity and discord prevailed among them, to such an extent, that they could no longer dwell together; hence they divided up into tribes, were scattered over the face of the earth, and their descendants are the American Indians.

    Art by Clark Kelley Price

    At this point, the interview came to an end; and my friend and myself returned home, fully convinced that we had smelt a large mice.Historical Magazine (second series) Volume 7 May 1870 Interview with the Father of Joseph Smith by Lafayette Lapham

    https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Historical_Magazine_(second_series)/Volume_7/May_1870/Interview_with_the_Father_of_Joseph_Smith

    By Ken Corbett. Nephi’s Temple on Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, TN

    After praying about this story, I personally “didn’t smelt a large mice”, but I felt the story was very interesting. I believe the Story of Laban was probably during a festival in Jerusalem (Maybe Passover), and likely Lehi or Nephi had the Urim and Thummim, as you see in the painting left. Also to hear about Lehi erecting a temple in the wilderness is very interesting. Lapham also said Joseph Smith Sr. said, “Under the first plate, or lid, he found a pair of spectacles, about one and a half inches longer than those used at the present day, the eyes not of glass, but of diamond.” Possibly a storage compartment for the glasses was inside the first leaf of the plates possibly secured like the image left with the box being a lighter wood encasing.

    Buried in the Stone box, the Interpreters, Spectacles & Breastplate, Not Brown Seer Stone and a Hat.

    Study and prayer are very invigorating and enjoyable to me!

  • Abinadi & Foxe’s Book of Martyrs/Urim and Thummim

    Abinadi & Foxe’s Book of Martyrs/Urim and Thummim

    Joseph Smith said, “I have, by the aid of the Urim and Thummim, seen those martyrs. They were honest, devoted followers of Christ, according to the light they possessed. They will be saved.” Hyrum L. Andrus, They Knew the Prophet, pg. 83

    “The Nephite prophet Abinadi holds a singular place in the Book of Mormon. He is the first Nephite of whom we have record to die as a martyr.” Robert J. Matthews

    Additional Urim and Thummim Usage

    1- How many revelations were given in the Doctrine and Covenants using a seer stone? Zero. How many revelations were given vusing the Urim and Thummim? At least 8 sections (Sections 3, 6, 7, 11, 14, 15, 16, and 17). 

    Dates of Revelations by Joseph Smith while using the Urim and Thummim

    • Section 3– Harmony, Pennsylvania, July 1828, relating to the loss of 116 pages “In July 1828, the heavenly messenger returned the Urim and Thummim (which had been taken in consequence of Joseph “having wearied the Lord in asking for the privilege of letting Martin Harris take the writings”). Joseph then received the revelation now recorded in Doctrine and Covenants 3 through the Urim and Thummim.” Larry E. Morris, “The Conversion of Oliver Cowdery,” in Days Never to Be Forgotten: Oliver Cowdery, ed. Alexander L. Baugh (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2009), 15–49.
    • Section 6– Harmony, Pennsylvania, April 1829, Oliver Cowdery began his labors as scribe
    • Section 7- Revelation given to Joseph Smith the Prophet and Oliver Cowdery, at Harmony, Pennsylvania, April 1829, The revelation is a translated version of the record made on parchment by John.
    • Section 11– Revelation given through Joseph Smith the Prophet to his brother Hyrum Smith, at Harmony, Pennsylvania, May 1829.
    • Section 14– Revelation given through Joseph Smith the Prophet to David Whitmer, at Fayette, New York, June 1829.
    • Section 15- Revelation given through Joseph Smith the Prophet to John Whitmer, at Fayette, New York, June 1829
    • Section 16- Revelation given through Joseph Smith the Prophet to Peter Whitmer Jr., at Fayette, New York, June 1829
    • Section 17- Revelation given through Joseph Smith the Prophet to Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris, at Fayette, New York, June 1829.

    2- “While translating the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery found they held different views on the meaning of a passage in the Bible. They “mutually agreed to settle” the question “by the Urim and [Thummim].” As a result, Joseph received a revelation giving the translation of an account by the ancient disciple John, [D&C 7] written on parchment but lost to history. This early experience seeking revelation that illuminated the text of a Bible passage was an important precedent. About a year later, during the summer of 1830, Joseph and Oliver received by revelation an account of visions experienced by Moses but not found in the Bible. This revelation marked the beginning of Joseph Smith’s efforts to prepare an inspired revision or translation of the Bible. For the next three years, Joseph worked on his “new translation of the Bible” with Oliver Cowdery, Sidney Rigdon, and other scribes, considering the project a “branch of [his] calling” as a prophet of God.” https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/joseph-smith-translation-of-the-bible?lang=eng

    3- Joseph Smith Translation (JST). A revision or translation of the King James Version of the Bible begun by the Prophet Joseph Smith in June 1830. He was divinely commissioned to make the translation and regarded it as “a branch of his calling” as a prophet. Although the major portion of the work was completed by July 1833, he continued to make modifications while preparing a manuscript for the press until his death in 1844, and it is possible that some additional modifications would have been made had he lived to publish the entire work. Some parts of the translation were published during his lifetime.” https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bd/joseph-smith-translation?lang=eng

    4- “Dec. 27, 1841: I met with the Twelve at Brother Joseph’s. He conversed with us in a familiar manner on a variety of subjects, and explained to us the Urim and Thummim which he found with the plates, called in the Book of Mormon the Interpreters. He said that every man who lived on the earth was entitled to a seer stone, [Not a Urim and Thummim, editor’s note] and should have one, but they are kept from them in consequence of their wickedness, and most of those who do find one make an evil use of it; he showed us his seer stone.” (Brigham Young, Mill. Star 26:118)

    5- The Prophet Joseph Smith was not the only individual in this dispensation to use the Urim and Thummim and to receive revelations from God. Heber C. Kimball testified that Brigham Young also used these sacred instruments. “The question is asked many times, “Has brother Brigham got the Urim and Thummim?” Yes, he has got everything; everything that is necessary for him to receive the will and mind of God to this people. Do I know it? Yes, I know all about it; and what more do you want? That is true, gentlemen; I am one of his witnesses in the last days, and to bear testimony of the truth of “Mormonism.”” (Heber C. Kimball, J.D. 2:111 Quote from August 13, 1853)

    5- Urim and Thummim used to Translate the Bible. “In this respect the testimony of Lorenzo Brown about the preparation the Prophet made for his translation of the Bible may be instructive. He records the Prophet as saying: “After I got through translating the Book of Mormon, I took up the Bible to read with the Urim and Thummim. I read the first chapter of Genesis and I saw the things as they were done. I turned over the next and the next, and the whole passed before me like a grand panorama; and so on chapter after chapter until I read the whole of it. I saw it all!” (as cited in Matthews, Plainer Translation, 25).” The Process of Translating the Book of Mormon Joseph Fielding McConkie (Professor of Ancient Scripture, BYU) Craig J. Ostler (Assistant Professor of Church History and Doctrine, BYU)

    6- Translation of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. “While looking over our copy of a large English Book of Martyrs, he (Josoeph Smith) expressed sympathy for the Christian martyrs and a hope for their salvation. He asked to borrow the book, promising to return it when he should meet us again in Missouri.

    On returning it he said, ‘I have, by the aid of the Urim and Thummim, seen those martyrs. They were honest, devoted followers of Christ, according to the light they possessed. They will be saved.’” Hyrum L. Andrus, They Knew the Prophet, pg. 83

     


    Abinadi: The Prophet and Martyr

    Robert J. Matthews

    The Nephite prophet Abinadi holds a singular place in the Book of Mormon. He is the first Nephite of whom we have record to die as a martyr. His doctrinal teachings are some of the most valuable in the Book of Mormon, clarifying the purpose of the law of Moses, identifying who the Redeemer would be, and declaring some facts about the Resurrection not previously mentioned in the Book of Mormon. He was capable of exquisitely colorful language sparked with fiery metaphor, yet at times was plain-spoken to the point of bluntness.

     

    Abinadi confronted the wicked establishment—in the person of king Noah and his priests—single-handedly. The record gives no hint of any other prophet being present with whom he could share the burden of his ministry. So far as we know, he converted but one man; yet that one man, Alma, became the progenitor of a posterity that kept the sacred records and served the Nephites as their ecclesiastical leaders (and sometimes their political leaders) for the remainder of their history, a period of well over 400 years. (This is seen in the lineage of Alma1, Alma2, Helaman2, Shiblon, Helaman3, Nephi2, Nephi3, Amos1, Amos2 and Ammoron. We do not know if Mormon was also a descendant of Alma, since the abridged record that we have does not give Mormon’s lineage, other than to say he was a descendant of Lehi [3 Nephi 5:20] and of Nephi [Mormon 1:5].) Abinadi’s history and teachings were preserved in the writings of his one convert, Alma, and Alma’s posterity kept the records down to the time of the prophet Mormon, thus making the remainder of the Book of Mormon possible. Abinadi’s ministry influenced the entire second half of Nephite history. Because Abinadi’s story is in the Book of Mormon, it has already influenced millions of readers in this dispensation and will yet influence billions more…

    In this paper I will deal with two general subjects. First, I will discuss the historical and circumstantial record of the man Abinadi—his life, ministry, and death. Second, I will discuss his doctrinal teachings. As we review these things, I invite you to think of the prophet Mormon, at the end of his nation’s struggles in the fourth century AD, searching what must have been by that time a wagonload of the large plates of Nephi and selecting those things of greatest worth to include in his abridged and summarized record. Mormon was not a freelance writer, but was called of God to prepare a record of his people. He was divinely appointed to be the editor and compiler of a sacred record that would deliver a specific message. We can be grateful that he was inspired to include the story and the teachings of the prophet Abinadi. The Book of Mormon would lack continuity, and a major part of its message would be missing, without the Abinadi portion.

    Abinadai

    Several times in Mosiah 11 the point is made that the bad example of the leaders led the people into wrong-doing (vv 2, 6–7, 15, 19). Pointing out this cause-and-effect relationship is a major contribution of the story: people have a tendency to follow their leaders, and corrupt leaders corrupt the whole kingdom.” Abinadi: The Prophet and Martyr Robert J. Matthews

    Editor’s Note: As you read the sins of the leaders below, think of the government today and its leaders. Think about the greedy business people and those who seek out riches daily and compare these sins in the Book of Mormon to those sins we see and hear about today. This sins of today seem even more horrific than those listed. I know the Lord is not pleased.

    As defined in the record, the people’s catalog of sins included the following (Mosiah 11:1–19):

    1. having many wives and concubines
    2. doing all manner of wickedness
    3. levying heavy taxes, with which they supported their opulence and luxury
    4. consecrating priests who were lifted up in pride
    5. being lazy
    6. worshiping idols
    7. enjoying whoredoms
    8. speaking lying and vain words
    9. placing their hearts upon riches
    10. spending their time in riotous living
    11. becoming winebibbers
    12. boasting of their own strength
    13. delighting in the shedding of blood

    As noted earlier, these were at first the sins of only Noah and his priests, but the iniquity spread until it became general among the people.” Abinadi: The Prophet and Martyr Robert J. Matthews

    Interesting Note about BOMC (Why do they lookdown at Heartlanders?)

    Little Barley in Iowa

    Side note about Abinadi: Book of Mormon Central (BOMC) prides itself in highlighting evidence for the Book of Mormon found in both North America and Central America to show they are being neutral by including North American evidence. They do this by sharing an article about Abinadi and him being tortured using faggots. BOMC claims that the North American Indians used this method as well as the Mesoamericans. BOMC sites the following quote and reference for proof of this; “More recent work by Mark Wright and Kerry Hull, however, documents the practice among the ancient Maya in pre-Columbian times. Wright and Hull also show that the practice was widespread among Native American cultures in both Mesoamerica and throughout North America.6 If you visit here reference 6 as noted it says, “Mark Wright and Kerry Hull, “Ethnohistorical Sources and the Death of Abinadi,” unpublished manuscript in our possession.” So BOMC’s proof of faggots used by North American Indians is in an UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT IN POSSESSION OF THEMSELVES? How convenient! I love much of the work from BOMC but their opinion on being neutral about geography is not correct. They only want to appear neutral because that is what the Church’s official position is.

    The odd thing about this idea of using faggots, the only other thing BOMC says comes from North America information about Barley, which doesn’t come from Mesoamerica. In Book of Mormon Central’s own words they say “While the connection between Mesoamerica and Barley is not made, it would seem odd that trade of “principal crops” would take place without the trade of barley. Whether the trade came from Mesoamerica to Arizona, or the other way around, it would make sense that barley was part of the crop trade between the cultures. Why make a trade of major crops and not trade barley? They very well may have. But, because of the moisture content and acidity of the soil in Mesoamerica, it may be difficult to find “little barley” in archaeological digs in Central America.” Tyler Livingston “Barley and the Book of Mormon New Evidence”  See my blog about Barley and how it comes from North America in many places here: https://www.bofm.blog/barley-in-iowa-not-in-mesoamerica/

    Little Barley in Iowa

    BOMC Continues, “Our policy is to utilize the most reliable academic scholarship on the Book of Mormon and follow the evidence wherever it might lead. Our process in selecting and highlighting Book of Mormon evidence is based on the following principles:

    • “In our hierarchy of evidence, the text itself is primary because it is closest to the divine.”
    • “If profound and compelling location-specific insights shed light on the text, we highlight these regardless of their geographic provenience.”
    • “We favor authors with credentials in their areas of interest.”
    • “We favor formally published works from reputable presses.”

    As explained in BOMC’s statement on geographical neutrality, “We welcome good work from any geographic persuasion that is responsive to these principles.” BOMC


    Foxe’s Book of Martyrs

    The Book of Martyrs, by John Foxe, documents the persecution and suffering endured by faithful men and women from the 1st to early 16th centuries for their faith in Jesus Christ.  Commonly known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, one fuller title is Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days, Touching Matters of the Church.

    Teach your children the true history of the lives, sufferings, and triumphant deaths of the early Christian martyrs. May it never be said that the blood of the saints has been spilled in vain and their testimonies forgotten. “And they overcame him by the blood of the lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death” (Revelation 12:11). Thanks to Joseph Smith foundation for most of this information. See them here

    Edward Stevenson

    Taken from They Knew the Prophet

    087-087-brother-joseph-full

    During the fall of 1834, the Prophet Joseph Smith paid a visit to the home of Edward Stevenson, a faithful member of the Church who would later become a prominent missionary and one of the seven presidents of the Seventy. While there he noticed a copy of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs by the sixteenth-century English cleric John Foxe. Brother Stevenson recorded the Prophet’s remarks in reference to Christian martyrs massacred during the Dark Ages:

    “While looking over our copy of a large English Book of Martyrs, he expressed sympathy for the Christian martyrs and a hope for their salvation. He asked to borrow the book, promising to return it when he should meet us again in Missouri.

    On returning it he said, ‘I have, by the aid of the Urim and Thummim, seen those martyrs. They were honest, devoted followers of Christ, according to the light they possessed. They will be saved.’” Hyrum L. Andrus, They Knew the Prophet, pg. 83

    What did Joseph Smith see? Who were these martyrs?

    The Reformation was the fuel for the colonization of America and a study of this period brings a deeper appreciation for scripture. To understand this era of persecution, is to appreciate why the Lord established a government of liberty in America. To comprehend this era of “rebirth” in civilization through sacred scripture is to envision how Christians in the 21st century can rebuild a broken world and fragmented society. To remember the Reformation is to remember the captivity and deliverance of our fathers. (Alma 36:2, 29, 29:11-12, 60:20)

    Foxe’s Book of Martyrs

    • Boston, Lincolnshire, England – Birthplace
    • 1516 – Born
    • 1832 – Published
    • Author: John Foxe
    • PDF (26.7 M)

    Summary

    Teach your children the true history of the lives, sufferings, and triumphant deaths of the early Christian martyrs. May it never be said that the blood of the saints has been spilled in vain and their testimonies forgotten. “And they overcame him by the blood of the lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death” (Revelation 12:11).

    CHAPTER I

    History of Christian Martyrs to the First General Persecutions

    Under Nero

    Christ our Savior, in the Gospel of St. Matthew, hearing the confession of Simon Peter, who, first of all other, openly acknowledged Him to be the Son of God, and perceiving the secret hand of His Father therein, called him (alluding to his name) a rock, upon which rock He would build His Church so strong that the gates of hell should not prevail against it. In which words three things are to be noted: First, that Christ will have a Church in this world. Secondly, that the same Church should mightily be impugned, not only by the world, but also by the uttermost strength and powers of all hell. And, thirdly, that the same Church, notwithstanding the uttermost of the devil and all his malice, should continue.

    Which prophecy of Christ we see wonderfully to be verified, insomuch that the whole course of the Church to this day may seem nothing else but a verifying of the said prophecy. First, that Christ hath set up a Church, needeth no declaration. Secondly, what force of princes, kings, monarchs, governors, and rulers of this world, with their subjects, publicly and privately, with all their strength and cunning, have bent themselves against this Church! And, thirdly, how the said Church, all this notwithstanding, hath yet endured and holden its own! What storms and tempests it hath overpast, wondrous it is to behold: for the more evident declaration whereof, I have addressed this present history, to the end, first, that the wonderful works of God in His Church might appear to His glory; also that, the continuance and proceedings of the Church, from time to time, being set forth, more knowledge and experience may redound thereby, to the profit of the reader and edification of Christian faith.

    As it is not our business to enlarge upon our Savior’s history, either before or after His crucifixion, we shall only find it necessary to remind our readers of the discomfiture of the Jews by His subsequent resurrection. Although one apostle had betrayed Him; although another had denied Him, under the solemn sanction of an oath; and although the rest had forsaken Him, unless we may except “the disciple who was known unto the high-priest”; the history of His resurrection gave a new direction to all their hearts, and, after the mission of the Holy Spirit, imparted new confidence to their minds. The powers with which they were endued emboldened them to proclaim His name, to the confusion of the Jewish rulers, and the astonishment of Gentile proselytes.

    I. St. Stephen

    Illustration from a 1583 edition of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, showing Papists torturing Protestants, in this case by scraping their bodies with shells.

    St. Stephen suffered the next in order. His death was occasioned by the faithful manner in which he preached the Gospel to the betrayers and murderers of Christ. To such a degree of madness were they excited, that they cast him out of the city and stoned him to death. The time when he suffered is generally supposed to have been at the passover which succeeded to that of our Lord’s crucifixion, and to the era of his ascension, in the following spring.
    Upon this a great persecution was raised against all who professed their belief in Christ as the Messiah, or as a prophet. We are immediately told by St. Luke, that “there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem;” and that “they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles.”

    About two thousand Christians, with Nicanor, one of the seven deacons, suffered martyrdom during the “persecution that arose about Stephen.”

    II. James the Great

    The next martyr we meet with, according to St. Luke, in the History of the Apsotles’ Acts, was James the son of Zebedee, the elder brother of John, and a relative of our Lord; for his mother Salome was cousin-german to the Virgin Mary. It was not until ten years after the death of Stephen that the second martyrdom took place; for no sooner had Herod Agrippa been appointed governor of Judea, than, with a view to ingratiate himself with them, he raised a sharp persecution against the Christians, and determined to make an effectual blow, by striking at their leaders. The account given us by an eminent primitive writer, Clemens Alexandrinus, ought not to be overlooked; that, as James was led to the place of martyrdom, his accuser was brought to repent of his conduct by the apostle’s extraordinary courage and undauntedness, and fell down at his feet to request his pardon, professing himself a Christian, and resolving that James should not receive the crown of martyrdom alone. Hence they were both beheaded at the same time. Thus did the first apostolic martyr cheerfully and resolutely receive that cup, which he had told our Savior he was ready to drink. Timon and Parmenas suffered martyrdom about the same time; the one at Philippi, and the other in Macedonia. These events took place A.D. 44.

    III. Philip

    Was born at Bethsaida, in Galilee and was first called by the name of “disciple.” He labored diligently in Upper Asia, and suffered martyrdom at Heliopolis, in Phrygia. He was scourged, thrown into prison, and afterwards crucified, A.D. 54.
    IV. Matthew

    Whose occupation was that of a toll-gatherer, was born at Nazareth. He wrote his gospel in Hebrew, which was afterwards translated into Greek by James the Less. The scene of his labors was Parthia, and Ethiopia, in which latter country he suffered martyrdom, being slain with a halberd in the city of Nadabah, A.D. 60.

    V. James the Less

    Is supposed by some to have been the brother of our Lord, by a former wife of Joseph. This is very doubtful, and accords too much with the Catholic superstition, that Mary never had any other children except our Savior. He was elected to the oversight of the churches of Jerusalem; and was the author of the Epistle ascribed to James in the sacred canon. At the age of ninety-four he was beat and stoned by the Jews; and finally had his brains dashed out with a fuller’s club.

    VI. Matthias

    Of whom less is known than of most of the other disciples, was elected to fill the vacant place of Judas. He was stoned at Jerusalem and then beheaded.

    VII. Andrew

    Was the brother of Peter. He preached the gospel to many Asiatic nations; but on his arrival at Edessa he was taken and crucified on a cross, the two ends of which were fixed transversely in the ground. Hence the derivation of the term, St. Andrew’s Cross.

    VIII. St. Mark

    Was born of Jewish parents of the tribe of Levi. He is supposed to have been converted to Christianity by Peter, whom he served as an amanuensis, and under whose inspection he wrote his Gospel in the Greek language. Mark was dragged to pieces by the people of Alexandria, at the great solemnity of Serapis their idol, ending his life under their merciless hands.

    IX. Peter

    Among many other saints, the blessed apostle Peter was condemned to death, and crucified, as some do write, at Rome; albeit some others, and not without cause, do doubt thereof. Hegesippus saith that Nero sought matter against Peter to put him to death; which, when the people perceived, they entreated Peter with much ado that he would fly the city. Peter, through their importunity at length persuaded, prepared himself to avoid. But, coming to the gate, he saw the Lord Christ come to meet him, to whom he, worshipping, said, “Lord, whither dost Thou go?” To whom He answered and said, “I am come again to be crucified.” By this, Peter, perceiving his suffering to be understood, returned into the city. Jerome saith that he was crucified, his head being down and his feet upward, himself so requiring, because he was (he said) unworthy to be crucified after the same form and manner as the Lord was.

    Illustration from a 1583 edition of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, showing Papists torturing Protestants, in this case by scraping their bodies with shells.

    X. Paul

    Paul, the apostle, who before was called Saul, after his great travail and unspeakable labors in promoting the Gospel of Christ, suffered also in this first persecution under Nero. Abdias, declareth that under his execution Nero sent two of his esquires, Ferega and Parthemius, to bring him word of his death. They, coming to Paul instructing the people, desired him to pray for them, that they might believe; who told them that shortly after they should believe and be baptised at His sepulcher. This done, the soldiers came and led him out of the city to the place of execution, where he, after his prayers made, gave his neck to the sword.

    XI. Jude

    The brother of James, was commonly called Thaddeus. He was crucified at Edessa, A.D. 72.

    XII. Bartholomew

    Preached in several countries, and having translated the Gospel of Matthew into the language of India, he propagated it in that country. He was at length cruelly beaten and then crucified by the impatient idolaters.

    XIII. Thomas

    Called Didymus, preached the Gospel in Parthia and India, where exciting the rage of the pagan priests, he was martyred by being thrust through with a spear.

    XIV. Luke

    The evangelist, was the author of the Gospel which goes under his name. He travelled with Paul through various countries, and is supposed to have been hanged on an olive tree, by the idolatrous priests of Greece.

    XV. Simon

    Surnamed Zelotes, preached the Gospel in Mauritania, Africa, and even in Britain, in which latter country he was crucified, A.D. 74.

    XVI. John

    The “beloved disciple,” was brother to James the Great. The churches of Smyrna, Pergamos, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea, and Thyatira, were founded by him. From Ephesus he was ordered to be sent to Rome, where it is affirmed he was cast into a cauldron of boiling oil. He escaped by miracle, without injury. Domitian afterwards banished him to the Isle of Patmos, where he wrote the Book of Revelation. Nerva, the successor of Domitian, recalled him. He was the only apostle who escaped a violent death.

    XVII. Barnabas

    Was of Cyprus, but of Jewish descent, his death is supposed to have taken place about A.D. 73.

    And yet, notwithstanding all these continual persecutions and horrible punishments, the Church daily increased, deeply rooted in the doctrine of the apostles and of men apostolical, and watered plentously with the blood of saints.

    CHAPTER II

    The Ten Primitive Persecutions Continued at the Link Below

  • Fallen Angels, Nephilim, Watchers, Giants?

    Fallen Angels, Nephilim, Watchers, Giants?

    The Nephilim (/ˈnɛfɪˌlɪm/; Hebrew: נְפִילִים Nəfīlīm) are mysterious beings or people in the Hebrew Bible who are large and strong; the word Nephilim is loosely translated as giants in some translations of the Hebrew Bible but left untranslated in others. Jewish explanations interpret them as fallen angels. The main reference to them is in Genesis, but the passage is ambiguous and the identity of the Nephilim is disputed. Wikipedia
    According to the Book of Numbers 13:33, they later inhabited Canaan at the time of the Israelite conquest of Canaan. A similar or identical biblical Hebrew term, read as “Nephilim” by some scholars, or as the word “fallen” by others, appears in the Book of Ezekiel 32:27.[3][4]

    Annotated Book of Mormon page 459

    Giants

    Unusually large, tall persons, apparently having great physical strength. They are mentioned both before the Flood (Gen. 6:4; Moses 8:18) and after (Num. 13:33; Deut. 2:10–11, 20; 3:11–13; 9:2; Josh. 15:8; 18:16). Raphah of Gath was said to be the father of several giants of whom Goliath was one (1 Sam. 17:4–7; 2 Sam. 21:16–22; 1 Chr. 20:6). A 12-fingered, 12-toed giant is also mentioned as one of the sons. The giants in Palestine were also known as Anakims, Emims, and Zamzummims. Source

    Let’s see what others say about the Sons of God, or Nephilim, or Fallen Angels, from the Old Testament. I think the quotes below from members of our Church are most likely to be correct. Many other Christians say the Nephilim are the Fallen Angels or Spirits who had relationships with women on the earth. I am confident that spirits, or those who have not come to this earth to receive a body, cannot have sexual relationships with those who have a physical body.

    JOSEPH SMITH DIDN’T BELIEVE IN WATCHERS

    Hidden in our scripture reading for this week is a strange little passage which many modern Biblical scholars say was originally intended to explain the rise of the giant race of antiquity by the union of angelic beings with human wives.  These verses in Genesis stirred a lively debate among early Christian theologians as they struggled to explain why God felt it necessary to cleanse the Earth with a worldwide Flood.  It all starts with this odd passage inserted in the account before Noah built his vessel, the great ark.

    “And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose…There were giants (Nephilim) in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (Genesis 6:1-5)

    This small passage has been the subject of much dispute in Christendom, and two main schools of exegesis have formed. The first and most popular explains this passage as descriptive of disobedient angels (sometimes called Watchers) who descended from celestial realms and cohabitated with human women, producing a race of giants. Pseudopigraphic literature such as the Book of Enoch are dedicated to expanding this particular incident and serve as proof-tests for this theory. It is also similar in many respects to various myths of Near Eastern peoples. This interpretation has spawned all kinds of new-age speculation on alien races, their interaction with antediluvian human beings, and modern-day abductions — but is actually the more conservative and accepted interpretation by the higher critics.

    An alternate explanation results by understanding the term “sons of God” to be the pious race descended from Seth, who sinned by marrying descendants of Cain, who would have been pagans. This is favored by some Christian groups who object to the idea that angels are physical or sexual beings. Many Jewish Biblical authorities prefer this explanation as well, to maintain an emphasis on one God.

    The first explanation is definitely the cool one.  I would have thought that Joseph Smith would have been all over fallen angels, with his emphasis on the corporeality of divine beings.  But it turns out that Joseph didn’t believe in Watchers.  Hugh Nibley wrote an article explaining how Joseph’s theology in the Book of Moses provides a solution to the dilemma called, A Strange Thing in the Land: The Return of the Book of Enoch, Part 8 By Hugh Nibley Professor Emeritus of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University which continues below:

    “Adam, having lost Abel, got another son, Seth, to carry on his work. (Moses 6:2.) From him comes that line of successors in the priesthood, duly registered in the Book of Life, from which the wicked were excluded. (Moses 2:5–8.) After Seth came Enos, who decided to make an important move. Since “in those days Satan had great dominion among men, and raged in their hearts,” causing “wars and bloodshed … in administering death, because of secret works, seeking for power” (Moses 2:15)—exactly as in the modern world—Enos gathered together “the residue of the people of God” and with them migrated out of the country “and dwelt in a land of promise,” named Cainan after his son (Moses 2:17). The line is Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, and Noah. (Moses 6:16–21; Moses 8:2, 5–11.)

    *[Remember the earth had no division between the old and new world. There was no Atlantic Ocean]

    Cainites Lived Near Jerusalem
    Sethites Lived Near Eden which was near the Garden of Eden.

    Jerusalem was very far distant from Eden. They were the as wide apart as Pangea or as Elder Holland calls it, the Continent of Genesis. See map above before the Atlantic Ocean arrived.

    In The Combat of Adam with Satan, as Migne observes, “the author depicts the descendants of Adam as divided into two separate and distinct branches: the Cainites dedicated to following Satan, who lived in a fertile country but very far distant from Eden, and who devoted themselves to all the pleasures of the flesh and all manner of immorality,” and the Sethites who “dwelt in the mountains near the Garden, were faithful to the divine law and bore the name of the Sons of God.”

    The occurrence of like names in the two genealogies should not surprise anyone who does much genealogy, where the same family names keep turning up in an endless round. The thing to notice is that there are two lines and that Enoch is seen as a stranger and a wild man only when he leaves his native colony in Cainan,[Western near the Garden of Eden] “a land of righteousness unto this day” (Moses 6:41), to sojourn as a missionary among the wayward tribes. And so the stage is set for Enoch.

    Another Expo is here. Register today.



     The Wicked World of Enoch

    The wickedness of Enoch’s day had a special stamp and flavor; only the most determined and entrenched depravity merited the extermination of the race. In apocryphal Enoch stories we are told how humanity was led to the extremes of misconduct under the tutelage of uniquely competent masters. According to these traditions, these were none other than special heavenly messengers who were sent down to earth to restore respect for the name of God among the degenerate human race, but instead yielded to temptation, misbehaved with the daughters of men, and ended up instructing and abetting their human charges in all manner of iniquity. They are variously designated as the Watchers, Fallen Angels, Sons of God, Nephilim, or Rephaim, and are sometimes confused with their offspring, the Giants.307 Other candidates for this dubious honor have been suggested by various scholars, the trouble being that more than one category of beings qualify as Fallen Angels and spectacular sinners before the time of the Flood.308 The Bible uses the title sons of God—were they different from the Watchers of tradition?

    “The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.

    There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare … to them … mighty men, … men of renown.

    And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth.” (Gen. 6:2, 4–5.)
    The idea of intercourse between heavenly and earthly beings was widespread in ancient times. Thus, in the newly discovered Genesis Apocryphon, when Lamech’s wife bears him a superchild (Noah), he assumes almost as a matter of course that the father is “one of the angels” and accuses her of faithlessness until his grandfather, Enoch, whose “lot is with the Holy Ones” and who lives far away, clears up the misunderstanding. Significantly, the name of the child’s mother is Bit-enosh, i.e., she is one of the “daughters of men.”309 The Cedrenus fragment avoids the problem of heavenly origin by identifying the sons of God and the daughters of men with the descendants of Seth and Cain respectively, and he specifically designates the sons of God as the Watchers.310 Recently M. Emanueli has suggested that the various terms are merely “a figure of speech in order to express the depth of the deterioration of that generation.”311

    While the sons of God have been identified with both angels and the Watchers, the Greek Enoch does not identify the Watchers with Satan’s hosts who fell from heaven from the beginning—they are another crowd.312

    “It is the Joseph Smith Enoch which gives the most convincing solution: the beings who fell were not angels but men who had become sons of God. From the beginning, it tells us, mortal men could qualify as “sons of God,” beginning with Adam. Moses 6:68 How? By believing and entering the covenant. Moses 7:1 Thus when “Noah and his sons hearkened unto the Lord, and gave heed … they were called the sons of God.” Moses 8:13 In short, the sons of God are those who accept and live by the law of God. When “the sons of men” (as Enoch calls them) broke their covenant, they still insisted on that exalted title: “Behold, we are the sons of God; have we not taken unto ourselves the daughters of men?” Moses 8:21 (Hugh Nibley, “A Strange Thing in the Land: The Return of the Book of Enoch, Part 8,” Ensign, Dec 1976, 73)

    Joseph Smith’s unique Mormon spin on the b’nei ha-Elohim was that they were priesthood holders, and the covenant people of the Lord, who were defiling themselves by marrying out of the covenant.  Their resulting progeny were “Nephilim,” or “fallen ones.” Joseph Fielding Smith later clarified the LDS interpretation of Genesis 6 when he scolded:

    “There is a prevailing doctrine in the Christian world that these sons of God were heavenly beings who came down and married the daughters of men and thus came a superior race on the earth, the result bringing the displeasure of the Lord. This foolish notion is the result of lack of proper information, and because the correct information is not found in the Book of Genesis, Christian peoples have been led astray.  The correct information regarding these unions is revealed in the inspired interpretation given to the Prophet Joseph Smith in the Book of Moses. Without doubt when this scripture was first written, it was perfectly clear, but scribes and translators in the course of time, not having divine inspiration, changed the meaning to conform to their incorrect understanding. These verses in the Prophet’s revision give us a correct meaning, and from them we learn why the Lord was angry with the people and decreed to shorten the span of life and to bring upon the world the flood of purification.  (Answers to Gospel Questions, 5 vols. [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1957-1966], 1: 136.)

    The doctrine is repeated in sermons in the Journal of Discourses, such as this one by Charles W. Penrose:

    “It is stated that the iniquity of man was great, and God brought a flood on the earth. Now, to understand that correctly we have to know what kind of position those persons were in, and why they were called the “Sons of God.” Those men were in the same position as the Latter-day Saints. They were heirs to the Priesthood. They were the sons of God. They had obeyed the holy covenants. They had received the word of the Lord. They were consecrated to the Almighty. But they went outside of their covenants and their engagement with the Lord, and took wives of the daughters of men that were not in the covenant, and thus transgressed the law of God. The law of God in relation to this has been the same in all ages, and has been given to this people—that the sons of Israel shall wed the daughters of Israel, and shall not go out to wed with the stranger. These men did that, and God was displeased, as He is today with Latter-day Saints, who are called out of the world to be His servants, to be holy unto the Lord, to be clean because they bear the vessels of the Lord, when they go outside and wed with the stranger. (Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. [London: Latter-day Saints’ Book Depot, 1854-1886], 25: 228 – 229.)

    Perhaps because of its controversial nature Genesis 6:1-4 is often ignored when discussing the causes of the flood, even though the strong link between them has been noted in the past.  More fundamental religionists believe that this type of explanation of the Flood underscores the importance of maintaining racial and spiritual purity. God’s believing remnant must be preserved. When men failed to perceive the importance of this, God had to judge them severely.  In a Pearl of Great Price Institute Manual, President John Taylor is quoted, describing the Flood as an act of love, done for the benefit of that generation. By taking away their earthly existence God prevented them from entailing their sins upon their posterity and degenerating them.  An additional quotation from Joseph Fielding Smith applies this lesson to our day, saying:

    “Because the daughters of Noah married the sons of men contrary to the teachings of the Lord, his anger was kindled, and this offense was one cause that brought to pass the universal flood. . . . The daughters who had been born, evidently under the covenant, and were the daughters of the sons of God, that is to say of those who held the priesthood, were transgressing the commandment of the Lord and were marrying out of the Church . Thus they were cutting themselves off from the blessings of the priesthood contrary to the teachings of Noah and the will of God. . . .Today there are foolish daughters of those who hold this same priesthood who are violating this commandment and marrying the sons of men; there are also some of the sons of those who hold the priesthood who are marrying the daughters of men. All of this is contrary to the will of God just as much as it was in the days of Noah” (Pearl of Great Price Student Manual – Religion 327)

    Now, the Church still teaches that it is preferable not to marry outside of the covenant.  But we’re usually not so un-PC as to suggest that marrying non-members is an abominable sin that may cause mankind to be swept off the earth.  Some of you reading this post may not even agree that marrying outside the covenant is what brought a great judgment upon these people.  Once again, we’re seeing a shift in doctrine, to the point that some Latter-day Saint thinkers are again putting credence in the “Watcher” theory of Genesis 6.  Recent examples are posts by Yellow Dart at Faith Promoting Rumor, Seth P. at his blog, and David Larsen at Heavenly Ascents. In this, we’re not so different than the Christian world, where the debate continues.

    Robert C. Newman points out some interesting facts concerning the current controversy:

    The present form of the debate is rather paradoxical. On the one hand, liberal theologians, who deny the miraculous, claim the account pictures a supernatural liaison between divine beings and humans. Conservative theologians, though believing implicitly in angels and demons, tend to deny the passage any such import. The liberal position is more understandable with the realization that they deny the historicity of the incident and see it as a borrowing from pagan mythology. The rationale behind the conservative view is more complex: though partially a reaction to liberalism, the view is older than liberal theology.”

    https://wheatandtares.org/2010/02/06/joseph-smith-didnt-believe-in-watchers/

    Annotated Book of Mormon page 460

    GIANTS BONES

    FRANKLIN, TENNESSEE WESTERN WEEKLY REVIEW, NOVEMBER 11, 1845
    There have been recently dug up in Williamson county, Tennessee, seven miles from Franklin, the bones of a giant and no mistake. We have conversed with an intelligent and enterprising gentleman of our city, who has seen, examined, and purchased an interest in the skeleton. From him we derive the following facts:  A Mr. Shumate was boring for water near his residence, upon a hill of considerable extent and eminence, situated in a rocky, mountainous section country, where the bones were discovered about 60 feet beneath the surface. They were immediately exhumed, and were found embedded in a strata of the hardest kind of clay which had apparently filled an extensive cavern or opening in the rock. The position of the skeleton was that of a recumbent, making an angle of the horizon. The bones are not at all petrified as in the case with most of the skeleton monsters of animals which have been discovered in our country, but are, nevertheless, in a most perfect state of preservation, and weigh in the aggregate about 1500 pounds!No doubt rests in the minds of any who have seen or examined them, that these bones belong to the genus homo. All the larger and characteristic bones are entire, and the skull, arms and thigh bones, knee pans, shoulder sockets and collar bones remove all skepticism as to their humanity. The whole skeleton, we are informed, is about 18 feet high , and must have stood full 19 feet ‘in his stockings’ (if he wore any.). The bones of the thigh and leg measure 6 feet 6 inches, so that our friend, ‘the General,’ could have marched erect, in full military costume, between the giant’s legs.The skull is described as being about 2-3 the size of a flour barrel, and capable of holding in its cavities near two bushels; a coffee cup of good size could be put into the eye sockets—and the jaw teeth, which are all perfect even to the enamel, would weight from 3½ to 6 pounds, some of the smaller ones which were loose have been weighed—the front teeth are missing.—These teeth bear the evidence of extreme age, from their cavities are apparent diminution from use in wearing away.  An eminent physician and anatomist, properly assisted, is engaged in having the skeleton put together and the small deficiencies supplied by art.We are further informed by our fellow citizen, who has purchased an interest of one fourth in this interesting and wonderful curiosity, that it will be ready for exhibition in about one month’s time, when it will start on its tour thro’ the civilized world, and proceeding from New Orleans will shortly be among us here. Our fellow townsman keeps the price he paid for his interest a secret, but says that $50,000 has been offered and refused for the whole of this curiosity. https://www.jasoncolavito.com/newspaper-accounts-of-giants.html

    THE GIANT SKELETON

    NEW YORK HERALD, DECEMBER 12, 1845
    The skeleton discovered in Williamson county in this State, and supposed to be that of a human being, has frequently been referred to, within a few days past, in the House of Representatives.  Notwithstanding the description given of it, as Wouter Van Twiller would say, “we have our doubts about the matter.” This skeleton was found about sixty feet beneath the surface of the earth, embedded in a stratum of the hardest kind of clay.  The bones are said to be in a perfect state of preservation, and weigh in the aggregate fifteen hundred pounds. All the large and characteristic bones are entire, and the skull, arms, and thigh bones, knee pans, shoulder sockets and collar bones remove all doubts, and the animal to whom they belonged has been decided “to belong to the genus homo.” This gentleman, when he walked the earth, was about eighteen feet high, and when clothed in flesh must have weighed not less than 3000 pounds. “The bones of the thigh and leg measure six feet six inches; his skull is said to be about two-thirds the size of a flour barrel, and capable of holding in its cavities near two bushels. (He must have had a goodly quantity of brains, and if intellect be in proportion to the size of the brain, he must have possessed extraordinary intellectual powers).  The description further states, that “a coffee cup of good size could be put in the eye-sockets.” The jaw teeth weight from 8 ½ to 6 pounds.  It is stated that an eminent physician and anatomist is engaged in putting the skeleton together, and that is will shortly be ready for public exhibition.—Nashville Orthopolitan.
    Giant burial mounds

    André the Giant is a known example of a man with superhuman proportions and strength, reaching 7 feet 4 inches tall. But André’s size was the result of gigantism and acromegaly, disorders caused by an overactive pituitary gland, which releases too much growth hormone. And with the average human height at 5 feet 6 inches for men and 5 feet 2 inches for women, it’s rare to find someone of André’s height, let alone his stature.

    With the extreme rarity of gigantism, affecting roughly three in a million, it’s surprising how often giants are spoken of in the Bible and North American folklore. David and Goliath, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Paul Bunyon are familiar examples of tales involving giants. But while these are thought to be myths or legends, is there any possibility that a race of giants once existed or were there humanoid ancestors significantly larger than us?

    The Mound Builders: Unusual Burial Sites

    Across the United States, there are burial mounds, or at least their remnants, some as extensive in size as the Great Pyramid of Giza. The Cahokia and Monk’s mounds in Illinois and Missouri are two thought to have been built before the arrival of Columbus. The Cahokia mound is 100 feet tall with a 14-acre base, almost an entire acre larger than the pyramid at Giza. Monk’s Mound is just as tall with a 1,000-foot-wide base. But what makes these and other mounds of their kind even more intriguing is what has been found buried inside of them.

    Monks mound

    Jim Vieira has made it his mission to explore the mystery behind these mounds and others where there is documentation of unearthed skeletons, often of gigantic proportions. Vieira, a stonemason by trade, found himself intrigued after finding a plethora of mysterious stone mounds throughout New England.

    https://www.gaia.com/article/giant-skeletons-have-been-found-buried-in-mounds-across-america 

  • Mulekites- Up the Mississippi or the St Lawrence? We ask a Navy Captain

    Mulekites- Up the Mississippi or the St Lawrence? We ask a Navy Captain

    Captain Philip Beale British Navy Captain and Adventurer

    Maritime adventurer Philip Beale has led a life of exploration, searching for answers to some of the great mysteries of ancient civilizations. His adventures began when he was chosen for Operation Drake, sailing the brigantine Eye of the Wind from Fiji to Papua New Guinea. Later, Philip joined the Royal Navy as an officer, and after leaving the Navy, he then led a successful career in finances. Years later, in Indonesia, Philip commissioned construction of a replica vessel depicted at the Borobudur stupa. He then navigated the Borobudur Ship Expedition across the Indian Ocean sailing far as Ghana in the West coast of Africa. The Borobudur Ship is now on display in its own dedicated at Museum at the Borobudur Temple in Indonesia. His next big project was the Phoenician Ship Expeditions.

    What Does Philip Beale Think?

    As you see below, I asked Philip a question about the best route of a 600 BC ship to America. Either from Gibraltar northwest to the St Lawrence Seaway or from Gibraltar southwest to the Gulf of Mexico and up the Mississippi River. His answer is a big reason why I believe the Mulekites landed in Zarahemla by way of the Mississippi River, and not through the St Lawrence. See Omni 1:16 which says, “And they [Mulekites] journeyed in the wilderness and were brought by the hand of the Lord across the great waters, into the land where Mosiah discovered them; and they had dwelt there from that time forth.”

    If the Mulekites had been “there from that time forth”, That is where they landed. If they used the St Lawrence Seaway they could not have landed directly at Montrose, IA without stopping and by foot traveling many miles to find another river to then get to Montrose. If they used the Mississippi River, they would have traveled by ship all the way to the Des Moines Rapids without stopping.

    This is just my opinion, as my good friend Wayne May feels they came through the St Lawrence. Neither of us know for sure, but I feel mine makes more sense to me.

    Below is my email from Rian Nelson to Philip Beale

    “So even though the northern route to the St Lawrence seems shorter travel that way would be because of the winds? How many days would it take in your ship for you to travel from Tunisia to the Mouth of the St Lawrence River? How many days from the Mouth of the St Lawrence to Nauvoo, Illinois? Also understanding the Great Lakes could have been higher in 600 BC how hard would it be to cross the Great Lakes going west to Lake Michigan and then to the Mississippi River and down to Nauvoo?

    How many days would it take in your ship for you to travel from Tunisia to the Mouth of the Mississippi River? How many days also from the Mouth of the Mississippi to Nauvoo, Illinois? How many days was your actual 2020 expedition from Tunisia to Florida?

    There is of course the Des Moines Rapids by Keokuk, Iowa on the Mississippi. If Mulek traveled up the Mississippi from the Gulf of Mexico to those rapids, would it have been possible that the rapids could have been higher in 600 BC to have crossed the rapids a few more miles to land near Nauvoo?”

    Thanks so much for your help, Rian Nelson

    Email from Philip Beale to Rian Nelson Jan 4, 2022

    “Hi Rian,

    Thanks for your email the other day and sorry for my delayed response.

    I think in general the so-called Northern route is a non-starter for an historical/maritime point of view because as you will see from the attached chart (below), the currents and winds (which have been the same for thousands of years) go against the norther route. Unless the Phoenicians invented the internal combustion engine or sailed to meet the Vikings first in Norway, it just does not make sense.

    This is the chart Captain Beale sent me in his email.

    However, the southern route is just like a conveyer belt all the way to the Caribbean from the Med. For the rivers we would have to look at the distances involved but I think at best you would be looking at 10 miles per day through rowing.

    Happy to do a bit more work on this but I thought I would send this to get started.”

    Regards Philip

    Study The Maps

    Rian says, “I believe if you study the maps below, they will be an important key to your understanding the voyage of the Mulekites. I have used Captain Beale as my guide to understand sailing of a 600 BC Phoenician ship. He has traveled 30,000 miles and is very educated in this travel.”

    Captain Beale said to me, “traveling up the Mississippi River could easily have been done with a technique called “tacking.”

    Beating to windward on a series of port and starboard tacks, tacking between each at points 1, 2, and 3. Wikipedia

    “Tacking or coming about is a sailing maneuver by which a sailing craft (sailing vessel, ice boat, or land yacht), whose next destination is into the wind, turns its bow toward and through the wind so that the direction from which the wind blows changes from one side of the boat to the other, allowing progress in the desired direction. Sailing vessels are unable to sail higher than a certain angle towards the wind, so “beating to windward” in a zig-zag fashion with a series of tacking maneuvers, allows a vessel to sail towards a destination that is closer to the wind that the vessel can sail directly.

    A sailing craft, whose course is downwind, jibes (or “wears” if square-rigged) by having the apparent wind cross the stern from one tack to the other. High-performance sailing craft may tack, rather than jibe, downwind, when the apparent wind is well forward.” Wikipedia

    Here is my projected voyage of the Mulekites and of Lehi.

    See my maps about the many voyages to the Promised land. I sincerely believe the Jaredites came from Babel through to Persian Gulf on the first set of barges and ended up in China or Japan with the second set of barges traveling 344 days as Ether says, to the Northwest coast of America near Seattle. See my blog here: https://bookofmormonevidence.org/jaredites-2-sets-of-barges-pacific-landing/

    If you want more details on any voyage. Don’t just dismiss these theories, study and ask questions. Firm Foundation Expo Facebook post Feb 10, 2024 Rian Nelson riannelson@aol.com or 801-931-9031

    This is a picture from Philip Beal of his voyage from Tunisia to Ft Lauderdale Florida. ending in April 2020.

  • Is the Word “SNOW” in the Book of Mormon?

    Is the Word “SNOW” in the Book of Mormon?

    If you answered No, to the title of this blog, the word snow is not found in the Book of Mormon, you would be in agreement with 90% of those in the Mesoamerican camp and probably 50% of other regular Latter-day Saints. People have said for so many years there is no snow in the Book of Mormon, yet most have not read that passage lately, or ever! 

    But these theorists would say, yes, but that was in a dream, Nephi wasn’t talking about real snow. Well, who was Nephi writing to? To his children and grand children and to us. Why would Nephi use the word snow if he had never experienced it? Why would he mention snow if his children wouldn’t understand what the word snow meant? Did you know the term “the whiteness of the driven snow” is not found in the Bible? They wouldn’t known about DRIVEN snow unless they lived in upstate New York or in Wyoming during winter. And yes, it does snow in Israel at times.

    CLIMATE

    What was the nature of the climate of the Book of Mormon? One longstanding question has been that of snow. If the Book of Mormon lands were in North America, why was there no mention of snow? If I told you right now the word “snow” is in the Book of Mormon, what would you say? Over 80% of the people I speak to today say, “NO it isn’t”. Then I ask them to look it up, there is usually shock on their faces. From there it is easy to discuss this issue. We have been conditioned by the Mesoamerican Theorists that there is no snow mentioned in the Book of Mormon. I would also say that 40% of Heartlanders don’t even know that snow is mentioned in the Book of Mormon. (1 Nephi 11:8)

    Annotated Book of Mormon

     

    “Nephi recorded the description of his previous vision of the Tree of Life: “And I looked and beheld a tree… and the beauty thereof was far beyond, yea, exceeding of all beauty; and the whiteness thereof did exceed the whiteness of the driven snow” (1 Nephi 11:8). Nephi was addressing his own people after having separated from the Lamanites and wrote this description on the small Plates of Nephi, which he was commanded to make forty years after arriving in the Promised Land (2 Nephi 5:30-34). It was thirty years after he made the large set of plates which were used by his father Lehi to record his history and visions. Nephi’s children and grandchildren never lived in Jerusalem. The Nephites were living in the land choice above all others where “driven” snow must have been common in order for them to understand the analogy of “whiteness of the driven snow,” an expression not found in Hebrew Scripture.

    As an example, Isaiah wrote: “…though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow…” a passage that was written on the Plates of Brass in the book of Isaiah (1:18). Nephi did not write, “they shall be as white as snow,” Nephi instead wrote, “…the whiteness thereof did exceed the whiteness of the driven snow.” In other words, the children and grandchildren of Nephi must have had experienced something similar to a blizzard—snow driven by the wind. Nephi may have experienced this weather condition in the Promised Land, and after living there for forty years, he knew that the generations of his people would understand this specific description as an analogy of the “whiteness” of the fruit of the Tree of Life. Nephi was commanded by God to write on the small plates “for the ministry of my people” (1 Nephi 9:3), suggesting this unique and specific analogy would have meaning to them.

    By comparison Nephi records what his father, Lehi saw in the vision while in the Arabian wilderness: “Yea and I beheld that the fruit thereof was white, to exceed all the whiteness that I had ever seen” (1 Nephi 8:11). The phrase, “whiteness of the driven snow” is Nephi’s description, recorded forty years after arriving in the Promised Land, suggesting that he lived somewhere in North America where blizzards “drive” the snow, providing an analogy that had a special and understandable meaning for those who witnessed snow driven by strong winds.” (See p. 300, Annotated Book of Mormon “Four Seasons in the Promised Land.”)

    “I want to mention something about the driven snow from an artist point of view. When the sun is at an angle and it hits the snow that is piled up or driven, it reflects so brilliantly that at certain angles it’s almost blinding to look at it. The top of the regular snow in most cases reflects the blue of the sky or the grey of the sky and really is not that white. But driven snow reflects that brilliant sunlight not off the surface but off the part of the snow that is driven or piled up and when it is in that condition it can be truly a bright white” – Clark Kelley Price, Professional Artist. See one of his brand new beautiful paintings below:

    “Truly He was the Son of God” by Clark Kelley Price

    Actually, snow and hail are mentioned three times in the text in conjunction with dreams and exhortations (1 Nephi 11:8, Mosiah 12:6 and Helaman 5:12), but no mention is made that they experienced it happening. Both “rain” and “heat” are mentioned in seven verses; twice rain is mentioned as having occurred, once by the Nephites (Helaman 11:17) and once by the Jaredites (Ether 9:35), all other references are speaking in prophecy or metaphorically. There are three instances of observed normal weather phenomena and only two mention the most common—that of rain.

    Only once is a hot day mentioned as having occurred as found in Alma 51:33 where it reads: “And it came to pass that when the night had come, Teancum and his servant stole forth and went out by night, and went into the camp of Amalickiah; and behold, sleep had overpowered them because of their much fatigue, which was caused by the labors and heat of the day.”

    It makes sense that the climate found in Jerusalem would be the same as the climate found in the New World. Seeds would grow, same type of beasts for the Law of Moses etc. There are only two seasons south of the Tropic of Cancer.

    This solitary reference has formed the foundation upon which many have speculated about the climate of the Book of Mormon. From this one verse it has been surmised that a tropical climate is indicated by the text. But does the text justify such an assumption?

    Assuming that the term “heat of the day” refers to the outdoor temperature of that particular day, the timing of the battle is important for context: “And thus endeth the twenty and fifth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi” (Alma 51:37). The Nephites’ lunar calendar meant that the end of their year was the beginning of spring on their observed Jewish calendar.

    Weather patterns may have been different anciently, so it may not have been unusual to experience warm temperatures in the Midwestern States in April (the beginning of the Jewish New Year.) Even so, temperature data shows that Cleveland, Ohio, a city noted for its cold winters, recorded highs of 83 degrees F in March, 1945 and 88 degrees F in April, 1986. Similarly, weather almanac’s for St. Louis, Missouri for the month of April have recorded average high temperatures of 67 degrees F and record high temperatures of 93 degrees F. Source: http://myforecast.co/bin/climate.m?city=22127&metric=false

    Therefore, it is quite possible that Teancum found Amalickiah much fatigued due to an unseasonably warm day at the end of the 25th year of the reign of the judges in March or April, 67 B.C. There is no reason to assume a tropical climate is necessitated by the text when all that would be required is one of any number of warm sunny spring days in the North American Heartland.

    In Helaman 11:17, it says, “that it [rain] did bring forth her fruit in the season of her fruit”. In North America what is the season of her fruit? Look at the picture lower left and see that typically in Ohio the harvest season is July, August, and September. In South America what is the season of her fruit? All the time! See the chart below right and you will notice things are abundant almost any time of the year in Brazil.

    Alma 46:40 it says,  “And there were some who died with fevers, which at some seasons of the year were very frequent in the landbut not so much so with fevers, because of the excellent qualities of the many plants and roots which God had prepared to remove the cause of diseases, to which men were subject by the nature of the climate—”

    At what seasons of the year would fevers be more likely? In South America there are basically two seasons. Hot and hotter. Or, warm and warmer. Rainy or not rainy? Dry or wet? In North America there are 4 seasons of the year and and at what time of the year are fevers and the flu more frequent?

    The Flu Season
    “While seasonal influenza (flu) viruses are detected year-round in the United States, flu viruses are most common during the fall and winter. The exact timing and duration of flu seasons can vary, but influenza activity often begins to increase in October. Most of the time flu activity peaks between December and February, although activity can last as late as May.” Center for Disease Control

    “Remember that the southern hemisphere seasons are reversed – with summer roughly November to February, and winter in June to August. Peru is pretty much a year round destination thanks to its proximity to the equator. However, visit between January and March and you’ll be slap bang in the middle of the rainy season.” Responsible Travel 


    The Mothers of Invention of a Snowless Setting by Jonathan Neville

    Below I will share highlights of a most enjoyable blog by Jonathan Neville, all about snow in the Book of Mormon. If you want the entire blog post visit here:

    “Mesoamerican advocates have trained their followers well. If you engage in a conversation about Book of Mormon geography with people afflicted with Mesomania, within minutes they will say something such as, “If the Book of Mormon took place in North America, it would have mentioned snow.”

    The argument is so irrational that we’re surprised it has endured, but I heard it again last week from a well-educated, experienced, long-time BYU-affiliated person who was perfectly serious.

    The basic idea is explained throughout the publications of the citation cartel, so if you’re involved with this issue, you’ve surely seen or heard it.

    Here’s one of the best explanations, this one from Jeff Lindsay, a persistent Mesoamerican advocate:

    “If the Book of Mormon were based on elements from Joseph’s environment, and if he was describing a people who lived or at least fought major battles in the New York area (around the puny hill where the plates where buried, which many Mormons incorrectly and implausibly associated with the Hill Cumorah of the text), then we would expect the snow and cold of winter to play a key factor.”

    http://mormanity.blogspot.com/2006/07/snow-in-jerusalem.html

    This passage is a beaut on several levels.

    First, the passage exemplifies the series of cascading assumptions that typify Mesoamerican “logic.”

    Second, by rejecting the New York Cumorah and claiming that “many Mormons” are incorrect, the passage dismisses Joseph and Oliver as ignorant speculators who deceived the Church–but instead of mentioning them by name, he slyly includes them in the amorphous group “many Mormons.” (Note: few Mesoamerican advocates will openly admit they think this about Joseph and Oliver, but a few have. Whether they openly admit it or not, every Mesoamerican advocate rejects Joseph and Oliver. Every time you see a map (like the ones at BYU Studies I linked to yesterday) or see a display like the one in the North Visitors Center on Temple Square, or read an article promoting the Mesoamerican setting, or even look at the artwork in most chapels and the Arnold Friberg paintings set in Central America that are in missionary editions of the Book of Mormon, you are seeing an implicit repudiation of Joseph and Oliver. So it’s not shocking to us that Jeff Lindsay would write this. It’s typical.)

    Third, we see this rejection of Joseph and Oliver framed as a proof of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon!

    That’s my favorite element of the no-snow argument, actually. The “scholars and educators” are actually making the argument that if Joseph wrote the Book of Mormon, he would have mentioned snow as an integral part of the narrative. What they don’t mention is that “View of the Hebrews” also doesn’t mention snow (except when the immigrants came across the Bering Strait). Their argument actually bolsters the anti-Mormon claims.
    ____________________

    Here is the genesis of the Mesomania about snow.

    1 Nephi 11:8 describes the fruit on the tree of life by writing “the whiteness thereof did exceed the whiteness of the driven snow.”

    This is the only mention of the term “snow” in the Book of Mormon (not counting the 116 pages). Presumably Nephi wrote this passage in the Old World, not the New World, and then, presumably, no one mentioned snow in the New World. Therefore, according to the citation cartel, the New World events of the Book of Mormon had to take place in a setting that lacked snow.

    I know, you’re having trouble keeping a straight face reading their argument, but there’s more.

    The “no snow” argument is really the inverse of the argument these same “scholars and educators” make about volcanoes. The text never mentions volcanoes, so these “scholars and educators” conclude the Book of Mormon had to take place in a setting that featured volcanoes.

    Which is the same argument that the Book of Mormon had to take place in an area that featured tapirs and jungles and massive stone temples, none of which are ever mentioned or described in the text.

    According to Mesomania logic, it is less likely that a feature of a geographical setting (i.e., snow) is actually found in that setting when it is mentioned in the text than when a feature (i.e., volcanoes) is not mentioned at all!

    That’s only the beginning of this Alice-in-Wonderland logic invented by necessity.


    The Fair blog at LDS Living has an all-time classic here. I’ll put my interlinear notes in red:

    Weather in relation to Book of Mormon geography
    by FAIR Blog Opinions & Features

    Comments by Jonathan Neville in Red [footnotes omitted]
    Snow [actually, “driven snow”] is only mentioned once in The Book of Mormon, and that is only when the Lehites were still in the Old World. [We don’t know when Nephi wrote this. Nephi wasn’t describing physical snow anyway; he was using “driven snow” as a metaphor, writing some time after the event (i.e., it’s just as likely he wrote chapter 11 in the New World as in the Old World). He wrote to his children (2 Ne. 26:1), so using “driven snow” as a metaphor while living in tropical Central America would be confusing at best, a contradiction to his insistence on writing in plainness (2 Nephi 32:7)] 

    This is very indicative of where The Book of Mormon took place. [I agree; it had to take place in an area that featured “driven snow,” especially since this is not a Biblical term.]

    If they lived in an area that was cold, such as the area around the Great Lakes, surely the bitter winters known in that area would have been mentioned. [Lots of fallacies here, but I’ll just mention the obvious three. First, Nephi did mention driven snow. Second, Book of Mormon authors rarely mentioned weather, and when Mormon did (Alma 46:40), he mentioned “some seasons,” not just the two in Central America (rainy and dry). Third, this argument, if applied consistently, precludes Central America as a possible setting because the text never once mentions volcanoes, jungles, jade, tapirs, or even Mayans. But one thing we’ve learned from the citation cartel over the years: they don’t apply their arguments consistently.]

    Other than the one reference , there is no mention of snow at all where the primary events of The Book of Mormon took place. [“Other than the one reference” is a classic dodge, isn’t it? If there were two references, the argument would be, “other than the two references.” This line of reasoning has no coherent limit. And the one mention is still one more than any mention of Mesoamerican features.]

    John Lund states “The pilgrims of Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620 often referenced the cold and the snow. If the major events of The Book of Mormon all happened around the New York Hill Cumorah, one would expect to hear about snow.”

    [This is almost poetic, the ability to pack so many logical fallacies into two sentences. The pilgrims landed in winter and nearly starved. Lehi landed in the spring with plenty of time to plant crops and with abundant wildlife to eat in the meantime. Not even the text suggests that the major events of the Book of Mormon happened around Cumorah; only the final battles did. This is another fine example of a straw man fallacy (creating the straw man claim that the major events took place around Cumorah, then attacking that straw man on the ground that the text doesn’t mention snow). The poetry comes in adding “all” to major events. Needless to say, many of major events took place in and around Jerusalem, so this straw man fails on that account already. For that matter, why didn’t Nephi describe snow falling when he was confronting Laban, since snow is so common in Jerusalem now, according to these “scholars and educators.”]

    However, the cold is not what we hear about. Instead, we hear phrases like “heat of the day”[This is a fun rhetorical trick. “Phrases like” implies there are other similar phrases, but there aren’t any! Plus, anyone who has been in the Midwestern U.S. or even western New York in the summer knows what “heat of the day” means. Besides, it’s easy to have a battle in the “heat of the day” even in cold weather. For example, in The Late War, we have this sequence (on p.49): “And when the battle waxed hot, and they began to rush upon one another with great violence, the small band of Columbia fought desperately, and the slaughter was dreadful; and the pure snow of heaven was sprinkled and stained with the blood of men!”], without any indication of a cold climate one would expect to see if The Book of Mormon took place in the North Eastern United States. [This reprise of the straw man expands the fake setting a little beyond the immediate proximity, but it’s no less misleading because of the straw man assertion that the Book of Mormon took place in the North Eastern U.S. Only the final battles took place at Cumorah.] 

    The Lehites came from the Middle East, travelled years through the vast Saudi Arabian deserts, and then we only hear about the heat of the new land. [I missed the part in the text where Nephi relates his encounter with all this heat in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia. Why was it okay for him to forget to mention the weather in the Old World, but he was supposed to describe it in detail in the New World?]

    If it were a new, colder climate, it would most certainly be mentioned. [The “most certainly” argument is a lot of fun, especially when FairMormon doesn’t know what was on the 116 pages and Nephi specifically focused not on history (or climate) but on prophecies and promises (which Mesomania also treats with great sophistry). A generation removed from Nephi, people had no “Old World” to compare with, yet they still presumably understood Nephi’s “driven snow” metaphor because Nephi wrote in plainness. And look at how Mesomania really uses the “most certainly” argument. If there were volcanoes, jungles, jade, jaguars, tapirs, massive stone pyramids, and, especially, millions of Mayans, these “most certainly” would not be mentioned, according to Mesomania. Do these Mesoamerican promoting “scholars and educators” really expect us to buy this argument? The answer, of course, is yes. They do expect us to fall for these arguments. And thousands of their students have gone through BYU accepting these logical fallacies, which they have continued to prop up as Institute and Seminary and Sunday School teachers ever since.]

    The rest of this awesome article is found on Fairmormon here. It’s more of the same nonsense, IMO.

    Source: Book of Mormon Wars by Jonathan Neville


    Art by Val Chadwick Bagley

    See Annotated Book of Mormon by David Hocking and Rod Meldrum, page 16, 300, and 566

    More on book of Mormon Climate and Seasons is here: https://www.bofm.blog/seasons-4-heartland-vs-2-mesoamerica/

    Order the Annotated Book of Mormon here!
    http://bookofmormonevidence.org/bookstore/product/annotated-book-of-mormon/

  • Peccaries & Swine in the Heartland- not Mesoamerica

    Peccaries & Swine in the Heartland- not Mesoamerica

    This initial  information is important before I blog about my subject of “Peccaries & Swine in the Heartland no Mesoamerica”, because I want you to have some context of Book of Mormon Central’s [BOMC] subjects on anachronisms. [which means, The representation of someone or something as existing or something as happening in other than chronological, proper, or historical order]. I want you to see how BOMC especially speaks about animals that the Book of Mormon speaks of, but none of these animals are found in Mesoamerica. However, you will find most of the Book of Mormon animals not found in Mesoamerica are found in North America, where I believe the proper geography is for the Book of Mormon.

    “The legal organization behind Book of Mormon Central is the Book of Mormon Archaeological Forum, [link below] Inc., a 501 (c) 3 non-profit public charity chartered in the state of Utah in 2004. Book of Mormon Central is not an official part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but rather an independent organization. BMC welcomes donations in support of this work. Book of Mormon Central is only possible through the diligent service of many volunteers. Book of Mormon Central began operating in May, 2015.” https://www.bookofmormoncentral.org/about

    Big Question: I have always wondered why BOMC and BOMAF get to put 4 Emeritus General Authorities on their website who support their organization, and we also have many Emeritus General Authorities who support the Heartland, but we are not allowed to tell you their names or put them on our website.  This has nothing to do with the Prophet and Apostles, as I don’t question anything they do. I’m sure some historian or scholar got permission from someone in the hierarchy. See which Emeritus GA’s are on their Advisory board here:

    See a Bold Statement below from BOMAF below.

    EVIDENCES THAT THE BOOK OF MORMON TOOK PLACE IN MESOAMERICA

    Why Mesoamerica?

    Criteria for Book of Mormon Lands and People

    “There are several theories held among Latter-day Saints for the location of Book of Mormon lands. Some place the geography of the book in upstate New York or near the Great Lakes. Others look to Peru and South America, or to the Baja Peninsula, or Texas, and some even propose the Malaysian Peninsula. BMAF supports a Mesoamerican context for the major Book of Mormon sites. Other locations may meet some of the following criteria, but only Mesoamerica meets all these elements required by the book itself.  This list of criteria is not a cafeteria list.  Any Book of Mormon lands proposal must be able to demonstrate all.” BOMC
     
      A Narrow Neck of land and 4 seas (east, west, north, and south)
      A major river running south to north from a narrow strip of wilderness
      A high civilization with cities, kings, artisans, military, and priests
      An agricultural base large enough to support several millions of people
      A highly literate (written language) society with scribes as important officers
      Functional calendar and dating systems
      A merchant class using weights and measures
      Engineers to build houses, temples, towers, and highways using cement
      Highly skilled craftsmen working with precious metals and stonework
      A warrior society involved in large battles using trained soldiers and sophisticated fortifications
      Legends of a white, bearded God
     
    See here their list of requirements to be a Mesoamerican Geography.
     
    After their long list above, notice their next quote that says,

    “These Criteria must be in the Western Hemisphere but where Joseph Smith could not have known about them in 1829.” BOMC

    What a power-packed statement. This statement says that whatever Moroni (My blog here shows over 20 visits to Joseph by Moroni and many other past prophets), or other translated beings or prophets taught Joseph Smith before 1829 he would not have recognized about Book of Mormon geography, animals, cities, teachings, way of life, interpreters, battles, artifacts, buried bodies, mounds, spiritual instructions, narrow passes, and more. What a list of disclaimers. This is why I have trouble taking seriously anything BOMC says about geography, and translation. I will still look for their opinions of things that I may have not studied as their scholars know many great things that I agree with.

    Our friends at Book of Mormon Central have many great articles and information, but when it comes to their Book of Mormon geography, some say that they are neutral like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is and believes. I know that is the church’s position and I am perfectly fine with that. I believe BOMC or BOMAF’s neutrality stand, makes it easier for researchers and members to feel more comfortable to read their their blog for answers, more than it says they really are neutral when it comes to geography however. In my opinion they are not neutral. You can’t find anything about the Heartland’s geography they say is true, except about when they speak of Barley in North America and Abinadi being tortured using faggots was something that happened in North and Mesoamerica, both. [See Blog Here]

    Below is an article by two BOMC scholars about their position about animals in the Book of Mormon that they can’t explain why they are not found in Mesoamerica. This is why I speak about specifically “swine” as the Meso-scholars can’t explain it to my satisfaction.

    Type: Journal Article Animals in the Book of Mormon: Challenges and Perspectives Author(s): Wade E. Miller and Matthew Roper Source:
    BYU Studies Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 4 (2017)
    Published by: BYU Studies Page(s): 133–175

    Abstract: When the Book of Mormon first appeared, skeptics said that references to horses, asses, elephants, and other animals (such as swine and cows) were out of place. During the first century after its publication, Book of Mormon critics argued that such animals never existed anywhere in the Americas before the arrival of Columbus and western Europeans in the late fifteenth century. In time, however, scientific discoveries showed that species of horses, asses, elephants, and other animals had once been present in North America, although dating to an earlier period than that covered in the Book of Mormon.(1)

    Encouraged by such discoveries, the present authors and some other specialists reasoned that future research and investigation would show that some of these species survived into historical times consistent with the account in the Book of Mormon. It can no longer be argued that there were no horses, asses, or elephants in the Americas. The issue has shifted to when such animals became extinct. As we approach the end of the second century since the publication of the Book of Mormon, the skeptical reader is more likely to claim that these animals disappeared before the advent of modern humans or long before the time covered by the Nephite record. Some Latter-day Saints are challenged by what they consider a lack of evidence supporting the historicity of the animals mentioned in the Book of Mormon. People of faith, however, are not alone in their challenges. Secular scholars have their own difficulties interpreting the past. An understanding of some of these challenges and the nature of the tools and evidence needed to address such questions can provide a helpful perspective to those who may be troubled by this issue.

    In this article, we address factors that provide important perspectives on animals mentioned in the Book of Mormon.(2) For many Latter-day Saints, the subject may be of peripheral interest. For others, these matters may be a challenge. The truth of the scriptural text, whose primary purpose is to testify of God’s dealings with an ancient group of his covenant people, is first and foremost a matter of faith. However, this should not stop scholars from seeking all available truths that can be derived from this sacred text. B. H. Roberts wrote, “Secondary evidences in support of truth, like secondary causes in natural phenomena [science], may be of first rate importance and mighty factors in the achievement of God’s purposes.”(3)

    Notes:
    1. Fred James Pack, “Revelation Ante-dating Scientific Discovery: An Instance,” Improvement Era 10 (February 1907): 241–47; (June 1907): 595–97; B. H. Roberts, New Witnesses for God (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1909), 3:534–43; Franklin S. Harris, The Book of Mormon: Message and Evidences (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1953), 70–94.
    2. The authors have benefited greatly from the pioneering research and publications of John L. Sorenson on this subject, which represent the essential starting place for those who approach this subject. See John L. Sorenson, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1985), 288–99; John L. Sorenson, Animals in the Book of Mormon: An Annotated Bibliography (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 1992); and John L. Sorenson, Mormon’s Codex: An Ancient American Book (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book; Provo, Utah: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2013), 309–21.
    3. Roberts, New Witnesses for God, 2:viii.

    Nephites and Jaredites had Swine?

    The answer is, Yes! And they had sheep and other animals spoken of in the Book of Mormon. All of the rhetoric and vagueness of the above BOMC statements, to try and get pigs and sheep and cows and doves and goats and rams and horses and elephants into a Mesoamerican setting, it can’t be done according to history. North America has all of those animals before during and after the timeline of the Jaredites and the Nephites. Read on.

    Ether 9:18 And also all manner of cattle, of oxen, and cows, and of sheep, and of swine, and of goats, and also many other kinds of animals which were useful for the food of man.

    3 Nephi 14:6 Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

    The 1828 Webster’s dictionary defines “swine ” as;
    SWINEnoun sing. and plural A hog, a quadruped of the genus Sus, which furnishes man with a large portion of his most nourishing food. The fat or lard of this animal enters into various dishes in cookery. The swine is a heavy, stupid animal, and delights to wallow in the mire.

    A collared peccary or Javelina or “Swine” are referred to twice in the Book of Mormon, and states that the swine were “useful for the food of man” among the Jaredites, and among the Nephites in a discussion to not mix pearls with swine.

    Anachronisms

    There are a number of words and phrases in the Book of Mormon that are anachronistic—their existence in the text of the Book of Mormon is at odds with known linguistic patterns or archaeological findings.

    Each of the anachronisms is a word, phrase, artifact, or other concept that critics, historians, archaeologists, or linguists believe did not exist in America during the time period in which the Book of Mormon claims to have been written.

    Mormon scholars and apologists respond to the anachronisms in various ways. Since I believe the events of the Book of Mormon happened in North America, I look for archaeology that support that setting.

    Peccaries in Tennessee

    *Editors note: It is my opinion that when many archaeologists identify dating of artifacts at millions of years, as a young earth creationist I believe no animals lived on this earth until they were created about 3-4,000 BC just before Adam was placed on the earth.

    Two species of peccary were present in North America north of Mexico *16,000 years ago, and remains of both are found in the midwestern U.S. The two species are the flat-headed peccary (Platygonus compressus) and the long-nosed peccary (Mylohyus nasutus).

    Both the flat-headed peccary and the long-nosed-peccary stood about three-quarters of a meter (about 30 inches) tall at the shoulder and probably weighed around 50 kg (110 pounds). Both were probably fairly omnivorous, although the long-nosed peccary consumed more browse (trees and shrubs) than did the flat-headed peccary.

    Peccaries are members of the artiodactyl family Tayassuidae. They are New World relatives of the Old World true pigs (family Suidae). Peccaries can easily be distinguished by the fact that their upper canines (tusks) point downward. In true pigs (suids) the tusks curve upward. In addition, peccaries have less complex cheek teeth, reduced side toes, and large, dorsal musk glands.

    The flat-headed peccary apparently lived in herds. Sometimes these herds used caves as shelters. Large numbers of peccary bones have been found in several caves in Kentucky, Missouri, and Texas. In some cases, such as Welsh Cave, Kentucky (specimen shown above), Bat Cave, Missouri, Zoo Cave, Missouri, and Laubach Cave, Texas, these finds probably represent long-term usage of a cave by herds of peccaries. Unlike the flat-headed peccary, Mylohyus was probably a solitary animal and did not frequent caves. In spite of the fact that they did not frequent caves, occasionally long-nosed peccary remains are found in caves.

    To the left is a fragment of a long-nosed peccary jaw was recovered from a cave in Jefferson County, Missouri. The teeth are shorter and have more rounded cusps than do the teeth of the flat-headed peccary (on the right). These differences in the teeth are due to the fact that long-nosed peccaries lived in woodlands and ate mainly shrubs while flat-headed peccaries lived in open areas and ate coarser vegetation.

    Bat Cave, Missouri contained the remains of at least 98 individual flat-headed peccaries. The material from this site is in the collections of the Illinois State Museum.

    Both Platygonus and Mylohyus became extinct in North America approximately *11,500 years ago. The reason for their extinction is being studied by paleontologists.

    Peccary Finds in the Midwestern U.S.

    This map shows some of the sites at which the flat-headed peccary (red triangles) and long-nosed peccary (green dots) have been found in the midwestern United States. The sites on this map are all relatively well-dated and well-studied. These sites contain peccary remains that are between *40,000 and 11,500 years old. [Wow, old pigs wouldn’t you say? Of course this is rubbish to me. How can anyone date them with that great of a distance of time. Why not just say the pig is millions of years old like they do for dinosaurs? I strongly believe dinosaurs lived during the time of Adam. See my blog here and here

    Long Fossil History.

    Peccaries have a long fossil history. They first evolved around *33 million years ago in either North America or Eurasia. They are present in North America from that time right through to the present. Between about *5 and 33 million years ago they were also found in the Old World. Peccaries dispersed into South America approximately *2.5 million years ago and have been successful in that area since. Three species of peccary are alive today. The Chacoan peccary (Catagonus wagneri), which is found in the Gran Chaco region of Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina, is a close relative of the extinct Platygonus. The collared peccary (Tayassu tajacu) ranges from Arizona and Texas south to northern Argentina. The white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari) ranges from southern Mexico to northern Argentina. Source:

    So pigs were in North America 33 million years ago and it only took 31 million years or so to disperse to South America” Wow I am believing this aren’t you? [haha] The fact remains there are peccaries in North America as seen in other archaeological artifacts above and below.

    Peccary

    Extinct Peccary NPS Photo/ Matternes Mural

    Hagerman Horse Quarry

    “The Hagerman Horse Quarry is a paleontological site containing the largest concentration of Hagerman horse (Equus simplicidens) fossils yet found. The quarry is within Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument, located west of Hagerman, Idaho, USA, at the geographic division of the Snake River Plain. The Hagerman Horse Quarry is an integral part of the monument and is located on the northern flank of Fossil Gulch in the northern portion of the monument.

    See my blog on Horses in North America here:

    The Hagerman Horse Quarry resides near the top of the hillside of Smithsonian Hill. The hill was named from the early Smithsonian excavations of the Hagerman horse. The Hagerman horse is the first fossil representation of the genus Equus in North America.” Source

    “In 1938, one of the scientists who excavated at the Hagerman Horse Quarry, Dr. C.L. Gazin, described a new species of peccary, Platygonus pearcei, from the Hagerman fossil beds. The name Platygonus means flat head and refers to the straight shape of the forehead. The species name pearcei is for the discoverer, George B. Pearce, a member of the 1934 Smithsonian field crew. Since its original discovery at Hagerman, Pearce’s peccary has been found near Grand View Idaho and at White Bluffs, Washington. People often confuse peccaries, which are found in the New World, with pigs which originated in the Old World, especially since some domestic pigs brought by european settlers have escaped over the years and now run wild in many parts of the United States. These feral pigs are popularly known as razor-back hogs.

    Relatives of the Old World pigs include the wart hog of Africa. One of the ways to tell the two groups apart is the shape of the canine tooth or “tusk”. In the Old World pigs the tusk is long and curves around on itself, whereas in the New World peccaries the tusk is short and straight. Peccaries are plant eaters and use it for defense. By rubbing the tusks together they can make a chattering noise that warns potential predators to not get too close. Today there are three living species of peccary. They are found from the southwestern United States through Central America and into South America. The only peccary in the United States is the collared peccary (Dicotyles tajacu), also known by its spanish name, javelina. It is often found in dry arid habitats. A second species is the White-lipped peccary (Tyassu peccari) which is found in the rain forests of Central and South America. The last species, the Chacoan peccary (Catagonus wagneri) is the closest living relative to the extinct Platygonus pearcei found at Hagerman. It is found in the dry shrub habitat or Chaco of Paraguay, Bolivia and Southern Brazil. The Chacoan peccary has the unusual distinction of having been first been described based on fossils and was originally thought to be only an extinct species. In 1975 the animal was discovered to still be alive and well in the Chaco region of Paraguay. This third species of peccary was well known by the native Indians but it took awhile for scientists to discover its existence. Peccaries have a long history in North America.

    They first appear in the Early Oligocene, about *32 million years ago and a variety of different species are present in faunas of different ages across the continent. Some of these extinct peccaries have been found at John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in Oregon and at Badlands National Monument in South Dakota. Although common in South America today, peccaries did not reach that continent until about 9 million years ago. Prior to that, there was no isthmus of Panama, and South America was an island continent. As the Panamanian isthmus formed, many North American animals entered South America. Along with peccaries, lames and tapirs also migrated south. Today people think these animals are South American, yet all come from North American ancestors. The exchange was a two-way street however, and some of the ancient South American species, like the ground sloth, migrated north and are found at Hagerman.” https://www.nps.gov/hafo/learn/nature/peccary.htm

    Georgia Before People

    Peccary Cave in Arkansas

    Perhaps the best site for Pleistocene fossils in Arkansas is Peccary Cave located in Newton County.  The site was first excavated in 1960s, and a follow-up expedition prospected for fossils again in the early 1990s.  The fossil remains of at least 51 species of mammals have been found here. 4000 specimens of a minimum of 64 individual flat-headed peccaries (Platygonus compressus) were discovered in the cave, hence the name.  The bones of other extinct species excavated from the cave include mammoth, mastodon, bison (Bison antiquus), stag-moose, helmeted musk-ox, tapir, beautiful armadillo, and dire wolf.  There are also remains of extralimital species found here that no longer occur in the region–grizzly bear, pine marten, porcupine, heather vole, and numerous other rodents and insectivores of northern affinities.  Plenty of species still found in the region are represented in the cave as well such as beaver, otter, muskrat, raccoon, coyote, gray fox, opossum, and either mule or white-tailed deer. Reptile and amphibian specimens have been excavated from the cave along with a few human-made artifacts of unknown cultural origin.

    Map of Arkansas highlighting Newton County

    Newton County, location of Peccary Cave.  

    Image result for Platygonus compressus

    Illustration of the flat-headed peccary.  Peccaries didn’t use Peccary Cave as a den.  Instead, they either fell inside or their bones were washed into the cave when the nearby creek flooded.  Birds of prey dropped or defecated smaller animals into the cave from overhanging trees.

    The fossils represent several different climate phases.  The lowest level contains fossils over *22,000 calendar years BP, a climate phase that includes a weak interstadial and the following early glacial maximum.  Mixed Ice Age woodlands of spruce, pine, and hardwoods interspersed with prairies predominated.  7 different species of squirrels lived in the region then, showing how many diverse habitats occurred here.  Red squirrels and least chipmunks, now absent from the region, preferred spruce forests; gray squirrels, fox squirrels, and southern flying squirrels occur in temperate hardwood forests; woodchucks like meadows; and 13-lined ground squirrels require tree-less plains.  The author of the study discussed below thinks the following glacial maximum caused the entire Missouri Plateau to become inhospitable desert because there are few fossils from the site, dating to between *21,000 calendar years ago-15,000 calendar years BP.  Undoubtedly, the region became more arid during this climate phase, and desert scrub grassland likely predominated, but I think there are alternative explanations for the lack of fossils during this time period here: a) the cave entrance may have become closed and/or b) the barren landscape allowed animals to see the trap entrance and avoid it whereas before it was hidden by thick vegetation and animals frequently fell inside.  Without overhanging limbs there was no perch for birds of prey to drop of defecate the remains of their meals.  Moreover, the nearby creek dried up, so there were no floods to wash fossils into the cave.

    The upper level of sediment represents a warm dry interstadial post *15,000 calendar years BP when the region was dominated by grassland.  Bison fossils appear during this phase, and toad fossils outnumber frog bones.  Toads can survive better than frogs in more arid climates.

    Kurt Wilson wrote his PHD thesis about the peccary and dire wolf bones found in Peccary Cave.  His paper has interesting information, but it is incompletely researched, and his conclusions are logically flawed.  He believes flat-headed peccaries were always an uncommon species.  Part of his reason for this assertion is based on his incorrect observation that “the southeast is virtually devoid of records (of flat-headed peccaries), except for a dozen localities in Florida.”  Wilson is unaware of 2 sites in north Georgia (Yarbrough Cave and Ladds) and 1 site in coastal South Carolina where fossil remains of flat-headed peccaries have been found.  It is also illogical to assume a species was absent from a region based on its absence in the fossil record.  Large areas of the southeast are devoid of fossils because the local geology is not conducive to fossil preservation, not because animals didn’t live there in the past.

    Wilson concludes flat-headed peccaries became extinct due to climate change based on 4 lines of evidence that are easily debunked.

    Collared Peccary

    1. He dismisses overhunting by humans as a cause of flat-headed peccary extinction when he regurgitates the tired old claim of Meltzer and Grayson (an archaeologist and anthropologist…not paleoecologists) that there isn’t enough archaeological evidence of human interaction (kill sites) with this species.  I consider this reasoning absurd in the extreme.  99.999…etc% of animals that ever lived on earth left no fossil evidence whatsoever.  It has always seemed unreasonable to me to expect the remains of the final populations of a species that overlapped with man for less than 2000 years to be preserved in the fossil record.  The chances of this happening are tiny.  I’ve noticed Grayson’s recent book published in 2016 is frequently being cited in new papers about Pleistocene vertebrates.  Grayson was blatantly dishonest in this book in the way he characterized a study that rules out climate change models of extinction.  (See: https://markgelbart.wordpress.com/2017/01/23/donald-graysons-disingenous-case-against-overkill/ ) Grayson lied and he knows he lied.

    2. Wilson assumes flat-headed peccaries became extinct in this region about 22,000 calendar years BP because their remains don’t occur in cave sediment after this date.  (When Wilson writes of extinction in his paper he means regional disappearance or extirpation because he’s aware terminal dates for this species in other regions are 11,000 calendar years ago.  Nevertheless, he clumsily never makes this distinction in his paper.)  He asserts peccaries became extinct here because the climate became too arid for them.  Again, he is basing his assertion on the dubious assumption that the absence of evidence is evidence of absence.  I think flat-headed peccaries were probably even more abundant during the arid climate phase because they were anatomically well-adapted to dry dusty environments.  Flat-headed peccaries had extensive structures in their nasal passages that helped filter dust.  Wilson must be unaware there are at least 9 fossil sites where herds of flat-headed peccaries were buried during sandstorms.  (See: https://markgelbart.wordpress.com/2013/03/10/when-sand-dunes-buried-herds-of-flat-headed-peccaries/ ) This suggests they were common in desert environments.  Flat-headed peccaries may have avoided falling in Peccary Cave after 22,000 calendar years BP because the area around the entrance to the cave was barren and not hidden by vegetation.  None happened to fall in the cave after this date, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t still occur in the region.  Other fossil sites in the region yield the remains of horses, but not a single horse fossil has been found in Peccary Cave.  Horses were likely another abundant species in the region that just happened to never fall in or enter Peccary Cave.

    3. Wilson did a stable isotope analysis of 2 flat-headed peccary teeth and concluded they fed upon just a few leguminous plant species, so they became extinct when these limited number of plant species disappeared from the region.  I don’t believe the entire dietary breadth of a species can be determined from such a small sample size.  Moreover, 1 study suggests stable isotope analysis is not at all reliable.  (See: https://markgelbart.wordpress.com/2016/06/24/trust-the-coprolites-not-the-stable-isotope-analysis/ )  Scientists compared the results of a stable isotope analysis of moa bones with actual fossil droppings.  The stable isotope analysis was wrong.  Flat-headed peccary teeth were built to eat grass and tough vegetation.  A species that survived millions of years of climate change didn’t exclusively feed upon just a few species of leguminous plants.

    4. Wilson asserts flat-headed peccaries were uncommon and thus vulnerable to extinction.  However, a new genetic study of 12 flat-headed peccary individuals from Sheridan Cave, Ohio, dating to just before their extinction revealed populations of this species were diverse and expanding.  This suggests flat-headed peccaries were common, adaptable, and had a wide geographical distribution until the species’ demise.

    Peccary Cave has yielded a wealth of information for paleoecologists, and I’m shocked at how little research has been published about this site.  I’ve been able to find about half a dozen research papers.  There hasn’t been a scientific excavation of the site since 1993, though amateurs are currently pillaging it.  Most of the specimens from this site have not yet been described in the scientific literature, and they are not listed on the paleobiology database. An early report of the site mentions the existence of peccary “droppings.”  Yet, nobody has studied the coprolites (please email me if I’m wrong)–an outrageous oversight.  We could actually find out what flat-headed peccaries ate, instead of guessing based on stable isotope analysis.  I’m not sure the coprolites were even collected and stored in a museum.  There should be hundreds of published papers about this site, not just a paltry 6.  I’ve come across other understudied fossil sites and collections in my research, but this site might possible be the most underappreciated.

    References:

    Bell, Kenneth; and Lee Davis

    “Sinkhole Excavations in Peccary Cave, Newton County, Arkansas”

    Arkansas Academy of Science 47(30) 1993

    Davis, Lee

    “Biostratigraphy of Peccary Cave, Newton, County, Arkansas”

    Arkansas Academy of Science 1969

    Perry, Tahlia; et. al.

    “Ancient DNA Analysis of the Extinct North American Flat-headed Peccary (Platygonus compressus)”

    Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 2017

    Wilson, Kurt

    “Late Pleistocene Extinction of the Flat-headed Peccary on the Ozark Plateau: Paleozoological Insights from Peccary Cave”

    Iowa State Graduate Thesis 2017

    Tennessee scientists unearth fossils of prehistoric pig-like creatures in stunning discovery

    By Madeline Farber | Fox News

    A modern-day peccary.

    A modern-day peccary. (iStock)

    In a thrilling discovery, scientists with East Tennessee State University (ETSU) have recently confirmed the prehistoric fossils found in an area known as the Gray Fossil Site belonged to two different species of ancient peccaries, pig-like creatures.

    The fossils, including part of a well-preserved skull, confirm that two species of peccaries — Mylohyus elmorei and Prosthennops serus — roamed this area in prehistoric times. In fact, the findings mark the first time the remains of either species have been found in the Appalachian region, the university said in a news release.

    While one of the two species, Prosthennops serus, had previously been found in other fossil sites in the U.S., it has never before been found in the Appalachian region. And the other, Mylohyus elmorei,  has “only been found in one region of central Florida, more than 900 kilometers to the south,” the university said.

    Scientists were able to identify these prehistoric species thanks to the “well-preserved remains of their skulls,” which included the “nearly complete lower jaws of both species.

    Both the Prosthennops serus and the Mylohyus elmorei would likely have been the size of a German shepherd, which scientists noted is larger than modern-day peccaries.

    “Details of the peccaries’ teeth suggest they spent their lives browsing on the leaves and fruits of succulent plants, so they would have been right at home in the Gray Fossil Site ecosystem, which we know from plant fossils was rich with tasty vegetation,” Chris Widga, the head curator at the ETSU Museum of Natural History at the Gray Fossil Site — which was once “a large pond surrounded by a lush forest” — said in a statement. https://www.foxnews.com/science/tennessee-scientists-unearth-fossils-of-prehistoric-pig-like-creatures-in-stunning-discovery

    Archaeology of New York

    The Archaeology of New York State by William A. Ritchie: 9780307820495 |  PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

    In the book “Archaeology of New York State” by William Ritchie in 1965 there have been found many ancient Peccary’s dated around the Jaredite and Nephite time periods. See their map below:

    As you see you also find many of the migratory and domesticated animals mentioned in the Book of Mormon. The food source of these animals alone show the ability for millions to have been feed during Book of Mormon time frames. In south Mesoamerica there are only migratory butterflies and turkies and it seems a challenge to feed on Apes, Llamas, and Lizards for survival.

    Mesoamerica also lacks the necessary animals needed to live the Law of Moses such as Sheep, Goats, Rams, Bullocks, and Doves.

  • Gathering Israel – Two Sticks, Two Lands

    Gathering Israel – Two Sticks, Two Lands

    The Heartland Research Group with John Lefgren, Mike and Betty LaFontaine and their entire team, are continually studying research from the Old World and the New World as a testimony that Jesus is the Christ.

    In essence they are helping the world join the two Sticks of Ezekiel where it says in the introduction of Ezekiel in the LDS King James Version Bible, “Ezekiel is shown the valley of dry bones—Israel will inherit the land in the Resurrection—The stick of Judah (the Bible) and the stick of Joseph (the Book of Mormon) will become one in the Lord’s hand—The children of Israel will be gathered and cleansed—David (the Messiah) will reign over them—They will receive the everlasting gospel covenant.” This research is becoming a very significant archaeological and ground breaking reunion of the House of Israel. A “miracle book” from the earth [Stone Box at Cumorah] is a sure witness that the “Last Days” are at hand. The rejoining of the Lord’s people and histories from Promised Lands of Israel and America, is a witness to the world of Christ’s ultimate love for all of His people on every continent.

    The connection of the Old World Phoenicians, likely bringing some of tribe of Judah like Mulek to America is of significance, as we join the two worlds. The ‘Phoenicia’ Voyages of 2009 and 2020 are an ideal test of the veracity of the Book of Mormon account. Former English Navy Captain Philip Beale, shows not only that the materials and technology of 600 BC allowed him to construct an ocean-going vessel representative of both Lehi’s group and the Mulekites voyages, as they may have crossed the Atlantic and landed near Florida in North America Blog Here You can now assist Heartland Research by donating or helping them re-construct that ship in Montrose, Iowa. Donate Here

    Every land the Lord has created and every person, are alike unto God. However, God chose a specific place for His people to have the ability to carry out His promises to share the world with His Gospel. The Lord chose two lands, the Holy Land, and land of Adam and his posterity here in America.

    As Pres. Hinckley said, “I should like to say a few words about America…No land is without its beauty, no people without their virtues, and I hope that you who come from elsewhere will pardon my saying a few words concerning my own native land, America…surely this is a good land, a choice land, a chosen land. To me it is a miracle, a creation of the Almighty.” Gordon B. Hinckley Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled”, BYU Speeches of the Year, October 29, 1974, pp. 267-68 )

    Why did the Lord chose North America? “…in culmination of the grand scheme of schemes, this great nation, the Republic of the United States, might be established upon this land as an asylum for the oppressed; a resting place, it might be said, for the Ark of the covenant, where the temple of our God might be built; where the plan of salvation might be introduced and practiced in freedom, and not a dog would wag his tongue in opposition to the purposes of the Almighty. We believe that this was His object in creating the Republic of the United States; the only land where his work could be commenced or the feet of his people find rest. No other land had such liberal institutions, had adopted so broad a platform upon which all men might stand. We give glory to those patriots for the noble work they did; but we give the first glory to God, our Father and their Father, who inspired them. We take them by the hand as brothers. We believe they did nobly their work, even as we would fain do ours, faithfully and well, that we might not be recreant in the eyes of God, for failing to perform the mission to which He has appointed us.” Bishop Orson F. Whitney, delivered in the Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Sunday Afternoon, April 19, 1885. Reported by John Irvine. Journal Discourses Volume 26 Page 201

    Broken Covenants- Children of Ancient Biblical Israel

    From the ground comes compelling evidence of broken covenants with the Lord in Palestine from the Northern Tribes of Israel in 722 BC and the Southern Tribes in 586 BC along with the once mighty nations of the Jaredites [Apx 500 BC] and the Nephites [Apx 400 AD] on North American soil. The Lord is gathering Israel in these last days, with the House of Israel being once again joined together as the Tribe of Joseph, and the Tribe of Judah.

    Judges CHAPTER 2

    The Lord was righteously angry at the original Children of Israel  Scripture says, “And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel; and he said, Because that this people hath transgressed my covenant.” Judges 2:20

    “An angel rebukes Israel for not serving the Lord—As a pattern of future events, a new generation arises that forsakes the Lord and serves Baal and Ashtaroth—The Lord is angry with the children of Israel and ceases to preserve them—He raises up judges to guide and lead them—The Canaanites are left in the land to test Israel.” Heading, Judges Chapter2

    Broken Covenants- Children of Book of Mormon Israel

    Jaredites:
    “And he had sworn in his wrath unto the brother of Jared, that whoso should possess this land of promise, from that time henceforth and forever, should serve him, the true and only God, or they should be swept off when the fulness of his wrath should come upon them.” Ether 2:8

    Nephites:
    “Behold, it is expedient that much should be done among this people, because of the hardness of their hearts, and the deafness of their ears, and the blindness of their minds, and the stiffness of their necks; nevertheless, God is exceedingly merciful unto them, and has not as yet swept them off from the face of the land.” Jarom 1:3

    “Therefore, repent ye, and humble yourselves before him, lest he shall come out in justice against you—lest a remnant of the seed of Jacob shall go forth among you as a lion, and tear you in pieces, and there is none to deliver.” Mormon 5:24

    Every American is under Covenant with the Lord, which covenant was made by General George Washington on September 22, 1789 at his inauguration. Earlier Washington said, “Come then, my Brethren, unite with us in an indissoluble Union, let us run together to
    the same Goal.—We have taken up Arms in Defence of our Liberty, our Property, our
    Wives, and our Children, we are determined to preserve them, or die.[Compare Moroni’s Title of Liberty statement.] Washington continues, “We look forward with Pleasure to that Day not far remote (we hope) when the Inhabitants of America shall have one Sentiment, and the full Enjoyment of the Blessings of a free Government.” The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 1, 16 June 1775?–?15

    Stay Centered in the Covenant Path

    Art by Ken Corbett

    Our dear Prophet has said, “Today, I spoke from my heart to the Saints in what is often referred to as the heartland of the United States. I shared with my brothers and sisters in Oklahoma and Kansas that their geographic location is a metaphor for how, and where, the Lord wants us to live—in the center of His covenant path and in the center of our temple covenants. He also wants us to understand the central core of His doctrine and message, which is why He has given us the gift of the Book of Mormon.

    The Book of Mormon centers on Jesus Christ. It contains the very heart of His message. It was written for us, in our day, for our lives. As we study, ponder, and apply the principles taught within its pages, we will receive strength to center our lives in Jesus Christ and enjoy the joyful blessings that He promises us, now and forever.” Russell M. Nelson Oct 17, 2021 on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/russell.m.nelson/posts/today-i-spoke-from-my-heart-to-the-saints-in-what-is-often-referred-to-as-the-he/434650214688535/

    The Battle of Cannae by Heartland Research

    “On August 2, 216 BC, near the ancient village of Cannae in Apulia, southeast Italy, there was a battle between the Roman Republic and Carthage during the Second Punic War. Hannibal led the Carthaginians and their allies in encircling and destroying a larger Roman army under Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro. The battle is regarded as one of the worst defeats in military history. For Hannibal’s army, it was an impressive tactical feat. Hannibal’s reputation as one of antiquity’s greatest tacticians was cemented by this victory.

    Today, we would be using the Phoenician Alphabet instead of the Roman Alphabet if Hannibal had succeeded in his campaign against the Romans. The Battle of Cannae profoundly impacted Western history. There is a great deal of information about Hannibal in Roman records. The Romans burned the libraries when they destroyed Carthage, so few records from the Phoenician side have survived.

    We know the location of the Battle of Cannae, so we expect the horrific battle on August 2, 216 BC, to be documented archaeologically.

    There are records of 85 thousand dead bodies in an area of only a few square miles. This great battle should have left bones, swords, and breastplates in the dirt. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the great battle took place. The location of that battle is undeniable. Remember, Hannibal’s army had 37 elephants when it crossed the Alps. We might expect to find a broken piece of an elephant’s toenail in Cannae.

    The Roman and Punic armies used metal weapons. An ancient battle of significant proportions was described in ancient records. The field of a few square miles was crammed with over 130,000 warriors, and the first day of the war left at least 60,000 dead, according to conservative estimates. On the Roman side, it was one of the deadliest days in history. What evidence can be found in the archeological record of this battle? As of today, there is no evidence. Cannae has a clean field with nothing to show for one of history’s great battles.

    The Hill Cumorah

    There are two leading contenders for the location of the final stand of one of America’s great armies. Some say that Cumorah is in Palmyra, New York; others say that Cumorah is some unknown hill in Middle America 2,000 miles south. According to many, the Hill Cumorah in New York has no archaeological evidence of the great battle where General Mormon died.

    So here’s the question. Many records provide significant details about the Battle of Cannae. We know where it is. We know what time it was. In the grain fields of Cannae, there are no signs of this great battle today. In Cannae, the fields are archaeologically clean. What evidence is there?

    The same is true of the great battle of Mormon’s last stand. In modern times, Cumorah and Cannae’s battlefields are comparable. Significant ancient battles seem unlikely to have occurred in Cumorah or Cannae based on the dirt evidence in New York and Italy. Does that mean these battles didn’t take place? In the modern world, both battles have profoundly influenced history.

    In understanding how Cumorah and Cannae played such an essential role in our history, it would be great if there was clear evidence from the ground that great battles were fought in both areas. Today, we only have ancient records and little physical evidence from the ground that would confirm the locations of both battles.” Heartland Research Group

    Below, the Heartland Research Group compares a battlefield in Italy, with a battlefield in New York. The analysis is amazingly parallel and convincing, that Hill Cumorah and the surrounding land may indeed have been the final battles of the Nephite’s and Jaredites, without the need to find many remaining artifacts. I however have a blog here, that will show you there were many breastplates, bones, weapons and artifacts found near Cumorah that substantially support that hill indeed, being a place of last battles. Email me at riannelson@aol.com for additional evidences.

    Morally Obligated to Turn this Land Over

    We have discussed the Land in Italy and the Land in New York, now let us ask ourselves,  “have we protected and preserved these lands the Lord has given to His people?” Do we not only love the Land but do we also show that love, through obedience to God?

    “I looked upon the sun, the glorious luminary of the earth, and also the moon, rolling in their majesty through the heavens, and also the stars shining in their courses and the earth also upon which I stood, and the beasts of the field and the fowls of heaven and the fish of the waters, and also man walking forth upon the face of the earth in majesty, and in the strength of beauty whose power and intelligence in governing the things which are so exceedingly great and marvelous. . . . And when I considered upon these things, my heart exclaimed, ‘Well hath the wise man said, it is a fool that saith in his heart there is no God.’ My heart exclaimed, ‘All these bear testimony and bespeak an omnipotent and omnipresent power, a being who maketh laws and decreeth and bindeth all things in their bounds.” Joseph Smith Letterbook 1, p. 2–3, Joseph Smith Papers, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; spelling and punctuation modernized.

    The earth is vulnerable. . . . Excessive consumption sullies God’s seas; wanton waste blackens His air. The creation groans under the weight of recklessness and indulgence that neglects both the poor earth and the earth’s poor.” In Honoring Creation, We Honor the Creator,” Apr. 26, 2018, MormonNewsroom.org

    Some live lavishly in the moment without a thought for the future. Others believe that because “the earth will [one day] be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory” that we have free license to be wasteful. Spencer W. Kimball, “God Will Not Be Mocked,” Ensign, Nov. 1974, 4–9

    “Stewardship in the Church is a very important matter. The Lord has mentioned it in the revelations. We are stewards over these earthly blessings which the Lord has provided, those of us who have this soil and this water. We have no moral latitude, it seems to me. In fact, we are morally obligated to turn this land over to those who succeed us—not drained of its fertility but improved in quality, in productivity, and in usefulness for future generations.” The Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson, 645

  • Florida- Ancient Human Brain Tissue Found

    Florida- Ancient Human Brain Tissue Found

    Unlimited North American Archaeology

    For me the amount of archaeology found in North America is simply amazing. We thank the pioneers, Wayne May, Rod Meldrum and others for their dedication for continuing research in North America for secondary evidences of the Book of Mormon.  I have the privledge of working with Rod often, searching and reading about the home of my heroes, Nephi and Mormon in the Heartland of the United States.

    Adamic Time Period Brain Tissue?

    This is a huge find. In 1982 a backhoe operator found a human skull in his hands. Several intact brains have been recovered hidden in “peat.” The results of the testing found the bones of the remains were over 7,000 years old – more than 2,000 years older than the Egyptian pyramids. Of course carbon dating may be inaccurate, but that simply means this person that was found, either lived during the time of Adam or before the flood and during the historic Clovis period.

    Florida Archaeology Abounds

    These burials were preserved because of the remarkable properties of the substance in which they were sub-merged – peat. Made up of layer upon layer of decomposing organic materials (mainly vegetation), peat provided an oxygen- and acid-free environment that allowed bones and artifacts to survive for thousands of years.

    What is amazing to me is, archaeologists were able to find DNA from Haplogroup X in soft brain tissue. That is DNA of Native Americans in the Great Lakes region as well as in the area around Israel. Absolutely amazing!

     

    Windover: Prehistoric Past Revealed at Ancient Pond Cemetery

    It was a warm, spring day in 1982 when backhoe operator Steve Vanderjagt paused to examine a pale rock he had uncovered while working construction near the edge of a pond at Windover Farms in Brevard County, Florida. Turning the object over in his hands, Vanderjagt saw two eye sockets and realized he was holding a human skull. His first thought was, “Oh shit!”

    What Vanderjagt did not know at the time was that he had stumbled across a prehistoric cemetery that would prove to be one of the most amazing archaeological discoveries of the 20th century.

    Developers Jack Eckerd (son of the famous drugstore founder) and his stepson Jim Swann had planned for Windover Farms to become a housing development serving the growing community of Titusville. To help draw people to the area, Swann built a restaurant called the Roost, with a small lunch counter and offices on the second floor. Swann was working at the Roost when Vanderjagt walked in carrying a bucket of bones. Not knowing whom to contact, Swann walked the bones over to a nearby Florida Highway Patrol station.

    “According to Swann,” archaeologist Rachel Wentz later wrote in her book Life and Death at Windover, “they were met with a chilly reception. The troopers took one look at the skeletons and said, ‘We only do car wrecks.’ ”

    After an examination by the county coroner showed the bones were not the remains of modern humans and, thus, of little value to law enforcement, Swann had to fight for them to be returned to him. When he did get them back, the remains resided in Swann’s garage, then in the tiny trailer on the Windover Farms construction site, where workers repeatedly stubbed their toes on the large containers. But Swann was intrigued by what else might be hidden beneath the layers of pond muck, and that would have remained a mystery if not for Swann’s next decision – to call in archaeologist Glen Doran.

    Doran was a young, up-and-coming professor at Florida State University in Tallahassee, and although he was not the first archaeologist to visit Windover, he was the first to recognize the site’s potential and not be daunted by the challenges it presented.

    He was immediately fascinated by the age of the bones – heavy wear on the teeth provided evidence of a prehistoric diet – but he didn’t have the funds to have them radiocarbon dated. Swann volunteered the money, and when the results of the testing came back, both men were astounded. The bones were over 7,000 years old – more than 2,000 years older than the Egyptian pyramids.

    Archaeologist Dave Dickel “pedestalling” a burial (working the muck away from a bone until it is entirely exposed in place) before it is mapped, photographed, and removed. Photo courtesy of R. Brunck.

    Archaeologist Dave Dickel “pedestalling” a burial (working the muck away from a bone until it is entirely exposed in place) before it is mapped, photographed, and removed. Photo courtesy of R. Brunck.

    WET-SITE ARCHAEOLOGY

    Wet sites have yielded some of the most spectacular archaeological finds in the world. Prior to Windover’s discovery, ancient human remains had been uncovered at four others in Florida:  Little Salt Springs (Sarasota County), Warm Mineral Springs (Sarasota County), Republic Groves (Hardee County), and Bay West (Collier County). Known as mortuary ponds, these sites served as cemeteries during the Early and Middle Archaic periods, roughly 10,000 to 5,000 years ago.

    These burials were preserved because of the remarkable properties of the substance in which they were sub-merged – peat. Made up of layer upon layer of decomposing organic materials (mainly vegetation), peat provided an oxygen- and acid-free environment that allowed bones and artifacts to survive for thousands of years. However, as soon as the materials are excavated and exposed to the air, they begin decomposing rapidly. This is one of the many factors that make wet-site archaeology especially slow, expensive, and challenging.

    Doran recruited an old friend from college, archaeologist Dave Dickel. They designed a demucking system that would remove enough water to excavate, but not too much. It was essential that the peat stay moist to protect the materials buried within. Over the course of three field seasons, in 1984, 1985, and 1986, Doran and Dickel perfected the process. They in-stalled 158 well points around the edge of the pond to capture water from both the top and bottom of the pond and eject it away from the site, creating an excavation area about the size of an Olympic swimming pool.

    Digging in peat was not like digging in soil. The peat had a clay-like consistency that had to be sliced using sharpened trowels and shovels. Thin layers were slowly shaved away until the peat changed color, a sign that archaeologists were nearing a burial. Then wooden tools were used to gently scrape the muck away from the bones. Chopsticks that the archaeologists hoarded from nearby Chinese restaurants worked best. However, their most important tool was water. Bones can crack when they dry out too quickly, so archaeologists used spray bottles of water to keep the bones wet and to help remove adhered peat.

    Archaeologists adapted their excavation strategy to the unique challenges of digging in dense peat. Photo courtesy of R. Brunck.

    Archaeologists adapted their excavation strategy to the unique challenges of digging in dense peat. Photo courtesy of R. Brunck.

    BRAINS!

    Toward the end of the first field season, Doran and Dickel made an astonishing discovery: a mushy, greasy, tan substance inside one of the skulls. Speculating on what the material might be, Doran joked that maybe it was only “snail poop.” But doctors at the University of Florida’s Shands Medical Center soon confirmed that a sample was actually human brain tissue. By the end of that year, several intact brains had been recovered. Though shrunken to a quarter of their original size, they still retained the shape and surface features of a typical human brain. According to Wentz, an editorial in a local paper ran the headline, “Brains finally discovered in Titusville!”

    Though these were not the first ancient skulls found with preserved brain matter, this was the first time such a discovery coincided with advances in technology that would allow researchers to analyze the tissue on a molecular level. To ensure the preservation of the brain matter for future study, it was removed from the skulls in the field, sealed in nitrogen-filled containers at minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit and transferred to the lab at the University of Florida, where the containers were frozen at minus 94 degrees. By comparing the DNA in these tissues with the genetic sequences of other populations – particularly mitochondrial DNA (passed down maternally) and Y-chromosome DNA (passed down paternally) – it is possible to trace the history of human migration.

    While researchers have determined that DNA did survive in the brain tissue, the samples are still extremely fragile. Instead, an analysis of DNA extracted from the skeletal remains has yielded the most interesting results. Conducted decades after the excavation, the study revealed that the people buried at Windover migrated to North America from Asia but are not related to any living Native American tribes or to any other known prehistoric peoples. This leaves one of two possibilities: either their descendants died out, or their population bottle-necked (was reduced sharply) before the genetic markers we find in modern humans evolved.

    WHAT CAN WINDOVER TELL US?

    Despite the remarkable discovery of the intact brains, Doran and Dickel were initially disappointed by the results of their excavation. The finds uncovered during the first two field seasons in 1984 and 1985 were either too commingled or too isolated to draw many conclusions. But during the third and final field season in 1986, as the team began digging in the northern part of the pond, they suddenly started finding undisturbed burials with distinct, nearly complete skeletons. This, Wentz writes, is when “the graves began to speak.”

    The story they tell begins 9,000 years ago when ancient humans began using Windover as a cemetery. As the indigenous people moved through the area seasonally, they would bury their dead in the pond during late summer and early fall. We do not know where they lived the rest of the year, but we can tell from the level of decomposition that the bodies were interred within 48 hours after death, so they were probably living nearby during the autumn months. The bodies were tucked into a “flexed” position, bundled in fabric along with a variety of grave goods, and submerged beneath the water, typically on their left sides, facing west. Wooden stakes driven through the cloth kept them anchored to the bottom of the pond. Generation after generation returned to the pond to bury their dead in this manner for the next 1,000 years.

    Life in prehistoric Florida was not easy. The bones at Windover show signs of numerous ailments, including disease, broken bones, and malnutrition. About half of the individuals died before the age of 18, and many more did not live past their late forties. By that time, the high level of grit in their diet (caused by using stone tools and surfaces to prepare food), combined with the use of their teeth as tools, had worn their teeth down to nubs. Arthritis and abscesses were common. It makes sense, then, that several were found with large quantities of plant seeds known to have pain-relieving properties in their stomach region, potentially representing the first archaeological evidence of the medicinal use of plants.

    The people of Windover probably also splinted broken bones, performed amputations, and cared for their sick and elderly. Only one skeleton showed signs of violence: a young man with an antler tine embedded in his hip – and a missing skull.

    The artifacts buried with the bodies can tell us just as much as the bones themselves. In addition to a variety of wooden artifacts, archaeologists recovered 119 objects made from animal parts, many of which would have been used as tools to fish, hunt, and butcher meat. Deer antler was used to make projectile points and barbed fishing hooks. Scrapers and other tools were made from the teeth of sharks, opossums, and canids (mammals in the dog family). Containers made of turtle shell, too small for use in cooking food, were possibly used to prepare medicinal plants.

    In one burial, archaeologists also found a bottle gourd that may have been used as a container. The oldest-known example of a bottle gourd north of Mexico, this find may support the theory that some of the earliest cultivated plants in the New World were not sources of food, but utilitarian plants that provided light, durable containers, and tools. Though very few stone artifacts were found, the points that were recovered can be traced to quarries in Sumter County, more than 80 miles away.

    In addition, awls, perforators, punches, and pins made from animal bones and antler would have been used in the preparation of hides, baskets, cordage, clothing, and other fabrics. Remarkably, 87 fragments of these handwoven, palm-fiber textiles survived. Extremely fragile and nearly indistinguishable from the surrounding peat, the cloth had to be removed with the entire burial in a single, large block and transported back to the laboratory where specialists in preserving ancient fiber worked to carefully extract and conserve them. Although their production and use certainly predate Windover, these woven textiles represent the oldest surviving examples of this type in the New World.

    Not all of the grave goods had a utilitarian purpose. Three necklaces adorned the neck of a woman in her early twenties, each made from a different material – fish vertebrae, Sabal palm seeds, and shells. Two more were found draped over a 2-year-old.

    An artist’s rendering of a cutaway of Windover pond shows how the burials were originally positioned. Image courtesy of G. Doran.

    An artist’s rendering of a cutaway of Windover pond shows how the burials were originally positioned. Image courtesy of G. Doran.

    LEGACY

    Garnering international fame, the archaeological finds at Windover were greeted by public demand for information so overwhelming that Doran was forced to hire a full-time communications specialist to respond to media inquiries, organize volunteers, and spearhead educational initiatives such as tours and school programs. The Brevard Artists’ Association even held a contest, challenging artists to produce the best Windover-inspired artwork, with Dickel, much to his dismay, to serve as the judge.

    By the end of the third field season, Doran, Dickel, and their team had uncovered a minimum of 168 skeletons, including 91 with preserved brain tissue. It is the largest, most demographically diverse skeletal discovery from this time period in the New World, with ages ranging from newborn to over 65, and both sexes equally present.

    Such a broad, well-preserved sample has allowed archaeologists to learn about prehistoric burial practices, lifeways, health, migration, and much more, and the materials will continue to be studied for years to come as new technologies open up fresh avenues for research.

    Windover may also be one of the last prehistoric cemeteries ever excavated in the United States because, several years later, federal and state laws were passed that protect indigenous human remains, funerary items, and sacred objects – a response to the long history of stripping Native Americans of their material culture.

    Although excavations of wet sites are notoriously challenging, a convergence of timing, technology, funding, and interest made the Windover excavation possible. As Doran wrote in his 2002 anthology about the site, “Our investigations at Windover were a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. . . . Never in my wildest dreams would I have been so bold as to envision excavations of a site like this. It was phenomenal. Being in the right place at the right time, and not knowing excavation of such sites was considered to be both unproductive and essentially impossible, has certainly made me one of the luckiest archaeologists of all time.”

    There are almost certainly other Windovers in Florida, Doran claims. But whether or not another site will ever offer up so many of its secrets still remains to be seen.

    https://www.thehistorycenter.org/windover/ Dr. Rachel Wentz, author of Life and Death at Windover.


  • Nephite Fruits in North America- Mounds, Artifacts, Armor, & Steel Swords in Plain Sight

    Nephite Fruits in North America- Mounds, Artifacts, Armor, & Steel Swords in Plain Sight

    By the Nephites Fruits, we Shall Know Them.

    In other words, by the millions and millions of mounds and artifacts of life in North America from 600 BC to 400 AD, has been left the fruits or artifacts of the labors of the great Lamanite and Nephite people. To say evidence doesn’t exist is to deny the obvious. To have to be shown the evidence of the Nephites path you would have to be blind. This article will just focus on artifacts in Tennessee, Ohio and several other states and any one item on it’s own could help the honest in heart find physical and spiritual proof of the Book of Mormon. Of course one would have to find room in their heart to believe the Book of Mormon did happen in North America, which I do. (Your contrary opinions are welcome).

    The most common question that is asked about mounds is, “How many exist?” In the 1800’s the Smithsonian sponsored many expeditions to identify mound sites across America. A map (shown above) was produced by Cyrus Thomas in 1894 in a Bureau of Ethnology book. They found approximately 100,000 mound sites, many with complexes containing 2 to 100 mounds. The figure of 100,000 mounds once existing— based on Cyrus Thomas map revealing 100,000 sites—is often cited by others, but that estimate is far, far too low. After visiting several thousand mounds and reviewing the literature, I am fairly certain that over 1,000,000 mounds once existed and that perhaps 100,000 still exist. Oddly, some new mound sites are discovered each year by archaeological surveys in remote areas. But in truth, a large majority of America’s mounds have been completely destroyed by farming, construction, looting, and deliberate total excavations” – Gregory L. Little, Ed.D., The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Native American Mounds & Earthworks, Eagle Wing Books, Inc., Memphis, TN [2009].

    When you don’t have “ALL THE RIGHT FACTS” your conclusions may be “WRONG.” To the Mesoamericanists searching for Book of Mormon geography, I say, as Indiana Jones said in the clip below,
    “You are “Digging in the Wrong Place”

    If the Book of Mormon is true (which it is), then this world is full of evidence of it’s existence both temporally and spiritually. If the Nephites were a real people in a real time and place (they are), there is found evidence of their existence. If Zarahemla was a city near Nauvoo (it is D&C 125), we will find evidence of its existence. If metal and copper are mentioned in the Book of Mormon (they are), we will find its evidence in the ground. If Joseph Smith is a Prophet born and raised in the United States and he talks of “this country” or “this land” he is speaking of the USA. (Wentworth Letter below). If the Land of Tennessee is the place of the Nephites, proof of habitation will exist. (It does)

    If you haven’t found physical evidence of the Book of Mormon in North America, you haven’t looked hard enough nor prayed about it. If you haven’t found evidence of big time voter fraud in the election of 2020 and 2022, your eyes are closed and you just don’t want to open them and see. Come on world! Please open your eyes and mind. The Book of Mormon is true and the election was stolen. This is just one man’s opinion, but I challenge you to answer each question yourself. Is there physical evidence of the Book of Mormon in North America, and is it possible our government has been infiltrated by the Deep State?

    “For it came to pass that they did deceive many with their flattering words, who were in the church, and did cause them to commit many sins” Mosiah 26:6

    The Remnant are the Indians that now Inhabit This Country

    “The history of ancient America is unfolded, from its first settlement by a colony that came from the tower of Babel, at the confusion of languages to the beginning of the fifth century of the Christian era. We are informed by these records that America in ancient times has been inhabited by two distinct races of people. The first were called Jaredites and came directly from the tower of Babel. The second race came directly from the city of Jerusalem, about six hundred years before Christ. They were principally Israelites, of the descendants of Joseph. The Jaredites were destroyed about the time that the Israelites came from Jerusalem, who succeeded them in the inheritance of the country. The principal nation of the second race fell in battle towards the close of the fourth century. The remnant are the Indians that now inhabit this country.” Wentworth Letter


    TENNESSEE ARCHAEOLOGY

    Amulon and Helam

    The Old Stone Fort was built during the Middle Woodland Period, 1,500-2,000 years ago. Native Americans used this area continuously for about 500 years, eventually leaving it abandoned. By the time European settlers arrived, it was unclear of what the area had been used for which resulted in it being misnamed as a fort. In 1966, the state of Tennessee purchased 400 acres of the Chumbley estate as the core of what is now Old Stone Fort State Archaeological Park. Source

    “Almost 2000 years ago, the native peoples who lived along the Harpeth River in Williamson County created a sacred site, akin to what we would call a cathedral today,” said Dr. Kevin Smith, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Middle Tennessee State University. “It remains the only known major sacred site of its type from the Cumberland River drainage – and much have involved peoples from throughout the region. For modern peoples, this site is important not only as the remnants of an ancient shrine, but also as a site that was recognized nationally in the 1870’s by early archaeologists and antiquarians. While only these two remnants of this sacred complex survive for us to preserve, remember and honor today, they are an important reminder that our history as Tennesseans extends much deeper into the past than we might usually think.”

    A diagram here of placement of mounds, works and stone box burials at the Old Town Archaeological Site in Williamson, Tennessee. Based on a map found in “The antiquities of Tennessee and the adjacent states, and the state of aboriginal society in the scale of civilization represented by them” by Thruston, Gates Phillips

    Editors note: Many Tennesseans need to know that their land is very possibly the land of the Nephites after Lehi’s escape from his brothers Laman and Lemuel. It is the Land where Alma was converted by Abinadi and the land near the Waters of Mormon. With Chattanooga as the City Nephi it is very likely the city of Amulon is where Franklin Tennessee is today and the city of Helam near the Pinson Mounds Park just south of Jackson, Tennessee. Both of these places show some amazing archaeology dating from 100 BC to 200 AD which is the appropriate time for of the exitance of these Book of Mormon People.

    Purchase over 200 Book of Mormon in North America Maps here

    In early 1875, Joseph Henry, the first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, wrote to a number of Tennessee citizens asking for assistance in collecting specimens for the United States National Museum. A fire in January of 1865 had destroyed significant portions of the museum’s early collections (DesRochers 2012), and the approach of the United States Centennial — to be celebrated in concert with the first major world fair and exposition held in the country — required acquisition of new materials. Among those individuals Henry contacted was Dr. William Martin Clark, a physician and resident of Franklin, Tennessee and later the editor-in-chief of the Nashville Banner (Clayton 1880).

    Clark began his efforts on behalf of the Smithsonian in May of 1875 with the excavation of an earthen mound on the farm of Dr. William Reid, near Franklin. From there, Clark shifted his efforts to the nearby Glass property, of which he wrote: There is a fine group here, and four of them are in a line from north to south, a large one in the centre [sic], flanked on the south by two small ones, and on the north by another, evidently intended to have been a large one, but from some interruption was never finished. This last was not more than three feet high, though seventy-five feet in diameter. It had been cultivated a great number of years, but distinctly showed its proportions. Being in cultivation at the time of my visit, I did not examine it. The two smaller ones were about six feet high and twenty in diameter, while the largest was twenty feet high and four hundred feet in circumference. They did not stand in a perfect circle, the largest mound forming the lowest part of the concavity (W.M. Clark, “Antiquities of Tennessee,” MS 2407, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Page 10).

    In his account, Clark mentions four mounds (identified herein for reference as Clark-A, Clark-B, Clark-C, and Clark-D): Clark-A stood ca. 6 m in height and 40 m in diameter and most closely matches Mound 2 at the Glass Mounds; Clark-B and C were located to the south and each measured ca. 2 m in height and 6 m in diameter; and Clark-D, situated to the north, measured ca. 1 m in height and 23 m in diameter. The surviving Glass Mounds Mound 1 may be either Clark-B or Clark-C, although the information provided by Clark is insufficient to determine which. Neither of the two surviving mounds at the Glass Mounds site match the dimensions of Clark-D. Clark excavated two trenches into the largest mound at the site (Clark-A; Glass Mounds 2), beginning on opposite faces and meeting in the center.

    Copper Facemask

    Within the mound he encountered a layer of ashes and burned earth five feet below the summit, with similar sequences recurring every five feet until the base of the mound. Clark records that the mound was constructed on top of a four-foot deep deposit of burned earth, ashes, and charcoal, from which he recovered “the only relics” from the excavation (W.M. Clark, “Antiquities of Tennessee,” MS 2407, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Page 11). 

    Those materials consisted of a copper earspool and hammered copper face plate (Figure 2) (National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution [NMNH] A19987-0 and A19986). https://siarchives.si.edu/history/historic-pictures-smithsonian/national-museum-natural-history

    No skeletal remains were present within the basal mound deposit, suggesting that these artifacts represent either a cache of ritual objects, or perhaps were associated with a cremation or completely degraded grave.

    The mask in particular fired Clark’s imagination, leaving him to ponder: Could it speak, what tales it could tell of the red men. [Lamanites & Nephites] No doubt it has witnessed many a torture of captives and heard them shriek, as their hearts were torn from their living bodies and thrown upon the fire to appease the vengeance of their captors. Now how low it has fallen! A small fragment of copper handed down from an antiquity far beyond our conceptions, only a slight token of the mythical nations (W.M. Clark, “Antiquities of Tennessee,” MS 2407, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Page 12). TENNESSEE ARCHAEOLOGY Volume 10 Fall 2020 Number 2 The Tennessee Division of Archaeology and Middle Tennessee State University

    Metal, Coins, Swords, Scabbards, Furnaces, Soldering, Hebrew, Helmets, Iron, Steel, Copper, Nails, etc.

    The natural and aboriginal history of Tennessee. Quotes about STEEL below.

    “They made wells also, wailed up with stone from die bottom. They had swords of iron and steel, and steel bows, and mirrors with iron backs, knives of iron, with ferules of silver: tools also of iron and steel, and chisels with which they neatly sculptured stone, and made engravings upon it; and spades, with which they sunk their wide and deep ditches.” The natural and aboriginal history of Tennessee  Page 2 Here:

    “And lately was taken from a mound in Maury county, a stone perfectly globular, very hard and heavy, of a variegated exterior, and exceedingly well polished. It probably belonged to some employment that the other circular stones did. They were all of them cut by some iron or steel instrument. It was two or three, inches in diameter.” Page 190 Here 

    “To these were added the steel-trap, which was hardly less destructive amongst the amphibious race. The scarcity of game was soon perceptible, and the scarcity of food was the inevitable consequence”. Page 295 Here

    “The aborigines had some very well manufactured swords and knives of iron, and possibly of steel.* A few years ago, near Blacksburg in Virginia, 8(5 miles from Marietta, was found about the half of a steel bow, which when entire would have measured five or six feet.” Page 349 Here

    “On the lower end of this pole is fixed an iron socket, with a cavity in the lower end, in which cavity a screw is cut for the reception of the auger. The auger is always made of steel; the end applied to the rock having an edge in the centre, and the other end having a screw to attach it to the socket in which the screw is cut, attached to the pole. As the hole descends into the rock, the rope attached to the sweep or spring pole is lengthened, until a sufficient distance is bored in the rock to require another pole, when one is attached by screw*, as the auger and pole first mentioned were. Thus those who perforin the boring descend to the requisite depth.” Page 382 Here


    The natural and aboriginal history of Tennessee: up to the first settlements therein by the white people, in the year 1768

    BY JOHN HAYWOOD, OF THE COUTNTY OF DAVIDSON, THE STATE OF TENNESSEE. NASHVILLE: PRINTED BY GEORGE WILSON, 1823. Page 341-349

    “First we will speak of the coins of the aborigines found in the neighboring countries, and then of metallic instruments and utensils also found there.

    First. On the farm of Mr. Edward Payne, near Lexington [KY], were found two ancient coins ; one was of gold, and sold for hundreds of dollars : the other was of brass. Each had a head reversed, and both were inscribed with characters not understood, but said to resemble Hebrew. The date of the gold coin was probably 1214, and the date of the brass piece 1009. A few miles below Mr. Payne, a gold piece “Was found, on the plantation of Mr. Chambers, who says it was sold at Lexington for 13 dollars. It was inscribed in unknown characters; and, as Mr. Chambers thinks, was unlike any coin he had ever seen. He says, that a small piece of copper was found on his farm at the same time. The date 1214 could not relate to the “hegira.” [Muhammad’s departure from Mecca to Medina in AD 622]. If it related to the Christian era, it must have come from some of the modern kingdoms of Europe, which had adopted the use of the Arabic numerals. It is not known that the Persians ever used them. The most that can be made of the fact, is, a probability that these coins came to the country before the discovery of America by Columbus; for between 1214 and 1492, the time of his discovery, were 178 years, and before the Spaniards could have circulated it, many more years intervened prior to their intercourse with the nations on the continent. So that it must have circulated nearly 300 years, before it could have come hither from them, and by that time would have been worn out.

    At Circleville [Ohio] a copper coin was taken from the central mound, from beneath the roots of a hickory growing on the mound, seven or eight inches in circumference. It has no resemblance in its devices to any British or other coins to which it hath been compared. A hickory six to eight inches in circumference, might have grown up long since the French settlements were on the Ohio and its waters.

    On the plantation of Colonel William Sheppard, in the county of Orange, on the river Enoe; 6 miles above Hillsborough in North Carolina, and near the remains of a town which had been deserted in very remote times, was picked up, about the year 1803 or 1804, a round piece of copper about the size of an American eagle. On both sides was a short line of letters, with parallel lines increasing in length till past the center, whence they decreased in length to the bottom, accommodating themselves to the rounded shape of the copper. It was neatly executed. The letters were of some unknown alphabet. This copper was dropped again on the same plantation, where probably it now is. It was about the thickness of the coins called coppers. Similar pieces were sometimes given by the Spanish friars to their proselyted Indians.

    Gold and silver ornaments have been found in many of the tumuli in Ohio. Silver very well plated, has been found in several of the mounds : copper in many: pipe bowls of copper, hammered, and not welded together, but lapped over, have been found in them. A bracelet of copper was found in a stone mound at Chillicothe. It resembles the links of a common chain, the ends passed by each other, but were not welded together. Ornaments of silver and copper have not been found north of Newark [OH The location of the Newark Earthworks of 100 BC to 100 AD]. Below that place, vast numbers have been found. North of that place are no wells perforated in the rocks. Arrow heads of copper, some of them five or six inches in length, circular medals of copper, several inches in diameter, very thin, and much injured by time, have been found in the tumuli of Ohio. Iron has been found in some instances oxidized.

    Sword, Skeletons and Mirrors

    Out of a mound near the circle of the large fort at Circleville [OH], was found the elk- horn handle of a small sword or long knife. Around the end where the blade had been inserted, was a ferule of silver; no iron was found, but an oxide remained. Also, charcoal and wood ashes in which those articles lay, which were surrounded by several bricks very well burnt. A skeleton appeared to have been burnt in a large and very hot fire, which had almost consumed the bones of the deceased. The skeleton was deposited a little to the south of the centre of the tumulus. And 20 feet to the north of it, was another. There was also a large mirror, three feet in length, one and a half in breadth, and one inch and a half thick. It was of “isinglass.” [mica or a similar material in thin transparent sheets]. Also a plate of iron, which had become an oxyde ; but before it was disturbed by the spade, resembled a plate of iron. This skeleton had been burned like the former and lay in charcoal and a considerable quantity of wood ashes.

    Gold and Silver

    An ornament of very pure gold was discovered, a few years since, in Ross County Ohio, near Chillicothe, lying in the palm of a skeleton’s hand, in a small mound. [Arch. Am. 176].

    Not long since, a silver cup was taken from a mound at Marietta, on the Ohio. It is in the possession of Mr. Hill, of St. Clair county, Illinois. It is in the form of an inverted cone, measuring three and a half inches across at top, two and a half at bottom, and four inches in height. It is of pure silver, and so skillfully wrought, that no traces of the plating hammer are discernible. The bottom, which is circular, has been separately forged, accurately fitted to the sides, or barrel, and soldered on.

    The line of attachment is plainly discernible. Its interior surface has been gilt, or washed, with a bright, yellow, untarnishable metal, which is undoubtedly gold ; but that gilding is impaired in some places. It was found in a mound at Marietta, half a mile east of those remarkable fortifications on the Muskingum. The mound is situated in woody plane, with a gentle declivity towards the river, and a small stream washes its base. During the autumnal rains, or the melting of the snow in the spring, it runs with the velocity of a current. Thus it has gradually washed away the earth, and laid open the mound for a considerable space, and in this situation the cup was discovered. It was then in a bruised or shapeless mass, and foul from adhering clay ; but being taken to a silversmith, was put into the shape it now presents, which was probably the shape it originally had. Its value by weight is about fifteen dollars. It bears no device or ornamental work of any kind, being a perfectly plain and heavy piece of workmanship. If it be not of European fabrication, the inference is inevitable, that some nation preceding the savages was formerly here, of far greater advancement in the arts of civilization than they ever possessed. But for fear of mistake, let us bear in mind that the French settled in Canada as early as the year 1608, and soon afterwards carried on trade extensively with all the Indians who lived on the waters of the Ohio.

    Copper, Marble and Amulets

    Copper instruments and ornaments have also been found. In 1813 was found in a mound a piece of copper incrusted with “erugo” [mildew, plant rust], half an inch thick It consists of thin plates of copper rolled up, encircling each other. It was about three inches in length, and one fourth of an inch in thickness. The plates were remarkably pure and fine. In the same mound a beautiful piece of marble was taken up in the year 1814. It was undoubtedly made and used for an ornament, being perforated with loopholes for fastening, which must have been bored by some hard instrument. The marble piece is about five or six inches in length, flat on one side, oval on the other, having an increasing width in the middle, the ends are apparently cut, and with some hard implement used for the purpose. The marble is of a dark dun colour, but the veins of the stones are very distinct.  The magicians of India are provided with many articles against witchcraft, which they distribute amongst those who consult them. There are certain enchanted beads, very thin plates of copper, on which extraordinary figures are engraved, with inexplicable words and unknown characters. Amulets also, of various kinds, all which are worn by the Hindoos to serve as talismans, and to preserve them from every species of incantation. No other circum-stance at present recollected, can account in the least degree for the plates of copper above mentioned.

    Verdigrease (patina), Helmet, Scull bone which lay under the plate of copper

    In one of the tumuli on Grave Creek [WV], below Wheeling, near to the Ohio, were found, about 20 years since, sixty copper beads, made of a coarse “wire, hammered out, and not drawn and cut off at unequal lengths. They were soldered together in an awkward manner, the centre of some of them uniting with the edges of others. They were incrusted with “verdigrease” [A green patina or crust of copper sulfate or copper chloride formed on copper, brass, and bronze exposed to air or seawater for long periods of time], but the inside of them was pure copper.

    This painting by Ken Corbett, represents Mormon with his son, Mormon traveling south on the Ohio River heading towards the Land Zarahemla in Illinois and Missouri. Near Grave Creek Mound in West Virginia, you can visualize in Mormon 1:6-7 it saying, “And it came to pass that I, being eleven years old, was carried by my father into the land southward, even to the land of Zarahemla. The whole face of the land had become covered with buildings, and the people were as numerous almost, as it were the sand of the sea.” Young Mormon is pointing to the Grave Creek mound and all the buildings around.

    Some copper pieces have been found in a mound near the Little Muskingum, four miles from Marietta, which appear to have been the front of a helmet, was originally eight inches long and four broad, and has marks of having been attached to leather. It is much decayed and is now a thin plate, and appears to have been attached to the centre of it by a rivet, the hole for which appears both in the plate and ornament. At this place the remains of a skeleton were found. No part retained its form but a portion of the forehead or scull, which lay under the plate of copper. These bones are deeply tinged with green, and appear to have been preserved by the salts in the copper.

    Shield Boss, Belts, Buckler, Scabbard, Sword, Iron and 500 year old trees.

    In an ancient mound of the streets of Marietta, in the margin of the plane near the fortifications, amongst other things, in 1819 were discovered three large circular bosses [A shield boss, or umbo, is a round, convex or conical piece of material at the centre of a shield], or ornaments, for sword belts, or a buckler composed of copper, oval, and with a thick plate of silver. The front is slightly convex with a depression like a cap in the centre. The measure, two inches and a quarter across the face of each. On the back side, opposite the depressed portion, is a copper rivet or nail, around which are two separate plates, by which they were fastened to the leather. Two small pieces of the leather were found lying between the holes of one of the bosses. They resemble the skin of an old mummy. The plates of copper are nearly reduced to rust. Around the rivet of one of them is a quantity of flax or hemp in a tolerable state of preservation. Near the side of the human body was a plate of silver, the upper part of a sword scabbard, six inches long, two wide, weighing one ounce. Three longitudinal ridges were on it, which perhaps corresponded with the edges or ridges of the sword. It had been fastened to the scabbard by three or four rivets, the holes of which yet remain in the silver.

    Below is a link to an article titled, A 1,000-Year-Old Viking Sword Emerges From an English River. Whether it is true or not you should put it with your other research and decide for yourself.

    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/1000-year-old-viking-sword-emerges-from-english-river-180983936/

    Two or three pieces of a copper tube were also found, filled with rust. These compose the lower end of the scabbard, near the point of the sword. There is no sign of the sword itself, except this appearance of rust. Near the feet was a piece of copper weighing three ounces. It seemed by the shape to have been used for a plumb or for ornament. Near one of the ends is a circular crease or groove for lying a thread. It is round, two inches and a half in length, one in diameter at the centre, and half an inch at each end. It is composed of small pieces of native copper pounded together; and in the cracks between the pieces, are several pieces of silver, one nearly of the size of a fourpenny piece or half a “disme” [ an American silver coin with a face value of five cents.] This copper ornament was covered with a coat of green rust, and is considerably corroded. A piece of red ochre or paint, and a piece of iron ore, which has the appearance of having been partly vitrified or melted, were also found. The trees upon the mound, as evidenced by the annulars, were between 400 and 500 years of age, and on the ground beside them were other trees, in a state of decay that appeared to have fallen from dotage.

    Bear Teeth, Mica, Copper Beads, Human Bones

    From the ancient works where Circleville [OH] now stands, and from the mound there, were taken a few scattered human bones, a branch of a deer’s horn and a piece of earthenware containing muscle shells. At the distance of 500 feet from this pyramid, in the direction of north eight east, there is another. Nine feet high, of a circular figure, nearly flat on the top. In it were found some human skeletons, and a hand full of copper beads, which had been strung on a cravat of lint. There is another mound at the intersection of Third and Main streets; whatever it contained was deposited a small distance below a stratum of loam which is common to the town. The first artificial layer was gravel, considerably raised in the middle; the next, composed of large pebbles, was convex and of a uniform thickness ; the last consisted of loam and soil. The strata were entire, and must have been formed after the deposits in the tumulus were completed. Amongst other articles were these : A bone ornamented with several carved lines ; the sculpture representation of the head or beak of a rapacious bird, perhaps an eagle ; a quantity of isinglass ; a small oval piece of sheet copper with two perforations ; a large oval piece of some metal with longitudinal grooves or ridges ; a number of beads of bone or shell; the teeth of a carnivorous animal, probably those of a bear; seven large marine shells, belonging perhaps to the genus buccinum, cut in such a manner as to serve for domestic utensils, and nearly converted into a state of chalk; several copper articles, each consisting of two sets of circular concave and convex plates. The. interior one of each sort connected with the other by a hollow axis, around which had been wound some lint. Other articles have been found there, consisting of pure copper, human bones of different sizes, sometimes enclosed in rude stone coffins, but oftener lying blended with the earth, surrounded by a portion of ashes and charcoal.

    Iron and steel utensils and ornaments have also been found. There was dug up from the central mound at Circleville, a fragment of some culinary vessel. It was evidently of cast iron, and showed the marks of the mould. It was covered on the lower side with the black, smut contracted over the fire. It was found among ashes, and large pieces of charcoal.

    Iron and Ivory Bracelets

    In the large cemetery of Augusta were found four iron bracelets on the left arm of a female skeleton. They are formed with a loop at one extremity, and extend in an oval shape to a knob at the other end, “which hitches into the loop. The elongated central part of the oval is the thickest, from which it gradually tapers to the clasp. These bracelets are much corroded, and the loops destroyed; but even their present state of preservation can only be accounted for by the fortunate circumstance, that the alluvial soil of the burying ground was free from mineral acids. There are in this state some ancient ivory bracelets from Indostan, which exactly resemble in shape those iron ones. It is a well-known fact, that the dress and ornaments of the Hindoos have continued unchanged from the earliest periods of history.

    Copper Bracelet

    Iron Knives and Swords

    The aborigines had some very well manufactured swords and knives of iron, and possibly of steel. A few years ago, near Blacksburg in Virginia, 80 miles from Marietta, was found about the half of a steel bow, which when entire would have measured five or six feet.

    Stone Wall and Furnaces

    On the main branch of Paint creek in Ohio, near some very ancient works, and on the inside of a wall on the side of an elevated hill 300 feet high, which wall is of stone, around the brow of the hill there appears to have been a row of furnaces or smiths’ shops, where the cinders now lie many feet in depth. The remains are four or five feet in depth even now in many places.” Source

    Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site consists of a restored town from the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as ruins of an ancient blast furnace.

  • Oldest Bone Projectile Point (Washington State) Found Stuck in a Mastodon’s Rib

    Oldest Bone Projectile Point (Washington State) Found Stuck in a Mastodon’s Rib

    It is rare to find archaeological evidence as far back as the Clovis or Adamic time periods of North America. No one knows the exact dates of anything archaeological, so be cautioned. It seems very likely the Manis Site may fit the Clovis timeline. Remember Adam was placed near Missouri before the Atlantic ocean split the Continents, and Missouri is also where the New Jerusalem will be built. Thus, the original oldest world is North America and that which historians call the Old World today (Israel area) is actually newer in time frame than the Missouri area of the globe. A fascinating subject to learn about.

    Clovis Culture

    The historical people of the Clovis Culture most closely fit the timeline of Adam and Eve’s posterity, what we sometimes call Adamites. No, there were no Pre-Adamites in Church Doctrine and no cave men. Adam was the first Man placed on this earth and it was about 4,000 BC that this happened. The material of the earth of course is billions of years old, in fact it was never created but organized, just as all mater has existed forever. To fully understand archaeological and intelligent dating, one should be familiar with the word of God that says, Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be. D&C 93:29

    I personally (Rian Nelson) believe that anything dated by historians or scientists today, that dates according to to them to be 20,000 or 13,000 or even 8,000 BC is most likely to be incorrect. I believe this could indicate a timing period close to the beginning of man or beast on the earth which in my opinion is 4,000 BC or later. If someone says a dinosaur is 1 million or 30 million years old I absolutely believe it to be false.

    Yes our earth is organized with materials and matter that have existed for ever as it says in D&C above. That doesn’t mean this particular earth is that old, just the materials used to organize it have always existed. Man is eternal and has existed as an intelligence for ever as well, but as pertaining to this earth, man and woman’s intelligence were clothed with spirit and body and placed in Missouri area in about 4,000 BC. It says in D&C 93:33, “For man is spirit. The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy;…  Additionally in D&C 93:37-38 it says, The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth. Light and truth forsake that evil one”.

    Additional Archaeological Dating information Here: https://bookofmormonevidence.org/lamoka-lake-clovis-period/


    Oldest Bone Projectile Point in the Americas Found Stuck in a Mastodon’s Rib!

    “Analysis of a 13,900-year-old bone projectile point has led to two major discoveries. First and most importantly, it is the oldest known artifact of its kind in the Americas! This archaeological treasure was uncovered at the Manis Mastodon site in Washington, USA during an excavation in the late 1970s, and it has now been put under the scanner, quite literally.

    The bone fragments from the tip of the weapon reveals that it was crafted from the bone of a mastodon, a prehistoric relative of the elephant. The Manis bone projectile point, as it has been termed, was found lodged inside a mastodon rib. This relates to the second significant discovery about the artifact – this bone projectile point is not only the oldest artifact of its kind in the Americas, but it also provides the oldest direct evidence of mastodon hunting in the Americas.

    The Manis mastodon rib with embedded bone projectile point. (A) Three views of the rib fragment with embedded point. (B) Close-up views of the embedded point. Note root staining on the bone and embedded bone point. (Waters et al. 2023 / Science Advances)

    The Manis mastodon rib with embedded bone projectile point. (A) Three views of the rib fragment with embedded point. (B) Close-up views of the embedded point. Note root staining on the bone and embedded bone point. (Waters et al. 2023 / Science Advances )


    Rib Tickling: A Weapon Stuck in an Uncomfortable Place

    “We isolated the bone fragments, printed them out, and assembled them,” says Michael Waters, director of the university’s Center for the Study of First Americans and professor of anthropology at Texas A&M University. “This clearly showed this was the tip of a bone projectile point. This is the oldest bone projectile point in the Americas and represents the oldest direct evidence of  mastodon hunting in the Americas,” he added.

    His team had employed a CT scan and 3D software, isolating all the bone fragments in the process, enlarging the image of each bone fragment by 6 times. They were then pieced together to show what the specimen would have looked like before entering the rib. Their study has been published in the newest edition of the journal Sciences Advances , and is available as open access.

    “What is important about Manis is that it’s the first and only bone tool that dates older than Clovis. At the other pre-Clovis site, only stone tools are found,” Waters explained. “This shows that the First Americans made and used bone weapons and likely other types of bone tools.”

    Reconstruction of the distal end of the Manis projectile point. (Waters et al. 2023 / Science Advances)

    Reconstruction of the distal end of the Manis projectile point. (Waters et al. 2023 / Science Advances )

    The preservation of the Manis specimen was an accident – the hunter missed, leading to the projectile getting stuck in a mastodon’s rib. It was crafted from the leg bone of another mastodon, shaped deliberately into a projectile point. The spear was thrown at the mastodon, penetrated the hide and tissue, eventually coming into contact with the rib.

    The hunter clearly wanted to hit the spear between the ribs and bust the lungs, but missed and hit the rib instead. The rib and its dating had been part of a 2011 study by Waters and his colleagues that was published in Science.

    A mastodon with an arrow pointing to the trajectory of the spear. (Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A&M University)

    A mastodon with an arrow pointing to the trajectory of the spear. ( Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A&M University )

    Disproving the Clovis First Hypothesis

    At 13,900 years old (Remember the dating can be inaccurate), the Manis point is at least 900 years older than the Clovis projectile points, stone tools which had also been studied by Waters. The Clovis spear points have been found in Texas and other parts of the country, dating from 13,050 to 12,750 years ago, according to a press release by Texas A&M University.

    The Clovis culture is a prehistoric Paleoamerican culture, from roughly 11,500 to 10,800 years BP. It is characterized by the manufacture of “Clovis points” and distinctive bone and ivory tools. The theory known as “Clovis First” had been the predominant hypothesis among archaeologists in the second half of the 20th century.

    Clovis points in the Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist collection. (Billwhittaker/ CC BY-SA 3.0)

    Clovis points in the Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist collection. (Billwhittaker/ CC BY-SA 3.0 )

    According to that theory, the people associated with the Clovis culture were the first inhabitants of the Americas, who’d crossed over from the Bering Strait (Wrong, man came by ship as believers in the Book of Mormon learn), from Siberia to Alaska during the last Ice Age. The primary support for this claim was that no solid evidence of pre-Clovis human habitation had been found…yet. The theory has been challenged and disproved several times in the last couple of decades, with the emergence of new and exciting evidence . The archaeologists behind the new study have provided another example, writing:

    “The Manis point, made of mastodon bone, shows that people hunted megafauna with osseous weaponry in the Pacific Northwest some 900 years before the emergence of Clovis technology. The use of osseous weaponry like the Manis point and the different stone projectile points of this age found at sites across the rest of North America may signal that the earliest people to enter and explore the Americas (Jaredites) brought with them a diversity of technologies and tools that they adapted to the local environments they found and inhabited.”

    So how they did those early inhabitants of the lands that would become known as the Americas arrive? Waters, who has extensively studied this time period and culture, postulates that it was probably by boat, perhaps a coastal route along the North Pacific, before moving south, reports Arkeo News. (This is what the Book of Mormon supports)

    These people would eventually get past the ice sheets covering Canada and touch base in the Pacific Northwest, evidenced by the cluster of sites found there – Idaho has the 16,000-years-old Cooper’s Ferry site, Oregon has the 14,100-year-old site of Paisley Caves, and to add to thisthe 13,900-year-old Manis site.

    All of these cultures and sites predate Clovis, suggesting that the first people to arrive in the Americas were the ones responsible for the culture in the northwestern USA between 16,000 and 14,000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age. (Most likely Jaredites in about 2200 BC).”

    Top image: Prehistoric hunters. ( anibal / Adobe Stock) Insert: The oldest known bone projectile point in the Americas. ( Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A&M University )

    By Sahir Pandey https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/oldest-projectile-point-0017890

    Jaredites Landing?

    Our friend and long time archaeology expert Wayne May, feels strongly the Jaredites landed at the St Lawrence River which is absolutely possible.

    However the articles above support a theory that the Jaredite barges very likely landed from the Pacific Ocean near Washington State in about 2200 BC. (Opinion of Rian Nelson, not Firm Foundation as a whole). Also supporting the Jaredite landing theory is Kennewick Man, whos skeleton was found in Kennewick Washington and is known as the oldest Native American skeleton found in the Americas. There are also over 35,000 ancient mound sites found in the State of Washington. Obviously it is your decision to decide the Jaredite landing for yourself, as there is no Church Doctrine on the subject. For more information, See Video and Presentation here:

    BP refers to “Before Present”  “BP is a system commonly used by geologists and archaeologists for the purposes of carbon dating. Because carbon dating become popular in the 1950s, BP essentially means “before 1950.” To estimate, I just think of it as “years ago.” So if you have 15,000 BP, it would be about 15,000 years ago. If you wanted to be more exact, it would be BP + (current year – 1950), or 15,067. In the grand scheme of things, 67 years is generally not a big deal, so I find it’s easier to say “years ago.” Kat Sanders Founder and Blogger at Pawsitive Research (2015–present)


    Without a doubt the Book of Mormon is the word of God. If read and studied carefully, you may know more truths not taught as doctrine in our wonderful Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

    By Ken Corbett

    President Nelson said, “You don’t have to wonder about what is true. You do not have to wonder whom you can safely trust. Through personal revelation, you can receive your own witness that the Book of Mormon is the word of God, that Joseph Smith is a prophet, and that this is the Lord’s Church. Regardless of what others may say or do, no one can ever take away a witness borne to your heart and mind about what is true.

    I urge you to stretch beyond your current spiritual ability to receive personal revelation, for the Lord has promised that “if thou shalt [seek], thou shalt receive revelation upon revelation, knowledge upon knowledge, that thou mayest know the mysteries and peaceable things—that which bringeth joy, that which bringeth life eternal.” Revelation for the Church, Revelation for Our Lives by President Russell M. Nelson

  • Volcanoes are not in the Book of Mormon-Earthquakes are!

    Volcanoes are not in the Book of Mormon-Earthquakes are!

    Meso vs Heartland- Which makes the most sense?

    In the Book of Mormon there is no mention of Jaguar’s, Jade, and Volcanoes which the Mesoamericanists talk about all the time. There are no lambs, goats, rams, bullocks, wine, wheat or barley to practice the Law of Moses in Mesoamerica.  We also hear of Earthquakes and Whirlwinds in the Book of Mormon which to me are defined like a Tornado. There are very few Tornados in Mesoamerica and the Heartland of America is called Tornado Alley. See map below.

    There are no large beasts that migrate in Mesoamerica [monkeys? llama’s? jaguars?], but in the Heartland of the United Stated there are Bison, Elk, Bear, and Moose which all migrate as is says in Ether 9:34, “And it came to pass that the people did follow the course of the beasts, and did devour the carcasses of them which fell by the way, until they had devoured them all.”

    By the way is an earthquake and a volcano the same thing? No! The Book of Mormon speaks of earthquakes, not volcanoes. More to come below.

    To me the Heartland JUST MAKES SENSE!


    1970 Copies of the Book of Mormon

    Many years ago in the copies of the Book of Mormon, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints included pictures of Mexico and various pyramids and statues. But, as you look at the picture left, you also see an old mammoth from Denver, Colorado. I served a mission in 1975 and those old blue books were full of Mesoamerica. I believe the historians and intellectuals were responsible for those theories. It has never been church doctrine about the location of the geography of the Book of Mormon, and today the Church is neutral on that subject. But, I am not neutral, I believe the Book of Mormon events began in the USA and the many remaining Lamanites have spread all over North and South America. That’s up to you to formulate your own opinion. Read all about “The Smoking Gun of Book of Mormon Geography” here.

    Nephite Archaeology

    Latter-day Saint Thomas Stuart Ferguson was the founder of BYU’s archaeology division (New World Archaeological Foundation). NWAF was financed by the LDS Church. NWAF and Ferguson were tasked by BYU and the Church in the 1950s and 1960s to find archaeological evidence to support the Book of Mormon. After 17 years of diligent effort, this is what Ferguson wrote in a February 20, 1976 letter about trying to dig up evidence for the Book of Mormon: “…you can’t set Book of Mormon geography down anywhere – because it is fictional and will never meet the requirements of the dirt-archaeology. I should say — what is in the ground will never conform to what is in the book.” Complete article here about Thomas Ferguson

    That is a lot of hard word with no reward. I honestly feel if we spent that much money in all the archaeology in the USA among the Hopewell and Adena civilizations, we would have found a ton of evidence. today in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee, Pennsylvania and New York, museums are full of artifacts and pottery dating at the time of the Book of Mormon. Look up the words “Mounds in North America”, or “Hopewell Culture” and you will be amazed at the millions of items of evidence. I believe the Hopewell are the Nephites, and the Adena are the Jaredites.

    “Thomas Ferguson was one of the most noted defenders of Book of Mormon archaeology. Mr. Ferguson planned the New World Archaeological Foundation which he hoped would prove The Book of Mormon through archaeological research. The Mormon Church granted hundreds of thousands of dollars to this organization, but in the end, Thomas Stuart Ferguson admitted that although the Foundation made some important contributions to New World archaeology, all his work with regard to the Book of Mormon was in vain. He admitted, in fact, that he had wasted twenty-five years of his life trying to prove the Book of Mormon. In 1975 Ferguson prepared a 29-page paper in which he wrote: ‘I’m afraid that up to this point, I must agree with Dee Green, who has told us that to date there is no Book-of-Mormon geography.’ In a letter to Mr. & Mrs. H.W. Lawrence, dated Feb. 20, 1976, Thomas Stuart Ferguson plainly stated: ‘…you can’t set Book of Mormon geography down anywhere – because it is fictional and will never meet the requirements of the dirt-archeology.’” https://www.mormonwiki.org/Thomas_Stuart_Ferguson.html

    Apologists Archaeology

    Apologist FAIRLDS say, “There are two major models today, the Mesoamerican Model, and the Heartland Model. There are tons of other ideas, but those are the two largest camps right now. There’s been a lot of back and forth between the two camps over what exactly Joseph knew by revelation and what he was opining. The fact remains that no revelation on the location of Book of Mormon geography has ever been definitively given.”

    Jonathan Neville said, “This is a red herring borrowed from L.E. Hills, who at least recognized what the prophets had taught. First, no one can say it’s “a fact” that “no revelation” about the setting has ever been definitively given. At most, we can say there is no canonized statement about the geography (although even that’s debatable).

    To say there was no revelation on the topic assumes we have records of every revelation, but we don’t. Joseph and Oliver both mentioned revelations that they never recorded. Joseph gave around 200 sermons that no one wrote down. Joseph taught lots of things that he didn’t claim specific revelation for, including some of the sections of the D&C (such as D&C 128). We infer that, because he taught these things, they originated with revelation. And Oliver, as an apostle and Assistant President of the Church (meaning he was Joseph’s spokesman) declared it was a “fact” that the hill in New York was the setting for the final battles of the Jaredites and Nephites.

    Furthermore, Lucy Mack Smith reported that Moroni identified the hill as Cumorah the first time he visited Joseph and that Joseph referred to the hill as Cumorah ever since. Others affirmed that identification.

    Notice the word thinking in this M2C [Mesoamerican Two Cumorah Theory] argument. Why would Joseph or Oliver have to claim revelation when they knew the location by personal experience? The restoration of the Priesthood and the keys were not “revelations.” They were experiences. Do we debate whether the Priesthood was restored because it was not a “revelation” or do we accept the report of the experience?

    We have more details about the New York Cumorah than we do about the restoration of the Priesthood. We have a date and approximate location for John the Baptist, but neither for Peter, James and John. Yet Oliver Cowdery related details about the visits he and Joseph made to the repository of Nephite records in the Hill Cumorah, described in Mormon 6:6. David Whitmer affirmed that Oliver told him about that–but he denied knowing about the restoration of the Priesthood. ” Jonathan Neville Blog

    FAIRLDS also said, “As far as things like the Zelph prophecies go, those weren’t published until after Joseph’s death, and all seven accounts contradict one another on various points. No one knows exactly what was said, especially since the word “Lamanite” seemed to mean “anyone of native, indigenous ancestry” to the early Saints.”

    Zelph, a Man of God by Ken Corbett

    First, FAIRLDS complains that there was no revelation. When faced with an actual revelation, they parse it for inconsistencies instead of accepting the overall context and implications.

    It’s not a question of publication, either. The accounts were recorded contemporaneously. This is one of the few instances where multiple people witnessed the revelation. Naturally they recorded it differently. In other situations, we take Wilford Woodruff’s words on their face because his is the only record. If we did that in this case, there wouldn’t be a debate.” Jonathan Neville.

    Volcanoes

    There are many volcanoes in Mesoamerica, does the Book of Mormon ever mention a volcano?

    Again FAIRLDS says, “Take, for example, the Interpreter articles demonstrating the volcanic eruptions around the time of Christ’s crucifixion in Mesoamerica, as well as the drought and famine from Helaman 11, which has a direct correlation to a drought in Mesoamerica during the same time period. Those are evidences supporting the narrative of the Book of Mormon. They are not direct proof.” FAIRLDS

    FAIRLDS quoting the Interpreter is demonstrating the Potemkin village nature of the citation cartel. [In politics and economics, a Potemkin village is any construction (literal or figurative) whose sole purpose is to provide an external façade to a country that is faring poorly, making people believe that the country is faring better.] FAIRLDS, the Interpreter, Book of Mormon Central, BYU Studies, etc., are all storefronts for the same M2C/SITH mindset. They have interlocking management and contributors who have worked closely together for years to enforce M2C/SITH assiduously. [Stone in the Hat]

    The volcano evidence is a perfect example. The Book of Mormon, despite 1,000 years of history in (allegedly) Mesoamerica, never once mentions volcanoes. The destruction in 3 Nephi is not volcanic, nor are there any other instances of volcanic action. Yet the citation cartel keeps insisting there really were volcanoes in there somewhere, if you read between the lines. What they’re citing is evidence of their M2C theory, not evidence of the historicity of the Book of Mormon. 

    New Madrid Earthquake

    “And the people began to look with great earnestness for the sign which had been given by the prophet Samuel, the Lamanite, yea, for the time that there should be darkness for the space of three days over the face of the land. And there began to be great doubtings and disputations among the people, notwithstanding so many signs had been given. And it came to pass in the thirty and fourth year, in the first month, on the fourth day of the month, there arose a great storm, such an one as never had been known in all the land. And there was also a great and terrible tempest; and there was terrible thunder, insomuch that it did shake the whole earth as if it was about to divide asunder. And there were exceedingly sharp lightnings, such as never had been known in all the land. And the city of Zarahemla did take fire.” 3 Nephi 8:3-8

    Think about this. What great city in Israel was the capital and it was destroyed? (Jerusalem). What great city in North America was the capital and was destroyed? (Zarahemla, Montrose, Iowa?). What is the great city of the last days? (New Jerusalem, Jackson County, MO). An interesting statement that should be familiar to you. “Consistent with this word usage, it is reported that Brigham Young often said that when the Saints returned to Jackson County, Missouri, there would not be as much as a “yellow dog [a persecuting gentile settler] to wag his tail” (see J. Golden Kimball address in Conference Report, [October 1930]: 59). This quote may refer to past or present events however.

    Click to Enlarge

    In the year 1811 did people in Missouri and the United States “look with great earnestness for the sign”? Yes! Today as I sit here in Bountiful, Utah have I ever “looked with great earnestness for the sign?” Yes! The Nephites of old had many signs that Christ was coming and they did not properly prepare.

    I feel it was a witness to us all that just after the (1811 earthquake) a Prophet of God was born (Joseph Smith), A huge sign was given in the Promised Land just before the Lord Jesus Christ visited the earth to Joseph in 1820.

    What other signs are there today that tell us that the Son of God is soon to return? Are we excited for the day or are we afraid of the day? I have heard it said that “fear and faith are not compatible” I think we can learn much from the 1811 earthquake and many other signs to prepare us.

    Could the very place called New Madrid, Missouri, be close to the same place that the Savior will appear to us when He comes? No one knows, but we should prepare. Could the earthquakes spoken of in the Book of Mormon be very similar to the New Madrid 1811 earthquake? Yes! Not Volcanoes, Earthquakes. Huge difference.

    The Earthquakes of 1811-12

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    “400 terrified residents in the town of New Madrid, Missouri were abruptly awakened by violent shaking and a tremendous roar.  It was December 16, 1811, and it was the first of at least three very large (M7 or greater) earthquakes and thousands of aftershocks to rock the region that winter, with the last occurring on February 7, 1812.

    Survivors reported that the earthquakes caused cracks to open in the earth’s surface, the ground to roll in visible waves, and large areas of land to sink or rise.  The crew of the New Orleans (the first steamboat on the Mississippi, which was on her maiden voyage) reported mooring to an island only to awake in the morning and find that the island had disappeared below the waters of the Mississippi River.  Damage was reported as far away as Charleston, South Carolina, and Washington, D.C.” Central U.S. Earthquake Consortium Memphis, Tennessee Read the entire article here

    Whirlwinds

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    “John Sorenson’s questions about snow and cold were addressed in the very first presentations. Apparently he again has not taken the necessary time to familiarize himself with the Heartland research. If he disagrees with the explanations that have been provided, he has provided no mention of why he disagrees, nor provided evidence refuting it.  Having read several of Sorenson’s works, I know him to be very articulate in his research involving things he is interested in. A concern is that Sorenson is either disinterested in this proposed model or so confident in his own theory  that he makes claims without attempting to ascertain the facts or review the information. Information regarding weather and climate can be at the blog here or here.

    Purchase 6 Different DVD’s

    The mention of snow and hail in the Book of Mormon occurs three times, whereas the mention of “the heat of the day” is mentioned only once, and cannot be construed as evidence requiring a tropical climate.  Nowhere in the Book of Mormon are monkeys, palm trees, coconuts or jungles mentioned.  Weather was apparently not high on the priority list for recording on the sacred records by the ancient prophets who were charged with keeping them.   Still, there are indicators of climate such as the fact that there were “seasons of the year” and that this was the “nature of the climate” (Alma 46:40) which would seem to favor a North American setting rather than a Mesoamerican setting because there is little difference between the warm rainy season and the warm dry seasons in Mesoamerica in comparison with winter and summer in North America.  Also indicators such as whirlwinds in the Book of Mormon (3 Nephi 8:12, 16) which are most likely referencing significant tornadoes, don’t occur in Mesoamerica, whereas North America’s heartland is known as tornado alley.

    Quotation from CES Letter

    “Archaeology: There is absolutely no archaeological evidence to directly support the Book of Mormon or the Nephites and Lamanites, who were supposed to have numbered in the millions. This is one of the reasons why unofficial apologists have developed the Limited Geography Model (it happened in Central or South America) and claim that the Hill Cumorah mentioned as the final battle of the Nephites is not in Palmyra, New York but is elsewhere. This is in direct contradiction to what Joseph Smith and other prophets have taught. It also makes little sense in light of the Church’s visitor’s center near the Hill Cumorah in New York and the annual Church-sponsored Hill Cumorah pageants.CES Letter. [CES Letter is one Latter-day Saint’s honest quest to get official answers from the LDS Church on its troubling origins, history, and practices. Jeremy Runnells was offered an opportunity to discuss his own doubts with a director of the Church Educational System (CES) and was assured that his doubts could be resolved. After reading Jeremy’s letter, the director promised him a response. No response ever came.]

    Here at Book of Mormon Evidence, and FIRM Foundation, with a lot of help from Jonathan Neville, we continue to try and answer this CES Letter. Jeremy Runnells asked many difficult questions that this CES director was just not the one to answer them. Our Church Leaders of course share with us doctrine, and the historians share researched opinion, but some of the answers Jeremy wanted were apologetic type questions such as, the age of dinosaurs, belief in evolution, method of translation and geography of the Book of Mormon. Our church leaders should teach doctrine as it is up to each of us individually to seek non-doctrinal answers on our own, followed with a lot of prayer. These are all questions we at FIRM Foundation strives to answer for you with the best information we can discover and research, and those that make sense. We each need to read and pray on our own for all answers in which the Lord has not reveled. Just keep looking as Moroni says, “we may know the truth of all things’” Keep searching.

    The Geography Bible of Mesoamericanists

    FAIR LDS loves John Sorensen’s book titled “Mormons Codex”, as they say, “as far as the New World evidences go, John Sorenson wrote an 850-page book detailing all of the evidence he’d personally compiled, with approximately 400 correlations between the Mesoamerican peoples and the peoples of the Book of Mormon.” FAIR LDS 

    Jonathan Neville responded and said, “It’s funny, I’ve had people cite me this book based on its size and weight as well, as if that matters in the least. Sorenson is an awesome guy, smart and faithful, etc., but Mormon’s Codex is an exercise in blatant bias confirmation. Much of it involves the “Sorenson translation” of the text, where he inserts his own opinions about what the text means or should have said to correspond with Mayan culture and geography. I don’t have to ask Michael Coe for all the reasons why the Book of Mormon doesn’t fit Mesoamerica; all I have to do is read the text and observe the absence of jungles, jaguars and jade, not to mention pyramids and Mayans. Then, like everyone else, I can read Mormon’s Codex and see the semantic gyrations Sorenson resorted to (e.g., his “narrow neck”) to cram the Nephites into Mayan society. And, of course, Mormon’s Codex contains the infamous passage in which Sorenson ridicules the prophets who have taught the New York Cumorah.” Jonathan Neville Blog

    Christ Visited the Nephites in the Land of Promise in North America

    FAIRLDS asks the question, “Question: Does the Book of Mormon fit best in a geography located around the Great Lakes, between the United States and Canada? Unfortunately, the geographical details of the Book of Mormon do not fit terribly well in models presented thus far.” FAIR LDS


    I love the readers of this blog to have as much information as I can share with them. Both sides of research about the Book of Mormon geography have value. I invite you to read FAIR LDS and others as you may not realize there are many wonderful people that have also known about a geography in North America that I mention below.

    A good friend of Rod Meldrum’s and Wayne May’s, Delbert Curtis proposed a limited geography around the Great Lakes region of North America in about 1993. His narrow neck of land lies between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. He states his position as follows:

    “The geography of the Book of Mormon was not important to the author until the Ensign printed an article suggesting there were two hills named Cumorah. That suggestion caused the author to become engrossed in the geography of the Book of Mormon. The author had never been able to believe a loving God would promise Nephi North America and land him thousands of miles from that land, or that the Nephites could have lived in Mesoamerica and died in New York State.

    Search the History and Standard Works of the Church

    Rather than looking to the works of man, the author [Curtis] searched the history and standard works of the church. To this was added the landmarks near and to the west of the Hill Cumorah as the source of information. All questions were answered, and each confusing passage become [sic] clear. All the landmarks in the area prove the Hill Cumorah in New York is the Hill Cumorah of the Book of Mormon. [Thus] the history and standard works of the church, along with the landmarks near the Hill Cumorah, offer proof positive that the Hill Cumorah in New York State, was and is the Cumorah of the Book of Mormon. . . . The invention of a second Hill Cumorah creates far more questions than it answers.” (Front cover & Back cover). Delbert W. Curtis “Christ in North America: Christ Visited the Nephites in the Land of Promise in North America”, Resource Communications, 1993.

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  • Iroquois- “Nephite Ancestry”- Algonquian “Lamanite Ancestry”

    Iroquois- “Nephite Ancestry”- Algonquian “Lamanite Ancestry”

    Obviously I am only surmising what ancestry I believe the Nephites and Lamanite tribes ended up as. I have another blog coming that will describe more details. Below is a basic chart that I am refining that I know will be updated eventually. If you have suggestions I would love to hear from you. One of many sources I have used so far is Here

    Algonquian (Lamanites) vs Iroquois (Nephites)

    Just as the Book of Mormon tells the story of two main societies at war Nephites vs. Lamanites, there are many instances historically of the same thing as some are called the Iroquois vs. the Algonquian, or the Tallegwi (Iroquois) vs the Leni-Lape (Algonquian), or the Cherokee (Iroquois)vs the Delaware (Algonquian). These tribes seem to always be at war with each other. The names on the list below (Map 1, 2) each are various sub-tribes under various groups of people. Sometimes in history writers have used various names for the same group of people without understanding the differences.

    Iroquois or Haudenosaunee/ Alleghewi/Tallegwi/Tsalagi/Cherokee/Allegheny/Onondaga/ Nephite?

    “Cherokee, North American Indians of Iroquoian lineage who constituted one of the largest politically integrated tribes at the time of European colonization of the Americas. Their name is derived from a Creek word meaning “people of different speech”; many prefer to be known as Keetoowah or Tsalagi. They are believed to have numbered some 22,500 individuals in 1650, and they controlled approximately 40,000 square miles (100,000 square km) of the Appalachian Mountains in parts of present-day Georgia, eastern Tennessee, and the western parts of what are now North Carolina and South Carolina.

    Traditional Cherokee life and culture greatly resembled that of the Creek and other tribes of the Southeast. The Cherokee nation was composed of a confederacy of symbolically red (war) and white (peace) towns. The chiefs of individual red towns were subordinated to a supreme war chief, while the officials of individual white towns were under the supreme peace chief. The peace towns provided sanctuary for wrongdoers; war ceremonies were conducted in red towns.” Source

    “Iroquois, any member of the North American Indian tribes speaking a language of the Iroquoian family—notably the Cayuga, Cherokee, Huron, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, and Tuscarora. The peoples who spoke Iroquoian languages occupied a continuous territory around Lakes Ontario, Huron, and Erie in present-day New York state and Pennsylvania (U.S.) and southern Ontario and Quebec (Canada). That larger group should be differentiated from the Five Nations (later Six Nations) better known as the Iroquois Confederacy (self name Haudenosaunee Confederacy).

    As was typical of Northeast Indians before colonization, the Iroquois were semisedentary agriculturists who palisaded their villages in time of need. Each village typically comprised several hundred persons. Iroquois people dwelt in large longhouses made of saplings and sheathed with elm bark, each housing many families. The longhouse family was the basic unit of traditional Iroquois society, which used a nested form of social organization: households (each representing a lineage) were divisions of clans, several clans constituted each moiety, and the two moieties combined to create a tribe.

    Groups of men built houses and palisades, fished, hunted, and engaged in military activities. Groups of women produced crops of corn (maize), beans, and squash, gathered wild foods, and prepared all clothing and most other residential goods. After the autumn harvest, family deer-hunting parties ranged far into the forests, returning to their villages at midwinter. Spring runs of fish drew families to nearby streams and lake inlets.

    Kinship and locality were the bases for traditional Iroquois political life. Iroquois speakers were fond of meetings, spending considerable time in council. Council attendance was determined by locality, sex, age, and the specific question at hand; each council had its own protocol and devices for gaining consensus, which was the primary mode of decision-making.

    The elaborate religious cosmology of the Iroquois was based on an origin tradition in which a woman fell from the sky; other parts of the religious tradition featured deluge and earth-diver motifs, supernatural aggression and cruelty, sorcery, torture, cannibalism, star myths, and journeys to the otherworld. The formal ceremonial cycle consisted of six agricultural festivals featuring long prayers of thanks. There were also rites for sanctioning political activity, such as treaty making.

    Warfare was important in Iroquois society, and, for men, self-respect depended upon achieving personal glory in war endeavours. War captives were often enslaved or adopted to replace dead family members. Losses to battle and disease increased the need for captives, who had become a significant population within Iroquois settlements by the late 17th century.” Iroquoian


    Algonquian /Leni-Lape/Delaware/Chipewa/Miqmak/Lamanites?

    One of the most populous and widespread Native American groups, Algonquian tribes consist of peoples that speak Algonquian languages and historically shared cultural similarities. There are hundreds of original tribes that spoke several related dialects of the language group. Historically, they lived across eastern North America from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rocky Mountains and from northern Canada to the Carolinas.

    Before Europeans came into contact, most Algonquian settlements lived by hunting, trapping, and fishing and gathering roots, nuts, wild rice, fruit, and berries; although quite a few supplemented their diet by cultivating corn, beans, and squash. Some tribes also grew tobacco. Because Northern weather patterns made growing food difficult, many Algonquian tribes moved their families from place to place. They traveled on foot, in canoes made of birch bark, and used snowshoes and toboggans in the snow. Their garments, as well as their shelters, known as wigwams, were fashioned with animal skins.

    At the time of the first European settlements in North America, Algonquian tribes occupied much of Canada east of the Rocky Mountains; what is now New England, New Jersey, southeastern New York, and Delaware and down the Atlantic Coast through the Upper South; and around the Great Lakes in present-day Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa. Many of the tribes were at war with the Iroquois Confederacy.

    The Algonquian were among the first North American natives to strike alliances with the French, who adopted Algonquian means of travel and terms like “canoe” and “toboggan.”

    The English settlements were often engaged in border wars with their Algonquian neighbors, who, continually pressed farther toward the interior by the advancing white immigration, kept up for a time a futile struggle for the possession of their territory. The eastern tribes, from Maine to the Carolinas, were defeated and their tribal organization was broken up. Some withdrew to Canada, others crossed the mountains into the Ohio Valley, while a few bands were located on reservations by the whites, only to dwindle and ultimately become extinct.

    The Abnaki and others who fled into Canada where they settled along the St. Lawrence River under the protection of the French, whose active allies they became in all the subsequent wars with the English down to the fall of the French power in Canada. Those who crossed the Allegheny mountains into the Ohio Valley, together with the Wyandot and the native Algonquian tribes of that region, formed themselves into a loose confederacy, allied first with the French and afterward with the English against the advancing settlements with the declared purpose of preserving the Ohio River as the Indian boundary. General Wayne’s victory in 1794 put an end to the struggle, and at the Treaty of Greenville in 1795 the Indians acknowledged their defeat and made the first cession of land west of the Ohio River.

    Shawnee Chief Tecumseh and his brother, Tenskwatawa, instigated by the British, again aroused the western tribes against the United States a few years later, but the disastrous defeat at Tippecanoe, Indiana in 1811 and the death of their leader broke the spirit of the Indians. In 1815 those who had taken part against the United States during the War of 1812 made peace with the Government; then began the series of treaties by which, within 30 years, most of the Indians of this region ceded their lands and removed west of the Mississippi River.

    Algonquian tribes of the New England area include Mohegan, Pequot, Narragansett, Wampanoag, Massachusett, Nipmuc, Pennacook, Abenaki, Maliseet, and Passamaquoddy. The Chippewa, Ottawa, Pottawatomie, and a variety of Cree groups lived in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Upper Michigan. In the Midwest lived the Shawnee, Illini, Kickapoo, Menominee, Miami, and Sac and Fox. The Great Plains were called home to the Arapaho, Blackfeet, and Cheyenne. In the mid-and South-Atlantic were the traditional homes of the Powhatan, Lumbee, Nanticoke, Lenape, Munsee, and Mahican peoples. Other Algonquian tribes reside in Canada.” Compiled by Kathy Alexander, updated January 2020. https://www.legendsofamerica.com/algonquian-peoples/


    The Siouan Language 

    Siouan Language Group

    Completely different from the Algonquian and the Iroquois Language Group are the Siouan and the Muskogean Group.

    There is obvious mixture between many of these language groups that are part of the Nephites, Lamanites, Mulekites and even the Jaredites, but that is not the purpose of this article.

     “Siouan or Siouan–Catawban is a language family of North America that is located primarily in the Great Plains, Ohio and Mississippi valleys and southeastern North America with a few other languages in the east.

    Authors who call the entire family Siouan distinguish the two branches as Western Siouan and Eastern Siouan or as Siouan-proper and Catawban. Others restrict the name “Siouan” to the western branch and use the name Siouan–Catawban for the entire family. Generally, however, the name “Siouan” is used without distinction.” Wikepedia


    Muskogean Language Group 

    Muskogean Language Group

    The Muskogean family consists of six languages that are still spoken: Alabama, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek-Seminole, Koasati, and Mikasuki, as well as the now-extinct Apalachee, Houma, and Hitchiti (the last is generally considered a dialect of Mikasuki). “Seminole” is listed as one of the Muskogean languages in Hardy’s list, but it is generally considered a dialect of Creek rather than a separate language, as she comments.

    The major subdivisions of the family have long been controversial, but the following lower-level groups are universally accepted: Choctaw–Chickasaw, Alabama–Koasati, Hitchiti–Mikasuki, and Creek–Seminole.” Wikepedia


    Algonquian (Lamanite) and Iroquois (Nephite) Groups

    Algonquian Language Group
    Iroquois Language Group

     

    Native American Chiefs

    Alleghewi or Tallegwi

    Alleghewi or Tallegwi, have given their name to the Alleghany River and Mountains, and were the mound-builders

    Leni-Lape = Delaware = Chipewa = Miqmak = ALGONQUIAN!
    Alleghewi = Tallegwi = Tsalagi = Cherokee = Allegheny = Onondaga= IROQUOIS!

    “There can be no reasonable doubt that the Alleghewi or Tallegwi, who have given their name to the Alleghany River and Mountains, were the mound-builders. The destiny which ultimately befell the Mound-builders can be inferred from what was known of the fate of the Huron themselves in their final was with the Iroquois. The greater portion of the Huron people were exterminated, and their towns reduced to ashes. Of the survivors many were received and adopted among the conquerors. A few fled to the east and sought protection from France.” Archaeological History of Ohio: The Mound builders and Later Indians pg 438

    “It may be considered as beyond dispute that the Cherokees are a branch or off-shoot of the Huron-Iroquois family. Their language proves it. “The striking fact has become evident that the course of the migration of the Huron-Iroquois family has been from eastern Canada, on the Lower St. Lawrence, to the mountains of northern Alabama.” Archaeological history of Ohio : The Mound builders and later Indians / by Gerard Fowke.

    The Wabash Indians were primarily the Miami, Weas and Piankashaws, but also included Kickapoos, Mascoutens, and others.[Algonquian/I call Remaining Lamanites]. In that time and place, Native American tribes were smaller political units, and the villages along the Wabash were multi-tribal settlements with no centralized government. The confederacy, then, was a loose alliance of influential village leaders (sometimes called headmen or chiefs). In the 1780s, headmen of the Wabash Confederacy allied themselves with a larger, loose confederacy of Native American leaders in the Ohio Country and Illinois Country known as the Northwestern Confederacy, in order to collectively resist U.S. expansion after the American Revolutionary War. In 1786, a Wyandot [Iroquois/ I call a remaining Nephite] messenger named Scotosh warned Congress that the Wabash, Twightwee, and Miami nations would disrupt U.S. surveyors, and Congress promised reprisals if that occurred. This resistance movement culminated with the Northwest Indian War. The alliance with the Western Confederacy ended in 1792 with the Wabash Confederacy signed a treaty with the United States.” Wikipedia

    This quote above could have been in reference to the many battles fought between the Lamanites and Nephites in this general area. (See Map Below) The area described in the article above is the area we would call the middle of the Land Zarahemla and the Land Bountiful with the Land Desolation being north of Bountiful. As a matter of fact, my maps show that the Wabash River could possibly be the division point of the Land Bountiful, east of the Wabash, and the Land Zarahemla west of the Wabash to the Mississippi River and beyond, to the Missouri River.  The area of Lachoneus of the Book of Mormon and many other battles in Alma 2 and Alma 46 are probably likely just south of the Narrow Neck bordering on the land Zarahemla and the Land Bountiful on the Wabash River. That area of Missouri to Illinois, to Indiana to Ohio to Pennsylvania were all the direction of the last great battle of the Book of Mormon ending at Cumorah. Full Blog Here:

    The Black arrow above represents the division of the Land Bountiful and Land Zarahemla. Between the Mississippi River and the Wabash is where the quoted battle from the Palmyra Register occurred. Yellow shaded area is Zarahemla and shaded orange area is Bountiful.

    Native American Indians Time Periods

    The Native American always held God, Christ, or the Great Spirit, as that great “One” God.
    These ancient Adena and Hopewell cultures created pipes in the images that they saw and experienced. Ancient cultures respected all that the Great Spirit created, animals, birds, people, and nature. The Adena culture represents approximately the same time frame as the Jaredites (c. 1500 BC – 200 BC) and the Hopewell or Woodland culture (c.200 BC – 400 AD) parallels the time frame of the Nephites.“There is a bowl for the tobacco in their pipes in the top, and there is a small hole at one end to breathe in the smoke. The pipe was made by Native Americans living in what is today the US state of Ohio. These Native Americans were small-scale farmers who built large burial and ceremonial mounds. There were over 200 pipes buried in a collection of mounds known as the ‘Mound City Group’. The pipe was not simply smoked for pleasure but probably had a religious function. A shaman may have smoked it to evoke the otter as a representative of his clan, or as a spirit guide who would then accompany the shaman on a spiritual journey. Tobacco has been smoked in North America for at least 2300 years and pipe smoking still remains an integral part of modern Native American culture. Tobacco was first brought to Europe in the early 1500s, where it quickly spread across Europe, Africa and Asia.” A History of the World BBC

    Read more about the reason for the various shapes of the pipes and how they were used. Why were these pipes so important to the Native Americans?

    Great Spirit Appears to the Onondagas

    “On the authority of some older inhabitants of Onondaga, New York, it is stated that on a ledge of rocks, about a mile south of Jamesville, (Near Syracuse and Oneida Castle) is a place which used to be pointed out by the Indians as a spot where the Great Spirit once came down and sat and gave good advice to the chiefs of Onondagas. That there are the prints of his hands and his feet, left in the rocks, still to be seen. In the former years the Onondagas used annually to offer, at this place, tobacco and pipes, and to burn tobacco and herbs as a sacrifice to the Great Spirit, to conciliate his favor and which was a means of preventing diseases.” Author L. Taylor Hansen He Walked the Americas 

    “Native accounts tell of his arrival [Christ] from the direction of the rising sun, after which he set up his priesthood among his followers known as the “Wau-pa-nu” (the spelling phonetic). They were said to have healed the sick and instituted new laws. Blood sacrifice was forbidden and replaced by the use of tobacco, today an important element in all traditional Native American ceremonies. Among many eastern tribes, East Star Man is regarded as the son of Great Spirit, the Creator.” Wayne May, Christ in North America.

    The Name of Nephi

    “JOSEPHUS SAYS the Egyptian called their Creator ‘Kneph,’ ‘Noub,’ or ‘Nour.’ Reynolds points out that ancient variants of the name of Nephi include Knephi, Kneph, Noub, Nouv, Knouphis, Nebo, Naba, Nechi, Necho and others. These variants are found in many of the American Indian languages.George Reynolds, Commentary on the Book of Mormon

    “NEPHI: This is also an Egyptian name, usually given as Knephi, and transliterated into Hebrew as Nebi. It means ‘prophet’ or one who speaks with God. The great Osiris, one of the Egyptian gods, was called Nephi or Knephi and the city in his honor was n-ph (vowels always had to be supplied). It is the city we know today as Memphis, located across the Nile from Cairo, but it is referred to by its original name of Noph (a variant of Nephi) in the writings of Hosea, Isaiah, and Jeremiah.” Treasures from the Book of Mormon, Volume One By W. Cleon Skousen

    The Seat of the Iroquois

    St George Temple Record of 85 Native Chiefs baptized for the Dead in 1877Atotarho or Tah-totah or Chief or Sachem or King

    “Onondaga was, from the remotest times, the seat of the Iroquois government. Granting credence to the account of their own origin, on the high grounds or falls of the Oswego, (East of Fulton NY See map below) they had not proceeded far up the course of the widely gathered waters of this stream, when a portion of them planted their wigwams in this fertile region. Whatever was the cause of their migrating from their primary council fire, nothing was more natural than that, by pursuing this stream upward, they should separate into independent tribes, and by further tracing out its far spread forks, gradually expand themselves, as they were found by the discoverers and first settlers, over the entire area of western New-York. On reaching the grand junction of Three River Point (Phoenix, NY), a part went up the Seneca river, who subsequently dividing, formed the Senecas and Cayugas. The bands who took the eastern fork, or Oneida river, pushed forward over the Deowainsta, or Rome summit, into the first large stream, flowing east, and became the Mohawks. The central or Onondaga fork was chosen by the portion who, from the hill country (Onondaga) they first located in, took this name; and from them, the Oneidas, pursuing in fact the track of the Mohawks, were an off-shoot…”

    “…The idea of a confederation was, it is believed, an old one with this people, for the very oldest traditions speak of something of this kind, among the lake and St. Lawrence tribes of older days. When the present league was formed, on the banks of the Onondaga lake, this central tribe had manifestly greatly increased in strength, and distinguished itself in arms, and feats of hunting and daring against giants and monsters… Most distinguished, however, above all others, east or west, was a leader of great courage, wisdom and address, called Atotarho…”

    “A singular tradition may be here added. It is said that the XIIIth Atotarho reigned at Onondaga when America was discovered” (1414 AD) Aboriginal History, Antiquities and General Ethnology of Western New-York by Henry R. Schoolcraft

    In speaking about the 13th Atotarho (or Sachem or Chief ) in the Iroquois tradition, we read also in the Book of Mormon. “And whoso should reign in [Nephi’s] stead were called by the people, ‘Second Nephi,’ ‘Third Nephi,’ and so forth…” (Jacob 1:11)

    Tadodaho was said to be a warrior and primary chief of the Onondaga people. Depending on the speaker’s dialect and the writer’s orthography, other versions of the name include Adodarhoh, Atartaho, Atotarho, Tatotarho, Thatotarho, and Watatohtahro. In the 1883 work The Iroquois Book of Rites, edited by Horatio Hale, the term Atartaho is said to signify “entangled”. Wikepedia

    “The temple registry page shown below is remarkable in that an Onondaga
    Nation king was named King Tah-totah, then others that followed: King Tah to-tah 2, King Tah-to-tah 3…then on the next page, King Tah-to-tah 7 through …15, etc. This tradition of naming kings in respect and remembrance of a prior king follows the pattern of the early Nephite colony.” Annotated Book of Mormon David Hocking and Rod Meldrum page 101

    Just like Tah-to-tah means Chief or Prophet to the Iroquois,
    Nephi meant Chief or Prophet to the Nephites

    See my blog here titled, 85 NATIVE AMERICAN CHIEFS-BAPTIZED AT THE ST GEORGE TEMPLE

    See my blog here: THE ONANDAGA-JOSEPH SMITH’S INDIANS

    Manasseh and Ephraim grew together upon this American continent

    “I am Mormon, and a pure descendant of Lehi. I have reason to bless my God and my Savior Jesus Christ, that he brought our fathers out of the land of Jerusalem” 3 Nephi 5:20

    “1 Nephi 7:2. Ishmael Is of Ephraim. The Book of Mormon is sometimes referred to as the “stick of Joseph” (Ezekiel 37:19) or the “stick of Ephraim” (D&C 27:5). Lehi was a descendant of Manasseh (see Alma 10:3) and Ishmael was a descendant of Ephraim. The prophecies of Jacob (see Genesis 48:16; 49:22) were fulfilled as Ishmael’s family (Ephraim) came to the American continent with Lehi (Manasseh).

    Elder Erastus Snow (1818–88) of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles discussed the importance of Ishmael’s lineage: “Whoever has read the Book of Mormon carefully will have learned that the remnants of the house of Joseph dwelt upon the American continent; and that Lehi learned by searching the records of his fathers that were written upon the plates of brass, that he was of the lineage of Manasseh. The Prophet Joseph informed us that the record of Lehi was contained on the 116 pages that were first translated and subsequently stolen, and of which an abridgment is given us in the first Book of Nephi, which is the record of Nephi individually, he himself being of the lineage of Manasseh; but that Ishmael was of the lineage of Ephraim, and that his sons married into Lehi’s family, and Lehi’s sons married Ishmael’s daughters, thus fulfilling the words of Jacob upon Ephraim and Manasseh in the 48th chapter of Genesis, which says: ‘And let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the land.’ Thus these descendants of Manasseh and Ephraim grew together upon this American continent” (in Daniel H. Ludlow, A Companion to Your Study of the Book of Mormon [1976], 199). LDS Study Manual

    I believe Joseph Smith was a pure descendant of Ephraim who obtained the Stick of Ephraim (D&C 27:5) from Mormon, who was a direct descendant of Lehi. Both sons of Joseph of Egypt  came together is a significant way in regard to that sacred record here in the United States, which is the Promised Land of the Book of Mormon. Elder Perry said, “The United States is the promised land foretold in the Book of Mormon—a place where divine guidance directed inspired men to create the conditions necessary for the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” Elder L. Tom Perry Ensign Dec. 2012

    Hebrew from Eber to Mulek Joined Joseph of Israel in America

    Remember how important the Tribe of Judah was to the Lord which is His lineage through David. The People of Zarahemla (Mulekites) were of Judah as was Ammon of the Book of Mormon who later helped to free King Limhi and his people from the Lamanites and bring them back to Zarahemla. Mosiah 22

    Just think, just as Joseph Smith (Ephraim) and Mormon (Lehi) represented the tripe of Judah (Christ), the Nephites who are of Joseph joined up with the people of Zarahemla who are of Judah the brother of Joseph of Israel.

    Mulek: “A son of the Old Testament king Zedekiah (about 589 B.C.). The Bible records that all the sons of Zedekiah were slain (2 Kgs. 25:7), but the Book of Mormon clarifies that Mulek survived (Hel. 8:21).

    Zarahemla was a descendant of Mulek, Mosiah 25:2.
    The people of Mulek joined the Nephites, Mosiah 25:13.
    The Lord brought Mulek into the land north, Hel. 6:10.
    All of Zedekiah’s sons were slain except Mulek, Hel. 8:21.” LDS Study Guide

    Ammon, Descendant of Zarahemla (Hebrew from Eber)

    Ammon: “In the Book of Mormon, a strong and mighty man who led an expedition from Zarahemla to the land of Lehi-Nephi (Mosiah 7:1–16). He was shown ancient records and explained what a seer is (Mosiah 8:5–18). He later helped to free King Limhi and his people from the Lamanites and bring them back to Zarahemla (Mosiah 22).” LDS Study Guide

    Burial of Mormon

    “When serving as Mission President to the Seminole Indians in Central Florida, Murray J. Rawson was teaching a group of the tribe about the Book of Mormon when he was interrupted by their Chief, saying: “We had a war long ago with a light skinned people around the Great Lakes. We conquered them but we had so much respect for their warrior chief that we buried him at the mouth of the Oswego River that is in New York State. We don’t discuss this very much because it is an embarrassment to us. President Rawson then asked why this is an embarrassment, and the Chief replied, “ Our history is written on metal plates and buried in a hill in New York, but we don’t know which hill!” (Talk given to missionaries in training at the MTC, Provo, Utah 1979, by President Murray J. Rawson). This talk has a poor audio but you can find it here: (See Map Above for Mormon’s burial place on Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Oswego River)

    Dating and Purpose of the Ancient Pipes

    “In the first few years following the creation of the [Smithsonian] Bureau, the debate began to escalate regarding the interpretation of the many bird and animal carvings that were coming out of the mounds. Many artifacts being recovered from the Hopewell and Adena mounds appeared to be birds and mammals that only exist in the southern tropical regions of the world. M. C. Read in Archaeology of Ohio, pointed out: “Of the animal that is supposed to represent the seacow, seven carvings have been found. This inhabitant of tropical waters is not met in the higher latitudes of North America.”162 Many carvings of birds, and animals from tropical climates such as the manatee, large seal-like animals, elephants and tropical birds like the big-beaked toucan and parrot-like carvings were found, all of which were raising questions as to a possible connections with peoples from these tropical regions.

    Tobacco is considered the most sacred of the Indigenous sacred medicines, used in virtually every ceremony as a means of connecting directly to the Creator. Tobacco is also thought to be the first plant given to the Indigenous people by the Creator. Because of this, tobacco is most frequently used as an offering, either in order to give thanks, to make a request for wisdom or protection, or as a means of cleansing.
    Annotated Book of Mormon by David Hocking and Rod Meldrum

    The Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, published in 1884, included for the first time a brief section entitled, Explorations in Mounds. It discusses work done in West Virginia, Ohio, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Florida, …by 1883, Cyrus Thomas’s Division of Mound Explorations included three full-time assistants and five temporary helpers, and work was under way in Tennessee, Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, and Missouri. Some 4,100 artifacts had been collected for the National Museum in Washington. They included elegant pipes and pendants of polished stones and such humbler things as hoes, scrapers, diggers, axes, and hammers. Some of the mounds had yielded clear evidence of contact with European civilizations: bits of hammered iron in North Carolina; silver bracelets, brooches, and crosses in Wisconsin, and fragments of copper plate bearing the marks of machinery in Illinois. All this served to back Powell’s original belief that “a few, at least, of the important mounds of the valley of the Mississippi had been constructed and used subsequent to the occupation of the continent by Europeans, and that some at least, of the mound builders were therefore none other than known Indian tribes.163

    In the early annual reports of the Bureau of Ethnology public documents, one finds that it is not what they included in their reports, but what they have obviously excluded. The discussions and findings that were explored and addressed in the Bureau’s publications followed a prescribed agenda, pointing out that Indian populations and America’s ancient cultures were never highly advanced, with little to no discussions as to their cultural achievements. Lost from these studies were acknowledgements that the Indians were at one time more advanced than first perceived. As evidence in the construction of their communities, fortifications, smelting of metals and their construction of watercrafts capable of navigating the many rivers and lakes of the northeast. Also distinctively missing were the findings that show that these ancient mound-building cultures possessed knowledge of mathematics, astronomy, written language and engineering, as shown in the building of earthwork structures, which were comparable to any achievements of any ancient culture in the world of their day.

    So where did the Mound Builders’ knowledge of these skills come from and why was so much of this knowledge not celebrated or passed on to our day and to their descendants?

    “The fourth Annual Report contains an essay by Garrick Mallery on the picture-writing of the Indians, in which he discusses the various inscribed tablets found in mounds. Most of these he dismisses as frauds.” Such was the case of the Holy Stones found by David Wyrick of Newark, Ohio,) “…discovered in 1860 a tablet bearing on one side a truculent likeness of Moses with his name in Hebrew.”164 [Editors note: These so-called hoaxes are also pushed by the Scholars and Intellects that believe in the Mesoamerican setting for the Book of Mormon]. It is interesting to note that these early men of the Bureau of Ethnology described and defined these artifacts as picture-writings of the Indians or frauds without giving any real consideration to the potential of other visitor, to the America’s prior to Columbus.” Lost Civilizations of North America Steve Smoot Chapter 18, Learning from America’s Antiquities

    _______________________

    162 Read, 48.

    163 Silverberg, The Mound Builders, 136-137.

    164 Silverberg, 137-138.

    Choctaw Traditions – The Council Fire, The Nahullo

    The faces of the Choctaw and Chickasaw men of sixty years ago were as smooth as a woman’s, in fact they had no beard. Sometimes there might be seen a few tine hairs (if hairs they might be called) here and there upon the face, but they were few and far between, and extracted with a pair of small tweezers whenever discovered. Oft have I seen a Choctaw warrior standing before a mirror seeking with untiring perseverance and unwearied eyes, as he turned his face at different angles to the glass, if by chance a hair could be found lurking there, which, if discovered, was instantly removed as an unwelcome intruder. Even today, a full blood Choctaw or Chickasaw with a heavy beard is never seen. I have seen a few, here and there, with a little patch of beard upon their chins, but it was thin and short, and with good reasons to suspect that white blood flowed in their veins.

    It is a truth but little known among the whites, that the North American Indians of untarnished blood have no hair upon any part of the body except the head. My knowledge of this peculiarity was confined, however, to the Choctaws and Chickasaws alone. But in conversation with an aged Choctaw friend upon this subject, and inquiring” if this peculiarity extended to all Indians, he replied; “To all, I believe. I have been among the Comanche’s, Kiowa’s and other western Indians, and have often seen them bathing, men and women, promiscuously together, in the rivers of their country, and found it was the same with them, their heads alone were adorned with hair.”

    In conversation soon after with a Creek friend upon the subject in regard to the full-blood Creeks, he said, “They have no hair whatever upon the body, except that of the head, and the same is the case with all full-bloods that I have seen of other tribes.” It is also the testimony of all the early explorers of this continent.

    The Council of Fire
    Choctaw Village near the Chefuncte, The women appear to be making dye to color the strips of cane beside them, by François Bernard, 1869
    Choctaw Village near the Chefuncte, The women appear to be making dye to color the strips of cane beside them, by François Bernard, 1869
    In their ancient councils and great national assemblies, the Choctaws always observed the utmost order arid decorum, which, however, is universally characteristic of the Indians everywhere. In those grave and imposing deliberations of years ago convened at night, all sat on the ground in a circle around a blazing fire called “The Council Fire.” The aged, who from decrepitude had long retired from the scenes of active life, the war-path and the chase, formed the inner circle; the middle aged warriors, the next and the young warriors, the outer circle. The women and children were always excluded from all their national assemblies. The old men, beginning with the oldest patriarch, would then in regular succession state to the attentive audience all that had been told them by their fathers, and what they themselves had learned in the experience of an eventful life the past history of their nation; their vicissitudes and changes; what difficulties they had encountered, and how overcome; their various successes in war and their defeats; the character and kind of enemies whom they had defeated and by whom they had been defeated, the mighty deeds of their renowned chiefs and famous warriors in days past, together with their own achievements both in war and the chase; their nation’s days of prosperity and adversity; in short; all of their traditions and legends handed down to them through: the successive generations of ages past; and when those old seers and patriarchs, oracles of the past, had in their turn gone to dwell with their fathers in the Spirit Land, and their voices were no longer heard in wise counsel, the next oldest occupied the chairs of state, and in turn rehearsed to their young braves the traditions of the past, as related to them by the former sages of their tribe, together with their own knowledge; and thus were handed down through a long line of successive generations, and with much accuracy and truth, the events of their past history; and when we consider the extent to which all Indians cultivated that one faculty, memory, their connections in the history of the past is not so astonishing. I will here relate a little incident (frequently published) in the life of the famous Indian chief, Red Jacket, as an evidence of strength and correctness of the Indian s memory. It is said of Red Jacket, that he never forgot any thing he once learned. On a certain occasion, a dispute arose in a council with his tribe and the whites, concerning the stipulations made and agreed upon in a certain treaty. “You have forgotten,” said the agent, “we have it written on paper.” “The paper then tells a lie,” replied Red Jacket. “I have it written down here,” he added, placing his hand with great dignity on his brow. “This is the book the Great Spirit has given the Indian; it does not lie.” A reference was immediately made to the treaty in question, when, to the astonishment of all present, the document confirmed every word the unlettered warrior and statesman had uttered. There can be little doubt but that a large majority of their traditions are based upon truth; though passing as they have through so long a period of time, it is reasonable to suppose that many errors have crept in.

    But one has given his opinion, on page 92 of his “History of the Indian Tribes of North America,” in the following positive and presumptuous assertion, though his apparent ignorance of all the characteristics (well known to the thousands of the White Race who have lived among them and studied them a long life-time) of the North American Indians so plainly manifested throughout his entire work, entitles his assumed learned opinion regarding the truth or untruth of the traditions of the North American Indians, or anything else concerning that people, to but little, if any, credit. He boldly asserts, with a seemingly great indifference as regards its truth, that “Nothing can be more uncertain, and more unworthy, we will not say of credit, but of consideration, than their (the Indians) earlier traditions; and probably there is not a single fact in all their history, supported by satisfactory evidence, which occurred half a century previous to the establishment of the Europeans.” Though all admit that the voices of tradition coming from all Nations even from our own ancestors, the Britons are enshrouded, to a greater or less extent, in dense and dubious fogs, and become more dim and distant as we go further back into the past. Yet that does not necessarily bring even the traditions of the North American Indians under his edict, “Nothing can be more uncertain, and more unworthy, we will not say of credit, but of consideration, than their traditions, “as here comes to our aid modern Oriental Discovery, with records engraved on rocks and stamped on bricks records contemporary with the events, and in all cases independent of the modern authority since the records have been hidden from the eyes of both the believer and disbeliever. Inscriptions are disclosed, in languages now dead, in characters long-forgotten, and to which every key had been apparently lost. Ancient cities and countries, Thebes, Ninevah, Pompeii, Balbee, Babylon, Jerusalem and Egypt rise to testify and confirm the credit of many of the traditions, fables and legends of the Old World. And so also, from the buried past of the New World, hundreds of witnesses have already been summoned, and are still being summoned, that confirm the credit of the traditions and legends of the North American Indians, and to which they pointed back through the long vista of ages past, ere the Indians were known to the White Race, and give the merited contradiction to the assertion that their traditions “merit not even consideration.”

    Mammoths & Nahullo Mastodon
    As the climate warmed during the last part of the Ice Age, large mammal such as the Mastodon migrated into the Shenandoah Valley. Source: VR image by Richard Thornton
    An ancient Choctaw tradition attributes the origin of the prairies along the western banks of the Tombigbee River, to some huge animals (mammoths) that existed there at the advent of their ancestors from the west to Mississippi. Their tradition also states that the Nahullo, (Supernatural) a race of giant people, also inhabited the same country, with whom their forefathers oft came in hostile contact. These mighty animals broke off the low limbs of the trees in eating the leaves, and also gnawed the bark off the trees, which, in the course of time, caused them to wither and die; that they roamed in different bands, which engaged in desperate battles whenever and wherever they met, and thus caused them to rapidly decrease in numbers; and that, in the course of years all had perished but two large males, who, separate and alone, wandered about for several years each confining himself to the solitude of the forest many miles from the other. Finally, in their wanderings they met, and at once engaged in terrible conflict in which one was killed. The survivor, now monarch of the forests, strolled about for a few years wrapped in the solitude of his own reflections and independence then died, and with him the race became extinct.

    That the Choctaw traditions of both the mammoth and great men, was based on truth as to their former existence in the southern and western parts of this continent is satisfactorily established by the many mammoth skeletons of both men and beasts and fragments of huge bones that have been, and are continually being found in different parts of the country, and all of whom, according to their tradition were contemporary with the ancient fathers of the present Indian race. It is well known that the ancient existence of those giants and mammoth was wholly unknown to the White Race, until the excavation of their bones proved their former existence; yet were known to the Indians to have existed and so declared; but which was regarded by the whites as only an Indian fable, unworthy of belief or even a second thought. A huge skeleton of one of those ancient animals was found in March 1877, four miles east of the town of Greenville, Hunt County, Texas. I secured a fragment of the skeleton, evidently a part of the femoral bone, which measured twenty-one inches in circumference. A tooth measured three inches in width, five inches in length along the surface of the jawbone and five inches in depth into the jaw, and weighed the seemingly incredible weight of eleven pounds. The teeth proved the monster herbaceous, the animal of which was in a perfect state of preservation. The greater part of the frame crumbled to dust, as soon as exposed to the action of the air.

    Here then it had found a burial place, among others of the prehistoric population of the various animals which held possession of this continent before, perhaps, the advent of man, rising up before us like some old granite dome, weather-beaten and darkened by the lapse of ages past. But death came to it, as to its predecessors, whose cemeteries time has opened here and there, and revealed to the scrutiny of the curious, the testimony of vanished age. Many citizens of the immediate neighborhood visited the place of disinterment, and viewed the solitary grave and looked with wondering interest upon this stranger of hoary antiquity arising from his forest tomb where he has so long slept in silence, unknown and unsung; whose history, as that of his mighty race, is wrapped in the eternal silence of the unknown past. Yet, to one who seeks to muse over the mysteries of the unwritten long ago, this fossil tells a story of the mystic days of yore and of the multiplied thousands of years since old Mother Earth commenced to bear and then destroy her children.

    Ah, could the records of the ages to which they point be restored, how many doubts and problems would be solved? But they only tantalize us by their near approach and undiminished inscrutableness, while imagination shrinks from the contemplation of the intervening years between. Yet, from those relics of the ages past, an unlimited field for the imagination is open to view, which many thinkers have attempted to explore only to find themselves utterly lost.

    “Hupimmi hattak tikba a mintih hushi aiokatula” (our, forefathers came from the west), [Jaredites?] declare the ancient Choctaws through their tradition, and they saw the mighty beasts of the forests, whose tread shook the earth; but our forefathers ancestry came from the northwest beyond the big water.”

    “Tis but the tradition of the ignorant Indian a foolish fable,” responded he of the pale-face, of boasted historical attainments when lo! Accident unearths the long hidden monster of traditional record, and the truth of the rejected declaration of the despised Indian is established, and with equal truth establishing the fact that, mid all our boasted ancient pedigree, theirs is more ancient, and perhaps more honorable, reaching back through the vista of pre-historic times to the” dim and hazy regions of ages past and unknown.

    In regard to the race of giants that once occupied the now State of Tennessee and mentioned in the tradition of the ancient Choctaws, Mr. H. S. Halbert, an esteemed friend, says in a letter to me, January 22, 1878, “I will give you some facts which modern researches have thrown upon the ancient occupancy of this continent, on the Atlantic seaboard of the United States stretching from the coast of North Carolina up to and through New England. I refer particularly to the seaboard .

    “I am satisfied that the Indian race were in occupancy of this seaboard region only about 200 years before the discovery of America in 1492, I give the reasons:

    About the year 1000, A. D. (I quote the date from memory, not having the authorities before me) the Northmen discovered America and made some settlements on the New England coast. All this, as you know, is historical. The Northmen there came in contact with a people whom they called Skrellings. Now these Skrellings, from the description given by them were not Indians, but Esquimaux. They were the same kind of people the Northmen had previously met in Greenland and whom they called also Skrellings, or rather Skraellinger. This is plain proof that 500 years before Columbus, the Esquimaux race inhabited the seaboard of New England and not the Indians.

    “Again, the Tuscarora Indians, now living in Canada, but formerly from North Carolina, state in their traditions that they came from the west and settled on the North Carolina seaboard about the year A. D. 1300. Their traditions also state that they came in contact with a people of short stature, ignorant of maize and eaters of raw flesh.

    “Now to whom does this description apply but to the Esquimaux? Thirdly, relics have been discovered implements of various kinds, along the seaboard exactly similar to those used by the Esquimaux of the present day. All this is plain proof to my mind, that the Esquimaux once inhabited the Atlantic seaboard as far south as North Carolina, and that they were pushed northward by the influx of the incoming Indian tribes; and that- the Indian had not been settled but for comparatively a short period in this seaboard at the time of Columbus discovery. The Mound Builders seemed to have never occupied this seaboard stretching from North Carolina upward. Now as to the Delaware tradition.

    “The Delawares, or Leni Lenape as they style themselves in their native tongue, have a tradition that they came from the west. When they came to the Great River, perhaps, somewhere in the latitude of St. Louis, they found a people of tall stature, and living in towns. This people the Delawares called Allegewi. They asked the Allegewi for permission to cross the river, which was granted. The Allegewi, however, seeing the Indians constantly coming from the west in such large numbers, and fearing they would ultimately dispossess them of their country, commenced war upon them. After years of fighting, the Allegewi were defeated and driven out of their country retreating southward, and the Delawares and other tribes took possession of their country. Now these Allegewi are without doubt the same stock of people spoken of in Choctaw tradition as the Nahoolo.”

    The word Nahoolo is a corruption of the Choctaw word Nahullo and is now applied to the entire White Race, but anciently it referred to a giant race with which they came in contact when they first crossed the Mississippi river. These giants, says their tradition, as related to the missionaries occupied the northern part of the now States of Mississippi and Alabama and the western part of Tennessee. The true signification of the word Nahullo is a superhuman or super natural being, and the true words for white man are Hattak-tohbi. The Nahullo were of white complexion, according to Choctaw tradition, and were still an existing people at the time of the advent of the Choctaws to Mississippi; that they were a hunting people and also cannibals, who killed and ate the Indians whenever they could capture them, consequently the Nahullo were held in great dread by the Indians and were killed by them whenever an opportunity was presented; by what means they finally became extinct, tradition is silent.

    “Chemical analysis of the bones of this giant race in Tennessee and elsewhere,” says Mr. H. S. Halbert, in a letter of January 3rd, 1878, “indicate the ravages of one of the most terrible diseases to which flesh is heir. Bones exhumed from these ancient cemeteries indicate with painful certainty that syphilis was, at least, one cause of the extinct ion of this ancient people. 1 It was long supposed that syphilis was imported into this continent by the European race. That may have been the case, in the historical period, but I have no doubt it prevailed with awful fatality among that ancient people, who -dominated a large portion of this continent before the advent of the Indian race” https://accessgenealogy.com/alabama/choctaw-traditions-council-fire-nahullo.htm

  • Law of Moses and Animals- Not in Mesoamerica!

    Law of Moses and Animals- Not in Mesoamerica!

    What do Mesoamericanists believe about geography, horses, and the Law of Moses. This law could not be accomplished without animals and grains as described in the Book of Mormon which have not been found in Mesoamerica, but only in the Heartland.

    John Sorenson, seasoned Mormon scholar and early proponent of the Tehuantepec limited geography theory, has publicly bemoaned the overwhelming unlikeliness of locating Book of Mormon animals in the ancient New World without substantial reinterpretations of the text:

    Sorensen said, “What kind of animals did the Nephites have? The terms cattle, horses, sheep and so on are mentioned at several points in the Book of Mormon, in the Nephite record. And it is dismaying to some, some who wish to be dismayed, I believe, (and a few others who wish an answer could be provided) why there are not cows like we mean cows, horses like we mean horses, sheep like we mean sheep. The fact is, however, is that all the ancient studies say those animals simply were not present in the New World. Period. They were not here.

    Well, 99.9% period. There is some little possibility of some horses as we know horses. The likelihood, however, is that we must go back to the text again, we see the internal having to articulate constantly with the external. We get some ideas from the internal, look outside, try to get enlightening, illuminating information, and then we may have to back into the text, and re-read it, and understand: “Let’s see now, when Mormon said this, what did really mean? Did he mean what I think he means? Or shall we read it the way he wrote it an meant it in his mind? We do not know that when he said ‘horse,’ he meant our kind of horse.” Sorenson, John L. “The Book of Mormon in Ancient America.” Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies Lecture Series. Provo. 1992.

    Did Sorensen read Mormon’s mind on what Joseph meant when he translated, “our kind of horse”??

    What Mesoamericanist say is a horse. A Tapir.

    See my blog here about Horses in North America during Book of Mormon times.

    Another Mesoamerican Theorist said, “I would say in evaluating the Book of Mormon, it had no place in the New World whatsoever. And we’d have to look for the place of the Book of Mormon events to have taken place in the Old World. It just doesn’t seem to fit anything that he [John Carlson] has been taught in his discipline, nor I in my discipline in anthropology, history; there seems to be no place for it. It seems misplaced. It seems like these are anachronisms. It seems like the items are out of time and place, and trying to put them into the New World. And I think there’s a great difficulty here for we Mormons in understanding what this book is all about.” Matheny, Raymond T. “Book of Mormon Archaeology: What Does the Evidence Really show?” Sunstone Symposium. 25 Aug. 1984.Provo, Utah: Maxwell Institute, 1993

    Editors Opinion

    I believe it may be important to understand the other most prevalent geography theory of the Book of Mormon, the Mesoamerican Theory. As one who believes that the Book of Mormon events happened in North America, I also believed for over 40 years (or was taught by Sunday School, seminary, and church literature), all about Mesoamerica, and nothing about the Heartland. Only after much prayer and search did I find the Heartland Model, and was blessed to meet Rod Meldrum 12 plus years ago.

    The Heartland Model is the most accurate theory of all. In fact, knowing that Hill Cumorah in NY is the only hill where the Nephites and Jaredites had their last battles, I listened and read and prayed about this one aspect, and it has become an important part of my testimony. The Book of Mormon happened in the Land of Promise of the United States of America, as Elder Perry said, “The United States is the promised land foretold in the Book of Mormon—a place where divine guidance directed inspired men to create the conditions necessary for the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” Elder L. Tom Perry Ensign Dec. 2012

    The Rejection of the Two Cumorah Mesoamerica Geography Theory for The Book of Mormon by Stephen Reed

    “The so-called Two Cumorah Mesoamerica Geography Theory for The Book of Mormon was created by a member of The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (The RLDS Church).

    His name is Louis E. Hills or L.E. Hills. He was a member of the First Quorum of The Seventy of that Church. He introduced this theory in 1917, during World War I. In 1918, one year later, the Spanish Flu Pandemic was in full force. To read Steven’s entire blog visit here: Steven’s Website here: https://twocumorahsolution.blogspot.com/


    Witnesses of the Heartland Model

    Nearly all those familiar with the early statements by the Prophet Joseph Smith touching on potential Book of Mormon lands know that he clearly indicated them to be in North America. This is evident in the historically verified accounts wherein he declared revelation such as in the Wentworth Letter, the American Revivalist Account, the Zelph Accounts and Joseph’s handwritten letter to Emma while on Zion’s camp. In addition, the prophet revealed a Nephite altar at Adam-ondi-Ahman, mentioned the land of Manti was near Huntsville, Missouri, and revealed that this land was “the borders of the Lamanites” (see D&C 54:8). Furthermore he received revelation from the Lord for the location of Zarahemla (see D&C 125:3) and New Jerusalem (see D&C 84:1-6) which Christ Himself declared to be on Book of Mormon lands (3 Nephi 20:22), both of which are absolutely located in North America. These accounts and their indications are not speculation based, but historically documented fact.

    John Sorenson the “Dean” so to say of Mesoamerican Geography says the following. “There remain Latter-day Saints who insist that the final destruction of the Nephites took place in New York, but any such idea is manifestly absurd. Hundreds of thousands of Nephites traipsing across the Mississippi Valley to New York, pursued (why?) by hundred of thousands of Lamanites, is a scenario worthy only of a witless sci-fi movie, not of history.” Mormon’s Codex, p. 688.

    Mesoamerica as Hinterlands

    From Moroni’s America Chapter 28 by Jonathan Neville

    For decades, LDS scholars have labored to establish and defend a Mesoamerican setting for the Book of Mormon because they believed they were vindicating what Joseph Smith wrote (or approved) in three articles published in the Times and Seasons on 15 September and 1 October 1842. The discovery that it was someone other than Joseph Smith, Wilford Woodruff, or John Taylor who wrote the articles,[i] led to the further discovery that Benjamin Winchester wrote the articles linking the Book of Mormon to Central America, and that William Smith edited and published them.[ii] These discoveries raise serious questions about the original premise for both hemispheric and Mesoamerican theories of Book of Mormon geography. Although now discredited, these Times and Seasons articles have influenced generations of Latter-day Saints—members, scholars, and leaders[iii]—and have been frequently cited by those who advocate a Mesoamerican setting.

    In response to the Winchester saga, some proponents of the Mesoamerican setting now claim the Times and Seasons articles are ancillary, or even irrelevant, to Book of Mormon geography. This chapter accepts that premise for the sake of argument and examines Mesoamerican geography on the merits, without the implied imprimatur of Joseph Smith’s authorship—or editorial approval—of the Times and Seasons articles. As John Sorenson wrote, “If we are to progress in this task, we must chop away and burn the conceptual underbrush that has afflicted the effort in the past. We must stop asking, as so many do, what have the Brethren said about this in the past?”[iv]


    [i] Matthew Roper, Paul J. Fields, Atul Nepal, “Joseph Smith, the Times and Seasons, and Central American Ruins,” Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 22/2 (2013): 84-97. In that article, the authors present the results of a stylometric analysis that show none of the three candidates tested could have written the articles. The authors nevertheless conclude that “Joseph Smith is the most likely author of the composite text” because they erroneously assume that no one else was “said to be working in the printing office.” In fact, there were several employees, but most importantly, William Smith was publishing the Wasp from the same office and much—often most—of the content of the Times and Seasons consisted of articles mailed to Nauvoo or excerpted from other publications.

    [ii] Jonathan Neville, The Lost City of Zarahemla (Legends Library, Rochester NY 2015).

    [iii] For example, Joseph Fielding Smith included one of them in Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and they have been widely cited and quoted in books and articles about Book of Mormon geography, including Mormon’s Codex, cited below, and numerous articles published by FARMS and the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Studies, both affiliated with BYU.

    [iv] John L. Sorenson, The Geography of Book of Mormon Events: A Source Book (FARMS 1990, 1992) p. 210.

    Filters and Terms of Reference

    Sorenson lists terms of references, or “filters,” that he believes must be applied to any real-world candidate for The Book of Mormon setting. This section examines his three “major filters,”[i] applies them to the text and evidence, and then performs the same assessment using three additional filters. The six filters are:


    1. Scope of territory (Sorenson)
    2. Destruction in 3 Nephi (Sorenson)
    3. Sophisticated society (Sorenson)
    4. Law of Moses (Discussed Below)
    5. Promised land
    6. Infrastructure (Ores, Towers, Fortresses, Buildings, Roads)

    [i] Numbers 1-3 are copied verbatim from Mormon’s Codex, pp. 20-21.

    Filter 4—Law of Moses. Criteria related to the law of Moses as described in the text must be accounted for in any acceptable theory. “Lehi and his people diligently kept the law of Moses. Nephi affirmed… that they did ‘keep the law of Moses, and look forward with steadfastness unto Christ, until the law shall be fulfilled’ (2 Nephi 25:24)…. The Nephites were to continue to keep the law of Moses until it was fulfilled.”[i]

    The Book of Mormon people did not casually observe the Law of Moses. They “were strict in observing the ordinances of God, according to the law of Moses.” Alma 30:3. It was obedience to the law of Moses that Korihor criticized:

    Lehi Offers Sacrifice

    “Korihor said unto him: Because I do not teach the foolish traditions of your fathers, and because I do not teach this people to bind themselves down under the foolish ordinances and performances which are laid down by ancient priests, to usurp power and authority over them, to keep them in ignorance, that they may not lift up their heads, but be brought down according to thy words.” (Alma 30:23)

    When groups failed to observe the law of Moses, they “had fallen into great errors.” Alma 31:9.

    The law of Moses and its implications for Book of Mormon geography deserve an entire book, but this filter can serve its purpose with just a few of the key points.

    Architecture

    One major difference between the Mesoamerican and American settings is visible in architecture. Mayan architecture is typified by large stone temples, made of cut stones and featuring steps by which one ascends to altars or the tops of the temples. By contrast, Hopewell architecture relies on uncut stone and ramps to ascend. Altars and ramps of earth are also common.

    According to the law of Moses, observers of the law must use ramps and uncut stones. “An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, . . . And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone, for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it. Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon” (Exodus 20:24-26). Ramps were also important for leading animals to be sacrificed.

    Altar of Stacked Stone.

    “The altars of the temple were made of stacked stone, not hewn stone. “The word in Exodus 20:25 which is translated as ‘tool’ is the Hebrew חרב which most literally means ‘sword’.  There explains that a sword is designed to shorten life, while an altar is designed to lengthen life by being used to achieve atonement. It makes sense, therefore, that one should not be used in the formation of the other.” Rashi, Medieval French Rabbi.

    By Val Chadwick Bagley

    Moroni’s America continued. “This distinction is apparent in Israel, where archaeologists can use the distinction between ramps and stairs to determine whether an ancient site was built according to the law of Moses. One archaeologist describing the discovery of Joshua’s Altar on Mt. Ebal, Israel, explains it this way:

    Hebrew altars can be distinguished from pagan altars in 5 respects: 1. They are made of uncut natural stone. 2. Ramps, never stairs. 3. Hebrew altars are square. 4. Hebrew altars have their sides oriented to the 4 points of the compass (NSEW), as we see in the orientation of the tabernacle.[ii]

    Altar at Copan
    Nicknamed El Caracol (“the snail”) because of the stone spiral staircase inside

    In Mesoamerican sites, there are no ramps; in the American setting, sites have no steps. In Mesoamerica, stones are carved; in the American setting, they are unhewn. Whoever created the Hopewell structures complied with this aspect of the Law of Moses, intentionally or not. Whoever created the Mesoamerican structures did not comply with the Law of Moses, even in the Nephite time period.”

    Amberli Nelson Said,

    3 Essential Truths about Nephite Observance of the Law of Moses

         “First Truth: Not only did the Nephites “strictly” keep the law of Moses (as indicated in 37 verses in the Book of Mormon (see Alma 30:3, Mosiah 13:29-30, Jarom 1:5), but they did so with delight as it was seen by them as both a collection of types of Christ and a means of coming unto Him. Occasionally even the Lamanites were known to “strictly” observe the law (Hel. 13:1).  Second: In “observing to keep the commandments of the Lord in all things, according to the Law of Moses” (2 Ne. 5:10), the Nephites would have necessarily observed all the feasts or “holy days” given to Moses by Jehovah. These are recorded in Exodus and Leviticus and are known as “holy convocations” or “rehearsals” and they typify the life and mission of Jesus Christ in profoundly beautiful ways. Third: It was absolutely essential for these Jewish Lehites to be brought to a land that would provide an abundance of all the plants and animals required to keep the Law of Moses, with its concomitant Holy Days or festivals. Based on the latest archaeological findings, it can now be irrefutably shown that the Heartland of North America is the only location in the Western Hemisphere where all ten of the essential items were found anciently including; lambs, oxen, goats, doves, barley, wheat, grapes, and altars made of stacked, unhewn stones. These aforementioned items have not been found in the archaeological record of the pre-Columbian peoples of Mesoamerica.” “An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me… in all places where I record my name I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee. And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it. Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar…” Exodus 20:24 – 26 Amberli Nelson MBA Hebrew/Jewish Symbology Expert

    Calendar

    Another aspect of the Law of Moses was determining the time for various religious events. The ancient Hebrews used a lunar calendar. Psalm 81:3-6 notes that the moon determined the time for feasts: “Blow up the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed, on our solemn feast day. For this was a statute for Israel, and a law of the God of Jacob.”

    Jewish Calendar

    Sorenson notes that “A lunar-based calendar was apparently basic to Nephite/Mulekite calendrical calculations (Omni 1:21). That being the case, a systematic record of moon phenomena would have been an element in their astronomy/calendar knowledge system… The moon-based calendar of the Jews of Jerusalem surely was carried forward by the Lehites and Mulekites when they emigrated from the near East to the New World.”[iii] He notes that some scholars believe the Mayans used lunar months at one time, but their primary calendar was solar. In fact, the Mayan lunar series was not incorporated until the 3rd Century AD.[iv] The best-known calendar, used by the lowland Maya, used 13 numbered days in connection with 20 named days, producing a 260-day cycle. Another version of Mayan calendars was based on the Haab’, a roughly solar calendar consisting of eighteen 20-day months plus five days at the end of the year. This resembled the Egyptian solar calendar.

    Mesoamerican Calendar

    Like the Hebrews (and presumably the Nephites), the Hopewell culture also used a lunar calendar to schedule feasts.[v] The largest geometric earthworks complex in the world is near Newark, Ohio, and is around 2,000 years old. The site’s “lunar alignments precisely encode the orb’s very complex cycle, with moonrises and moonsets rotating north and south over an 18.61-year cycle.”[vi]

    To summarize, Mesoamerican culture was based primarily on a solar calendar, while the ancient American (Hopewell) culture, like the culture of ancient Israel, was based primarily on a lunar calendar.

    Plants and Animals

    Proof of the existence of species at the time and place mentioned in the Book of Mormon requires first, determining what species were mentioned, and second, where the species were encountered. Consideration of the Law of Moses is important because it filters out species that would not, and could not, be used as part of strict observance of the law. Specific species of plants and animals are essential for observing the law of Moses. Strict obedience to the law of Moses does not allow substitutions; for example, for a peace offering, the law specifies “a bullock, a sheep, or a goat,” (Leviticus 22:27). When he arrived in the land of promise, Nephi indicated that he found the animals they needed to observe the law of Moses. He wrote “we did find upon the land of promise… that there were beasts in the forests of every kind, both the cow and the ox, and the ass and the horse, and the goat and the wild goat.” 1 Nephi 18:25.

    One unnamed animal pertains directly to the law of Moses. The Book of Mormon has sixty-six references to “flocks.” Mosiah 2:3 explains the significance: “And they also took of the firstlings of their flocks, that they might offer sacrifice and burnt offerings according to the law of Moses.” The flocks were so important that when Limhi prepared his people to escape from the Lamanites, he “caused that his people should gather their flocks together…the people of king Limhi did depart by night into the wilderness with their flocks and their herds.” Mosiah 22:10-11. When Alma led his people out of bondage, he “and his people in the night-time gathered their flocks together.” Mosiah 24:18. Presumably the reason they took their flocks when they escaped, despite the evident complications and the pursuit by the Lamanites, was because they needed them for their offerings and sacrifices.

    The Hebrew term translated as “flock” ordinarily applies to sheep, but when used as the plural “flocks” it can include other kinds of domesticated animals. “Book of Mormon terminology fails to clarify what species composed Nephite ‘flocks’ and ‘herds,’” according to John Sorenson.[vii] However, Alma defines the term flock as meaning sheep. “For what shepherd is there among you having many sheep doth not watch over them, that the wolves enter not and devour his flock?” (Alma 5:59) Other uses of the term, such as “flocks of sheep” in 3 Nephi 20:16, could be interpreted as purely metaphorical, but if the people did not have sheep, what sense would the metaphor make? Christ is referred to as the Lamb of God throughout the text, from 1 Nephi through Ether.

    Sheep, of course, are one of the animals required under the law of Moses, along with goats, bulls, and oxen. Enos reiterated that the people of Nephi did raise “flocks of herds, and flocks of all manner of cattle of every kind, and goats, and wild goats, and also many horses.” Enos 1:21. Mosiah emphasized that the people grew wheat and barley, both needed for the law of Moses. Mosiah 9:9. None of these species are found in Mesoamerica, which is why Mesoamerican advocates suggest the small Mexican brocket deer might be a goat and the tapir an ass.[viii] By contrast, there is evidence of each of these species in the American setting.

    Barley

    Pre-Columbian wheat and barley have both been documented in North America (but not in Mesoamerica). Wade E. Miller and Matthew Roper have noted, “beginning in the 1980s, discoveries of pre-Columbian barley started to be made, substantiating the Book of Mormon claim.”[ix] The Fort Ancient State Memorial Museum in Oregonia, Ohio, has this ancient barley on display. Miller and Roper also note that the Vikings claimed to find wheat in North America when they arrived in the year 1000 A.D. Despite this evidence in North America, because they are defending the Mesoamerican setting, Miller and Roper write, “while the Book of Mormon makes reference to wheat (e.g., Mosiah 9:9), it might have been another grain translated as ‘wheat.’”[x] Sorenson explains: “Exactly what species Nephite ‘wheat’ referred to is unclear, but it apparently was not the wheat familiar to us, which was unknown in Mesoamerica; presumably the name was applied to one of the aforementioned grains.”[xi] But if the Nephites were using a different grain, how did they comply strictly with the Law of Moses?

    Ripening of Barley and the Law of Moses

    Annotated Book of Mormon by David Hocking and Rod Meldrum page 160

    Animals that match the terms used in the Book of Mormon apparently existed in North America before Columbus. Nephi claimed he found “the goat and the wild goat.” (1 Nephi 18:25). These species were permitted as food under the Law of Moses (Deuteronomy 14:4-5). It’s interesting that Deuteronomy also specifies “the hart, and the roebuck, and the fallow deer… and the pygarg, and the wild ox, and the chamois,” but Nephi listed none of these. Early French explorers noted the presence of “wild goats” along the Mississippi River, in Indiana and Illinois, and in Florida.[xii] Miller and Roper suggest the “goat” may have been a species of domesticated deer that resembled a goat. They note that men accompanying De Soto observed “herds of tame deer”[xiii] in Ocale, a town in northern Florida. Another Spanish historian recorded a similar observation in Apalachicola[xiv]—right in the area where Lehi landed, according to the American model.

    As evidence that ancient people in Ohio had goats, the Mound City Group Visitors Center, a Hopewell Culture National Historic Park near Chillicothe, Ohio, features a copper goat horn that dates to Book of Mormon times.

    Sheep and lambs are mentioned 77 times in the Book of Mormon. Many references are figurative, but as Alma 5:59 indicates, the people were familiar with sheep and did tend to them. William Richie, an archaeologist, reported that he found remains of domestic sheep in western New York dating to 100 A.D., about 30 miles east of the Hill Cumorah.[xv] At least one Hopewell sculpture of an animal that looks like a sheep has been found.

    Enos referred to “all manner of cattle of every kind,” a description similar to that of French explorers who described seeing “wild bulls, wild cows, wild cattle, and vaches sauvages” that are now considered to be terms used “as the designation of both the moose and the elk.”[xvi] Buffalo, or bison, were often described as cattle. There are several accounts from the 1500s of buffalo-like creatures in Florida, but it is not known what species the explorers were describing.[xvii]

    Evidence of the specific animals required by the Book of Mormon is far more abundant in the American setting than it is in the Mesoamerican setting. Sorenson notes that there is evidence of other Book of Mormon animals from the right time period that fit the American model, such as the horse, mammoth and mastodon remains at St. Petersburg, Florida, that date around 100 B.C.[xviii]

    Horses or Tapir’s?

    Regarding Mesoamerica, Sorenson concludes that “there are plausible creatures to match each scriptural term.”[xix] He suggests that the deer or tapir may qualify as horse, ox, ass and goat, while the paca or agouti may qualify as sheep, his theory being that Joseph Smith didn’t know a more accurate term to translate the original word on the plates. But “deer” and “pygarg” (the term for antelope) were both terms used in Deuteronomy that presumably could have been used in the translation of the Book of Mormon and would have been better fits to the species in Mesoamerica. It is inconceivable that a paca or agouti, both of which are rodents and therefore unclean under the law of Moses, would have been considered “sheep” by the Nephites and used for their sacrifices.

    At any rate, calendars, architecture, plants, and animals all tend to show that this important aspect of Nephite culture was feasible in America, but not in Mesoamerica.

    Conclusion: The American model passes filter #4 and Mesoamerica does not (unless one assumes the Book of Mormon was not translated accurately when it came to naming animal and plant species). Mormon’s America Chapter 28 by Jonathan Neville


    [i] John W. Welch and Stephen D. Ricks, editors, King Benjamin’s Speech, (Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, Provo, Utah 1998), pp. 150-151.
    [ii] Adam Zertal, Ph.D , Joshua’s Altar on Mt. Ebal, Israel, http://www.bible.ca/archeology/bible-archeology-altar-of-joshua.htm (accessed 29 April 2015). See another description of the altar at Mt. Ebal here: http://www.ucg.org/the-good-news/the-bible-and-archaeology-archaeology-and-the-book-of-joshua-the-conquest 
    [iii] Mormon’s Codex, p. 432-435.
    [iv] See, e.g., http://mayan-calendar.com/ancient_supplementary.html
    [v] E.g., see Brad Lepper, Hopewell Astronomy, Ohio History Connection Archaeology Blog http://apps.ohiohistory.org/ohioarchaeology/hopewell-astronomy/
    [vi] Stephanie Woodard, “Ohio’s Magnificent Earthworks, an Ancient Astronomical Wonder,” Indian Country Today, June 16, 2012, accessed April 29, 2015 at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/06/16/ohios-magnificent-earthworks-ancient-astronomical-wonder-118726
    [vii] Mormon’s Codex, p. 313.
    [viii] Ibid.
    [ix] Wade E.Miller and Matthew Roper, “Animals in the Book of Mormon: Challenges and Perspectives,” Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture, (herein Animals), http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/animals-in-the-book-of-mormon-challenges-and-perspectives/, note 69, citing Daniel B. Adams, Last ditch archaeology. Science 83/4 (1983), 28-37; N. B. Asch and D. L. Asch, “Archaeobotany.” In C. R. McGimsey and M. D. Conner (eds.) Deer Track: A late Woodland Village in the Mississippi Valley (Kampsville, Illinois, Center for American Archaeology, 1985): 79-82. Note that this discovery was made in the Mississippi Valley.
    [x] Ibid.
    [xi] Mormon’s Codex, p. 306.
    [xii] Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard College, Volume 4 (Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology 1874) pp. 81, 88 and 133, available online on google books. (herein, Memoirs).
    [xiii] Animals, footnote 97, citing Hernando De Soto, Narratives of the Career of Hernando De Soto (New York: Allerton Book, 1922), 162.
    [xiv] Ibid.
    [xv] William Richie, The Archaeology of New York (The Natural History Press, Garden City, NY 1965), p. 242.
    [xvi] Memoirs, p. 87.
    [xvii] Memoirs, pp. 99-100.
    [xviii] John L. Sorenson, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon (Deseret Book Company, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1996), p. 298.
    [xix] Ibid, p. 299.


    Heartland or Mesoamerican Animals?

    Below is some information from the Book “New Approaches to the Book of Mormon”. They share how difficult it is to fit the animals of the Book of Mormon in Mesoamerican. Most animals of the Book of Mormon fit a North American geography and they are very difficult to place these animals into a Mesoamerican setting. Read below:

    New Approaches to the Book of Mormon Brent Lee Metcalfe, editor Chapter 8.
    Does the Shoe Fit? A Critique of the Limited Tehuantepec Geography
    Deanne G. Matheny

    Animals

    Like domesticated plants, domesticated animals form an important component of civilized life. The Book of Mormon mentions many different kinds of animals, for the most part those which would have been found in an Old World setting. Table 1 lists animals mentioned in the Book of Mormon and their possible Mesoamerican correlates as suggested by Sorenson (1985, 299). Animals such as the dog or honey bee, which present fewer problems for a Mesoamerican setting, are omitted.

    Table 1.
    Book of Mormon Animals and Their Suggested Correlates19

    Cattle, oxen, cows, calf deer, bison, camelidae
    sheep, lambs sheep, camelidae, paca, or agouti
    goats brocket, deer
    swine, sow peccary (wild pig)
    horses horse, deer, tapir
    asses tapir, camelidae
    elephants mammoth, mastodon
    curelom sloth, bison, tapir, mammoth, mastodon
    cumom sloth, bison, tapir, mammoth, mastodon

    Sorenson discusses the terminology used for animals in the Book of Mormon and notes that some labels are unclear. He mentions the frequent references to flocks and herds such as the following: “And they did raise many flocks and herds, yea, many fatlings” (Hel. 6:12). [p.303] He suggests that these flocks and herds could have included deer and pigs (peccary) and various fowls such as turkey, Muscovy duck, Tinamou duck,20 quail, pheasant, partridge, dove, currasow, cotinga, roseate spoonbill, macaw, chachalaca, and parrot (1985, 292-93). He also suggests that the term flocks could apply to hares, rabbits, pacas, agoutis, and even fattened dogs.

    However, many of these animals may have been considered unclean for consumption by Nephites, who according to the Book of Mormon kept the Law of Moses (see, e.g., Jacob 4:5, Alma 30:3). We do not know if the Nephites kept the dietary laws but Nephi exhorted them to keep the performances and ordinances of the Law of Moses, inasmuch as it was expedient, until the law was fulfilled (2 Ne. 25:30). It is stated in 4 Ne. 1:12 that they “did not walk any more after the performances and ordinances of the law of Moses.” If they had been keeping the dietary laws, it is unclear whether they abandoned the laws at that point.

    If the Nephites kept the dietary laws associated with the Law of Moses, their classification of animals could have been based on those laws. The dietary laws given in the Old Testament state that only animals which have split hooves and chew the cud may be eaten. Prominent among such animals are cattle, sheep, and deer. In the Old Testament, prohibited birds are listed and laws are given concerning fish and other categories of animals. For example, the hare is declared “unclean” because “he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof” (Lev. 11:6). It is further noted: “Nevertheless these ye shall not eat of them that chew the cud, or of them that divide the cloven hoof; as the camel, and the hare, and the coney: for they chew the cud, but divide not the hoof; therefore they are unclean to you” (Deut. 14:7). A further clarification explains: “And whatsoever goeth upon his paws, among all manner of beasts that go on all four, those are unclean unto you: whoso toucheth their carcass shall be unclean until the even” (Lev. 11:27).

    Such passages indicate that those who kept the Law of Moses and its dietary laws would not have kept flocks of either lagomorphs (hares and rabbits) or rodents (agoutis and pacas) because those animals would have been considered unclean. This also would suggest that the camelidae (llama and alpaca), even if they could be shown to have been present in Mesoamerica at the proper time and place, would not have been considered sheep-like. Their characteristics as measured by the dietary laws would likely have rendered them unclean for consumption.  Chapter 8. Does the Shoe Fit? A Critique of the Limited Tehuantepec Geography Deanne G. Matheny


    Below are some of my blogs about evidence of various animals and plants of the Book of Mormon fitting nicely in a North American setting.

    Horses
    Mammoth/Mastodon
    Sheep
    Barley
    Wine

    Bees

  • Nephites Built with Wood & Earth not STONE!

    Nephites Built with Wood & Earth not STONE!

    NEPHITE BUILDING MATERIALS

    Purchase

    See Annotated Book of Mormon by David Hocking and Rod Meldrum Pages 349, 383, 397

    Hugh Nibley stated: “In view of the nature of their civilization one should not be puzzled if the Nephites had left us no ruins at all. People underestimate the capacity of things to disappear, and do not realize that the ancients almost never built of stone. Many a great civilization which has left a notable mark in history and literature has left behind not a single recognizable trace of itself. We must stop looking for the wrong things.” (An Approach to the Book of Mormon, pg. 431)

    Hugh Nibley also observed: “A closer approximation to the Book of Mormon picture of Nephite culture is seen in the [mound builder] earth and palisade structures of the Hopewell and Adena culture areas than in the later stately piles of stone in Mesoamerica…” (The Prophetic Book of Mormon’, pp.272-273)

    By Val Chadwick Bagley

    “The Nephites vastly preferred wood to any other building material, and only worked in cement when they were forced to by shortage of timber. Indeed, they refused to settle otherwise good lands in the north if timber for building was lacking (Helaman 3:5). Where they reluctantly settled in unforested areas they continued to “dwell in tents, and in houses of cement,” while they patiently waited for the trees to grow (Helaman 3:9). Since cement must be made of limestone [see. p. 63], there was no lack of stone for building in the north. Why then did they not simply build of stone and forget about the cement and wood? Because, surprising as it may seem, ancient people almost never built of stone. Even when the magnificent “king Noah built many elegant and spacious buildings,” their splendor was that of carved wood and precious metal, like the palace of any great lord of Europe or Asia, with no mention of stone (Mosiah 11:8-9). The Book of Mormon boom cities went up rapidly (Mosiah 23:5; 27:6), while the builders were living in tents. And these were not stone cities: Nephite society was even more dependent on forests than is our own” – Hugh Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon, 2nd Edition, Chapter 29,
    Building Materials, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co. [1964].

    Helaman 3:7 And there being but little timber upon the face of the land, nevertheless the people who went forth became exceeding expert in the working of cement; therefore they did build houses of cement, in the which they did dwell. 8 And it came to pass that they did multiply and spread, and did go forth from the land southward to the land northward, and did spread insomuch that they began to cover the face of the whole earth, from the sea south to the sea north, from the sea west to the sea east. 9 And the people who were in the land northward did dwell in tents and in houses of cement, and they did suffer whatsoever tree should spring up upon the face of the land that it should grow up, that in time they might have timber to build their houses, yea, their cities, and their temples and their synagogues and their sanctuaries, and all manner of their buildings. 10 And it came to pass as timber was exceedingly scarce in the land northward, they did send forth much by the way of shipping. 11 And thus they did enable the people in the land northward that they might build many cities, both of wood and of cement. 12 And it came to pass that there were many of the people of Ammon who were Lamanites by birth, did also go forth into this land.


    Burnt Lime Plaster (“cement”)

    There is a temple mound situated above the Ohio River near Cincinnati. “Fragments of burnt limestone may still be seen on the top. The mound is a rectangle two hundred and twenty-five feet long by one hundred and twenty feet broad, and seven feet high.” In contrast to the hewn stone buildings and altars of Mexico, the Ohio mound has the right dimensions to have accommodated a timber and burnt lime plaster (“cement”) building of the size and proportions of Solomon’s Temple.” J. P. Maclean, The Mound Builders – Archaeology of Butler County, Ohio, 1904, pp. 222-223.

    Huts located at Fort Ancient, Lebanon, OH, were made of rectangular or circular sapling frames covered in mats, bark and animal hides. These huts may have been similar to the type of homes built by the Nephites. (Photos by Rod Meldrum and Found on Page 349 of Annotated Book of Mormon)

    The outer wall of this timber-built circular hut, shown above, depicts how they were covered with clay daub, a type of “cement” filler (see p. 63 Annotated Book of Mormon). (Right photo by Bill) Typical Hopewell Indian hut.

    (Left) Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology. In: Wilbur Sturtevant Nye, Plains Indian raiders: the final phases of warfare from the Arkansas to the Red River, with original Photographs by William S. Soule. University of Oklahoma Press, 1st edition, 1968, ISBN 0806111755, p. 400. On the left: Homes built by Plains Indians with timber frames and thatch roofs.


    (Above) Angel Mounds, located in southwest Indiana had defensive walls made of timber plastered with a type of cement. (Photos by Rod Meldrum and also on page 383 of Annotated Book of Mormon)

    (Above) Depiction of an Ancient Indian Village with Walled Fortifications Cahokia Mounds, Illinois


    NEPHITE CITIES BUILT WITH WOOD BURNED

    ▪ “And many great and notable cities were sunk and many were burned” (3 Nephi 8:14).
    ▪ “And behold, that great city Jacobugath which was inhabited by the people of King Jacob, have I caused to be burned with fire” (3 Nephi 9:9).
    ▪ “And behold the city of Laman and the city of Josh and the city of Gad and the city of Kishkumen, have I caused to be burned with fire” (3 Nephi 9:10).
    ▪ “And it came to pass that whatsoever lands we had passed by and the inhabitants there were not
    gathered in were destroyed by the Lamanites, and their towns and villages and cities were burned with
    fire” (Mormon 5:5).
    ▪ “And he [Shiz] did overthrow many cities, and he did slay both women and children, and he did burn
    the cities” (Ether 14:17; Jaredite timber cities).

    “And I did teach my people to build buildings, and to work in all manner of wood” – 2 Nephi 5:15.

    “And the people who were in the land northward did dwell in tents, and in houses of cement, and
    they did suffer whatsoever tree should spring up upon the land that it should grow up, that in time
    they might have timber to build their houses, yea, their cities, and their temples, and their
    synagogues, and their sanctuaries, and all manner of their buildings” – Helaman 3:9.

    Since the Nephites and Jaredites built their cities primarily out of wood, with no mention in the text of any buildings made of stone, burning would be the most effective way to destroy them.


    (Above) “American Indian Life in the Late Prehistoric Period” By Susan A. Walton Courtesy of Hopewell Cultural Center, Chillicothe, Ohio

    (Right) Chief of the Taensa Indians Receiving La Salle. March 20, 1682 By George Catlin (July 26, 1796  December 23, 1872) Wooden Homes of the Taensa Indians.


    American Cement

    “This name has been lately given to a geological compound, so arranged that it crystallizes into perfect stone. It is now well settled, that we can prepare the constituent parts of various rocks so as to render them subject to the laws of affinity, which soon unites them into their former solid state. It is now generally believed that all rocks were once in a liquid, or semi-liquid state, so as to admit of motion among their particles. As the laws of nature are immutable, it is obvious that if the elements of various rocks are brought into the same state, in which chance often throws them on the surface of the globe, their crystallization is certain. And sometimes we find fragments of different rocks and pebbles united by an intervening formation which has crystallized around them. Hence the production of artificial stone is as much the work of nature as the fruit of an apple-tree. When their natural products are being developed, we may vary the soil which gives nourishment to the latter, and the elements which enter into the composition of the former.—Buffalo Paper.American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, Volume 3 Page 76 edited by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Elizabeth Manning page 76


    Jonathan Neville about Cement

    I’m getting questions about cement, so I’ll repeat what I’ve said about one of my favorite “Kno-Whys” of all time.

    The Temple of the Inscriptions, built hundreds of years after Book of Mormon times-
    Mesomania in all its glory

    You can see it here: https://knowhy.bookofmormoncentral.org/content/when-did-cement-become-common-in-ancient-america

    I blogged about it before: http://bookofmormonwars.blogspot.com/2016/11/cement.html. I have a few more comments below, but first, let’s talk about the only known instance of Nephite cement.

    The only known Nephite cement was the cement that Moroni used when he built the stone box for the plates, as described by Joseph and Oliver.

    Unless by now the Mesomaniacs have talked themselves into disbelieving what Joseph and Oliver said about the box, even they have to admit that Moroni used Nephite cement in New York. There is no other instance of Nephite cement that we can identify with 100% confidence.

    “The box in which they lay was formed by laying stones together in some kind of cement.” Joseph Smith-History 1:52.

    Oliver Cowdery (who, according to Book of Mormon Central, was an ignorant speculator so you won’t find this in any of their no-wise) described the situation on the Hill Cumorah this way:

    “First, a hole of sufficient depth, (how deep I know not) was dug. At the bottom of this was laid a stone of suitable size, the upper surface being smooth. At each edge was placed a large quantity of cement, and into this cement, at the four edges of this stone, were placed, erect, four others, their bottom edges resting in the cement at the outer edges of the first stone. The four last named, when placed erect, formed a box, the corners, or where the edges of the four came in contact, were also cemented so firmly that the moisture from without was prevented from entering. It is to be observed, also, that the inner surface of the four erect, or side stones was smoothe. This box was sufficiently large to admit a breast-plate, such as was used by the ancients to defend the chest, &c. from the arrows and weapons of their enemy. From the bottom of the box, or from the breast-plate, arose three small pillars composed of the same description of cement used on the edges; and upon these three pillars was placed the record of the children of Joseph, and of a people who left the tower far, far before the days of Joseph, or a sketch of each…” http://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1834-1836/95

    This was in New York, not Mesoamerica.

    It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Moroni knew how to work with cement in New York; he and his father Mormon wrote the Book of Mormon while they lived in what is now New York. Moroni told Joseph that the record was “written and deposited not far from” his home.

    The fun part about this no-wise is how the Book of Mormon never mentions the people building with stone (except one wall in Alma 48:8). They built with wood and with wood and cement.

    Helaman 3:11 “And thus they did enable the people in the land northward that they might build many cities, both of wood and of cement.”

    That’s right. Wood. Cement.

    Not stone.

    And yet, all the evidence cited by the no-wise involves ancient Central Americans building with stone and cement.

    This might seem like nitpicking, but it’s an essential difference. If we’re looking for the Book of Mormon culture described by the text, we’re not looking for a culture that built with massive stones, engraved their history on stella, etc.

    By Minerva Teichert

    In fact, in a thousand years of history, exactly one engraved stone is even mentioned (Omni 1:20), and that was because its uniqueness made it so remarkable. And it wasn’t even a Nephite or Lamanite who engraved it.

    We’re looking for a culture that built with earth and wood, primarily. They only used cement when they needed to let timber grow, because they preferred to build with timber. Only in one instance, Helaman 3, (again, so unusual it deserved special mention) with wood and cement.

    IOW, the “cement” requirement describes ancient North American culture and excludes ancient Central American culture.

    Of course the Mesoamerican/two-Cumorahs advocates cite “cement” as a “correspondence” between the Book of Mormon and Mesoamerica. I’d like to know of any human society that did not use a material that could be called “cement.” It’s another illusory correspondence, designed to support the rejection of what Joseph and Oliver taught about Cumorah in New York.

    You can see archaeological reconstructions of ancient wood and cement structures at museums in Ohio.

    And they are houses, just as the Book of Mormon describes.

    Naturally, we don’t expect much, if any, Nephite cement to exist today. Even modern cement doesn’t last a long time where there is freezing and thawing.

    Notice that Moroni knew this when he buried his stone box into the hill Cumorah and kept the moisture from entering.

    We all wish Joseph or Oliver had kept a sample of Moroni’s cement. But at least they left us this detailed account of it.

    Which, in any rational world, would be enough evidence to tell us where the Book of Mormon actually took place.

    Here’s another perspective: http://www.bookofmormonpromisedland.com/nephite%20cement.htm

    Source: Book of Mormon Wars Jonathan Neville


    Onondaga Limestone and Reeds by W. Vincent Coon

    “I pulverized the limestone to powder and heated it to incandescence, converting some of the limestone (calcium carbonate) to calcium oxide. Ancient North Americans capable of smelting copper, could have produced temperatures hot enough to make moisture resistant lime plaster. Burnt lime “plaister” was known to the Israelites of old. (Leviticus 14:42, Isaiah 33:12) Hebrew scripture, in fact, may have inspired Nephite “cement”.

    I then made a “wattle and daub” type structure of reeds cemented with clay.

    Model “wattle and daub” structure with moisture resistant coating

    I mixed the cooked powdered limestone with water (it warmed exothermically as I mixed in the water). I applied the moist paste to the exterior of the reed and clay model. When dry, the cooked lime plaster formed a moisture resistant coating on the exterior of the model shelter.

    “Wattle and daub” type structures are known to have been made by many ancient peoples around the world, particularly in areas where timber was scarce…

    A 19th Century definition of “cement” is “any substance applied in a soft or glutinous state to the surfaces of solid bodies to make them cohere firmly”. (Oxford English Dictionary)

    The mound builders of North America are known to have made “wattle and daub” houses using materials that qualify for the definition of “cement” in use in Joseph Smith’s day. The Bible makes mention of “daubed” structures. (Ezekiel 13:15).” W. Vincent Coon


    “I, Nephi, did build a Temple by Ken Corbett. Click to see Ken’s Art

    The outside of the temple may have been finished with a mortar cement (As seen in this painting above), made out of limestone which was prevalent in the Promised Land. We also find mention of cement houses in the Book of Mormon. Helaman 3:7. “Lime mortar is a type of mortar composed of lime and an aggregate such as sand, mixed with water. It is one of the oldest known types of mortar, dating back to the 4th century BC and widely used in Ancient Rome and Greece. After processing, products derived from limestone have the unique ability to return fairly quickly to their original chemical form.” Lucas, A. 2003 Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries.

    *Clay: In ancient Hebrew, the word “chomer” (pronounced as kho’mer) may be translated into “cement” but is synonymous with clay and is more commonly used to represent a type of filler or daub than it is to represent cement. (See p. 349 for examples.) (*https://biblehub.com/hebrew/2563.htm)

    I. חֹ֫מֶר noun masculine cement, mortar, clay; — ׳חabsolute Genesis 11:3 13t.; construct Isaiah 10:6 2t.; —
    1 mortar, cement for holding building-stones (brick) together Genesis 11:3 (J), Exodus 1:14 (P; both “” לְבֵנִים); Nahum 3:14 (“” טיט).
    2 clay:
    a. as material of vessels Jeremiah 18:4,6, היצר ׳ח Isaiah 29:16, in simile of God’s fashioning man Isaiah 45:9; Isaiah 64:7; Job 10:9; as material of human bodies ׳בָּתֵּי ח Job 4:19; compare Job 33:6; as material of bulwarks (disparagingly) Job 13:12; חותם ׳ח = seal-clay i.e. clay upon which seal is pressed.
    b. = mire חוצות ׳ח Isaiah 10:6; ׳הֹרָנִי לַח Job 30:19 he hath cast me into the mire, i.e. deeply humiliated me (עָפָר and אֵפֶר in “” clause); as simile of commonness, abundance Job 27:16 (“” עָפָר).

    The temple would be built on the highest point of the Nephite settlement. (Painting represents Lookout Mountain above Moccasin Bend on the Tennessee River). It would be facing directly east symbolic of The Savior’s coming. It was to be built like Solomon’s. The altars of the temple were made of stacked stone, not hewn stone. “The word in Exodus 20:25 which is translated as ‘tool’ is the Hebrew חרב which most literally means ‘sword’. There explains that a sword is designed to shorten life, while an altar is designed to lengthen life by being used to achieve atonement. It makes sense, therefore, that one should not be used in the formation of the other.” Rashi, Medieval French Rabbi.

    In reference to Solomon’s Temple, the LDS Bible Dictionary says; “The temple walls were composed of hewn stone made ready at the quarry. The roof was of cedar and the walls were paneled with it. The cedar was carved with figures (cherubim, palm trees, and flowers) and was overlaid with gold fitted to the carving. All the materials for the house were prepared before they were brought to the site… There were two temple courts. The inner court was surrounded by a wall consisting of three rows of hewn stone and a row of cedar beams.” 1 Kgs. 6:36. “And Solomon’s builders and Hiram’s builders did hew them, and the stonesquarers: so they prepared timber and stones to build the house.” 1 Kings 5:18. “Pillars of Solomon’s temple (1 Kgs. 7:21; 2 Chr. 3:17); the names denote “He will establish” [Jachin] and “In Him is strength” [Boaz]. The pillars, which stood on the south and north sides of the porch, were probably ornamental and not intended to support any part of the weight of the building.” LDS Bible Dictionary.


    More about Ancient Cement

    The natural and aboriginal history of Tennessee: up to the first settlements therein by the white people, in the year 1768 BY JOHN HAYWOOD, OF THE COUNTY OF DAVIDSON, THE STATE OF TENNESSEE. NASHVILLE : PRINTED BY GEORGE WILCOX, 1823. Page 356-7

    In the year 1794, was discovered, in North Carolina, a subterranean wall, about twelve miles above Salisbury, in Rowan county. It was parallel to a small branch, which ran into a creek about 30 yards below the wall. It is ten or twelve yards distant from the stream, and runs into a hill on the side of a branch, and upon the upper part of it. On this side of the rivulet and extending to it, was a cleared field. The rain water running from the hill to the branch, carried away in a gully, the soil above the wall, and exposed it to view. The inner side was then uncovered, as well as the outer, by digging. It is somewhat less than two feet thick. It is said, that as the hill rises, the wall rises, still keeping its upper part at the same distance below the surface as it was in the bottom. The wall is perfectly straight, except a small circular offset of about six feet, after which it is continued in its former direction.

    Some persons have dug ten or twelve feet by the side of the wall, without finding its bottom, or any alteration in its form. The stones of which it is composed, are all of a dark blue colour, containing iron, of the size and shape of small bricks, and exactly similar to others on the opposite hill, about the distance of 250 or 300 yards, where an abundance of the same sort of stones was to be seen in 1794. These stones, seven or eight inches long, are placed across the wall, and in the middle are stones of all sorts and shapes. There is between the stones a mortar, or cement, the outer side of which is of a ferruginous or dark colour ; the inside, of the thickness of one sixth or eighth of an inch, was a pure white substance, of the precise colour of lime, made of burnt limestone, or oyster shells, and rendered adhesive by the addition of water ; in which state being laid away, it had afterwards become dry and hard.

    When the outer stones do not exactly fit, there seems to be a small fragment of stone wedged in so as to fill the space. The mortar in some places is said to be an inch thick, where the stones do not exactly fit to one another. The wall seems to have been plastered on both sides with the same kind of mortar. He who has not seen it may think it a work of nature ; but not him who has — one of whom is the writer. I look at it, and the hill above, and adjoining to it, will not fail to force the idea, of soil heaped in a diluted state, against, upon, and over the wall, without throwing it down. I would rather say, of settling against and reposing upon it, till it acquired a more solid consistence by exposure to the sun and wind. A lesser wall has since been discovered at the distance of five or six miles from this. It has been traced fifty or sixty feet. It is only seven inches thick, and all the stones reach quite across the wall. These walls are probably of the same age.

    In 1783, in the county of Craven, in North Carolina, at the plantation of General William Bryant, was a stream on which he had a mill. A point of land projected into the stream, against which the dam was made to abut. Into the bluff lie cut twenty feet or more, for a site for the millhouse. At the “bottom of this cavity, in red clay, the diggers filled a hard glass bottle, of uncommon thickness, with a short neck, and the lower part with bulges projecting on the sides, as if protruded by the pressure of the bottle to the ground when in a plastic state. Near the spot where the bottle was found, when a number of fire coals and some chumps. The bottle was fifteen or twenty feet at least below the surface of the bluff, and more than thirty feet from the margin of the stream.

    Along the Ohio, where the river in many places swells over its banks, hearths and fire-places are seen, two, four and six feet below the surface It is supposed by some to be a long time since the dirt was deposited over them. Around them are immense quantities of muscle shells, bones of animals, &c. Upon the surface above these chimneys and fireplaces, there grew, at the first settlement of the country by the whites, as large trees as any in the forest. The conclusion made by some, is, that a large space, probably l,000 years, has elapsed since these hearths were deserted. Muscle shells used in all the pottery of the ancient inhabitants, and found at all their dwellings, shows a much greater  abundance of them produced in our waters in those days, than at the present; a much more agreeable taste in the muscle than at the present day, and of course a change in the waters themselves, to much more freshness now than then. Source: https://archive.org/stream/naturalaborigina00hayw#page/n10/mode/2up

    More of Angel Mound’s recreated palisades of cement in Evansville, Indiana.

    Native American Life: Reconstructed Sweat Lodge. Angel Mounds State Historic Site, Evansville, Vanderburgh County, Indiana
    A section of reconstructed palisade at Angel Mounds
  • Volcanoes are not in the Book of Mormon-Whirlwinds are!

    Volcanoes are not in the Book of Mormon-Whirlwinds are!

    Meso vs Heartland- Which makes the most sense?

    In the Book of Mormon there is no mention of Jaguar’s, Jade, and Volcanoes which the Mesoamericanists talk about all the time. There are no lambs, goats, rams, bullocks, wine, wheat or barley to practice the Law of Moses in Mesoamerica.  We also hear of Whirlwinds in the Book of Mormon which to me are defined as a Tornado. There are very few Tornados in Mesoamerica and the Heartland of America is called Tornado Alley. See map below.

    There are no large beasts that migrate in Mesoamerica [monkeys? llama’s? jaguars?], but in the Heartland of the United Stated there are Bison, Elk, Bear, and Moose which all migrate as is says in Ether 9:34, “And it came to pass that the people did follow the course of the beasts, and did devour the carcasses of them which fell by the way, until they had devoured them all.”

    By the way is an earthquake and a volcano the same thing? No! The Book of Mormon speaks of earthquakes, not volcanoes. More to come below.

    To me the Heartland JUST MAKES SENSE!


    1970 Copies of the Book of Mormon

    Many years ago in the copies of the Book of Mormon, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints included pictures of Mexico and various pyramids and statues. But, as you look at the picture left, you also see an old mammoth from Denver, Colorado. I served a mission in 1975 and those old blue books were full of Mesoamerica. I believe the historians and intellectuals were responsible for those theories. It has never been church doctrine about the location of the geography of the Book of Mormon, and today the Church is neutral on that subject. But, I am not neutral, I believe the Book of Mormon events began in the USA and the many remaining Lamanites have spread all over North and South America. That’s up to you to formulate your own opinion. Read all about “The Smoking Gun of Book of Mormon Geography” here.

    Nephite Archaeology

    Latter-day Saint Thomas Stuart Ferguson was the founder of BYU’s archaeology division (New World Archaeological Foundation). NWAF was financed by the LDS Church. NWAF and Ferguson were tasked by BYU and the Church in the 1950s and 1960s to find archaeological evidence to support the Book of Mormon. After 17 years of diligent effort, this is what Ferguson wrote in a February 20, 1976 letter about trying to dig up evidence for the Book of Mormon: “…you can’t set Book of Mormon geography down anywhere – because it is fictional and will never meet the requirements of the dirt-archaeology. I should say — what is in the ground will never conform to what is in the book.”

    That is a lot of hard word with no reward. I honestly feel if we spent that much money in all the archaeology in the USA among the Hopewell and Adena civilizations, we would have found a ton of evidence. today in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee, Pennsylvania and New York, museums are full of artifacts and pottery dating at the time of the Book of Mormon. Look up the words “Mounds in North America”, or “Hopewell Culture” and you will be amazed at the millions of items of evidence. I believe the Hopewell are the Nephites, and the Adena are the Jaredites.

    “Thomas Ferguson was one of the most noted defenders of Book of Mormon archaeology. Mr. Ferguson planned the New World Archaeological Foundation which he hoped would prove The Book of Mormon through archaeological research. The Mormon Church granted hundreds of thousands of dollars to this organization, but in the end, Thomas Stuart Ferguson admitted that although the Foundation made some important contributions to New World archaeology, all his work with regard to the Book of Mormon was in vain. He admitted, in fact, that he had wasted twenty-five years of his life trying to prove the Book of Mormon. In 1975 Ferguson prepared a 29-page paper in which he wrote: ‘I’m afraid that up to this point, I must agree with Dee Green, who has told us that to date there is no Book-of-Mormon geography.’ In a letter to Mr. & Mrs. H.W. Lawrence, dated Feb. 20, 1976, Thomas Stuart Ferguson plainly stated: ‘…you can’t set Book of Mormon geography down anywhere – because it is fictional and will never meet the requirements of the dirt-archeology.’” https://www.mormonwiki.org/Thomas_Stuart_Ferguson.html

    Apologists Archaeology

    Apologist FAIRLDS say, “There are two major models today, the Mesoamerican Model, and the Heartland Model. There are tons of other ideas, but those are the two largest camps right now. There’s been a lot of back and forth between the two camps over what exactly Joseph knew by revelation and what he was opining. The fact remains that no revelation on the location of Book of Mormon geography has ever been definitively given.”

    Jonathan Neville said, “This is a red herring borrowed from L.E. Hills, who at least recognized what the prophets had taught. First, no one can say it’s “a fact” that “no revelation” about the setting has ever been definitively given. At most, we can say there is no canonized statement about the geography (although even that’s debatable).

    To say there was no revelation on the topic assumes we have records of every revelation, but we don’t. Joseph and Oliver both mentioned revelations that they never recorded. Joseph gave around 200 sermons that no one wrote down. Joseph taught lots of things that he didn’t claim specific revelation for, including some of the sections of the D&C (such as D&C 128). We infer that, because he taught these things, they originated with revelation. And Oliver, as an apostle and Assistant President of the Church (meaning he was Joseph’s spokesman) declared it was a “fact” that the hill in New York was the setting for the final battles of the Jaredites and Nephites.

    Furthermore, Lucy Mack Smith reported that Moroni identified the hill as Cumorah the first time he visited Joseph and that Joseph referred to the hill as Cumorah ever since. Others affirmed that identification.

    Notice the word thinking in this M2C [Mesoamerican Two Cumorah Theory] argument. Why would Joseph or Oliver have to claim revelation when they knew the location by personal experience? The restoration of the Priesthood and the keys were not “revelations.” They were experiences. Do we debate whether the Priesthood was restored because it was not a “revelation” or do we accept the report of the experience?

    We have more details about the New York Cumorah than we do about the restoration of the Priesthood. We have a date and approximate location for John the Baptist, but neither for Peter, James and John. Yet Oliver Cowdery related details about the visits he and Joseph made to the repository of Nephite records in the Hill Cumorah, described in Mormon 6:6. David Whitmer affirmed that Oliver told him about that–but he denied knowing about the restoration of the Priesthood. ” Jonathan Neville Blog

    FAIRLDS also said, “As far as things like the Zelph prophecies go, those weren’t published until after Joseph’s death, and all seven accounts contradict one another on various points. No one knows exactly what was said, especially since the word “Lamanite” seemed to mean “anyone of native, indigenous ancestry” to the early Saints.”

    Zelph, a Man of God by Ken Corbett

    First, FAIRLDS complains that there was no revelation. When faced with an actual revelation, they parse it for inconsistencies instead of accepting the overall context and implications.

    It’s not a question of publication, either. The accounts were recorded contemporaneously. This is one of the few instances where multiple people witnessed the revelation. Naturally they recorded it differently. In other situations, we take Wilford Woodruff’s words on their face because his is the only record. If we did that in this case, there wouldn’t be a debate.” Jonathan Neville.

    Volcanoes

    There are many volcanoes in Mesoamerica, does the Book of Mormon ever mention a volcano?

    Again FAIRLDS says, “Take, for example, the Interpreter articles demonstrating the volcanic eruptions around the time of Christ’s crucifixion in Mesoamerica, as well as the drought and famine from Helaman 11, which has a direct correlation to a drought in Mesoamerica during the same time period. Those are evidences supporting the narrative of the Book of Mormon. They are not direct proof.” FAIRLDS

    FAIRLDS quoting the Interpreter is demonstrating the Potemkin village nature of the citation cartel. [In politics and economics, a Potemkin village is any construction (literal or figurative) whose sole purpose is to provide an external façade to a country that is faring poorly, making people believe that the country is faring better.] FAIRLDS, the Interpreter, Book of Mormon Central, BYU Studies, etc., are all storefronts for the same M2C/SITH mindset. They have interlocking management and contributors who have worked closely together for years to enforce M2C/SITH assiduously. [Stone in the Hat]

    The volcano evidence is a perfect example. The Book of Mormon, despite 1,000 years of history in (allegedly) Mesoamerica, never once mentions volcanoes. The destruction in 3 Nephi is not volcanic, nor are there any other instances of volcanic action. Yet the citation cartel keeps insisting there really were volcanoes in there somewhere, if you read between the lines. What they’re citing is evidence of their M2C theory, not evidence of the historicity of the Book of Mormon. 

    New Madrid Earthquake

    “And the people began to look with great earnestness for the sign which had been given by the prophet Samuel, the Lamanite, yea, for the time that there should be darkness for the space of three days over the face of the land. And there began to be great doubtings and disputations among the people, notwithstanding so many signs had been given. And it came to pass in the thirty and fourth year, in the first month, on the fourth day of the month, there arose a great storm, such an one as never had been known in all the land. And there was also a great and terrible tempest; and there was terrible thunder, insomuch that it did shake the whole earth as if it was about to divide asunder. And there were exceedingly sharp lightnings, such as never had been known in all the land. And the city of Zarahemla did take fire.” 3 Nephi 8:3-8

    Think about this. What great city in Israel was the capital and it was destroyed? (Jerusalem). What great city in North America was the capital and was destroyed? (Zarahemla, Montrose, Iowa?). What is the great city of the last days? (New Jerusalem, Jackson County, MO). An interesting statement that should be familiar to you. “Consistent with this word usage, it is reported that Brigham Young often said that when the Saints returned to Jackson County, Missouri, there would not be as much as a “yellow dog [a persecuting gentile settler] to wag his tail” (see J. Golden Kimball address in Conference Report, [October 1930]: 59). This quote may refer to past or present events however.

    In the year 1811 did people in Missouri and the United States “look with great earnestness for the sign”? Yes! Today as I sit here in Bountiful, Utah have I ever “looked with great earnestness for the sign?” Yes! The Nephites of old had many signs that Christ was coming and they did not properly prepare.

    I feel it was a witness to us all that just after the (1811 earthquake) a Prophet of God was born (Joseph Smith), A huge sign was given in the Promised Land just before the Lord Jesus Christ visited the earth to Joseph in 1820.

    What other signs are there today that tell us that the Son of God is soon to return? Are we excited for the day or are we afraid of the day? I have heard it said that “fear and faith are not compatible” I think we can learn much from the 1811 earthquake and many other signs to prepare us.

    Could the very place called New Madrid, Missouri, be close to the same place that the Savior will appear to us when He comes? No one knows, but we should prepare. Could the earthquakes spoken of in the Book of Mormon be very similar to the New Madrid 1811 earthquake? Yes! Not Volcanoes, Earthquakes. Huge difference.

    The Earthquakes of 1811-12

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    “400 terrified residents in the town of New Madrid, Missouri were abruptly awakened by violent shaking and a tremendous roar.  It was December 16, 1811, and it was the first of at least three very large (M7 or greater) earthquakes and thousands of aftershocks to rock the region that winter, with the last occurring on February 7, 1812.

    Survivors reported that the earthquakes caused cracks to open in the earth’s surface, the ground to roll in visible waves, and large areas of land to sink or rise.  The crew of the New Orleans (the first steamboat on the Mississippi, which was on her maiden voyage) reported mooring to an island only to awake in the morning and find that the island had disappeared below the waters of the Mississippi River.  Damage was reported as far away as Charleston, South Carolina, and Washington, D.C.” Central U.S. Earthquake Consortium Memphis, Tennessee Read the entire article here

    Whirlwinds

    “John Sorenson’s questions about snow and cold were addressed in the very first presentations. Apparently he again has not taken the necessary time to familiarize himself with the Heartland research. If he disagrees with the explanations that have been provided, he has provided no mention of why he disagrees, nor provided evidence refuting it.  Having read several of Sorenson’s works, I know him to be very articulate in his research involving things he is interested in. A concern is that Sorenson is either disinterested in this proposed model or so confident in his own theory  that he makes claims without attempting to ascertain the facts or review the information. Information regarding weather and climate can be at the blog here or here.

    The mention of snow and hail in the Book of Mormon occurs three times, whereas the mention of “the heat of the day” is mentioned only once, and cannot be construed as evidence requiring a tropical climate.  Nowhere in the Book of Mormon are monkeys, palm trees, coconuts or jungles mentioned.  Weather was apparently not high on the priority list for recording on the sacred records by the ancient prophets who were charged with keeping them.   Still, there are indicators of climate such as the fact that there were “seasons of the year” and that this was the “nature of the climate” (Alma 46:40) which would seem to favor a North American setting rather than a Mesoamerican setting because there is little difference between the warm rainy season and the warm dry seasons in Mesoamerica in comparison with winter and summer in North America.  Also indicators such as whirlwinds in the Book of Mormon (3 Nephi 8:12, 16) which are most likely referencing significant tornadoes, don’t occur in Mesoamerica, whereas North America’s heartland is known as tornado alley.

    Quotation from CES Letter

    “Archaeology: There is absolutely no archaeological evidence to directly support the Book of Mormon or the Nephites and Lamanites, who were supposed to have numbered in the millions. This is one of the reasons why unofficial apologists have developed the Limited Geography Model (it happened in Central or South America) and claim that the Hill Cumorah mentioned as the final battle of the Nephites is not in Palmyra, New York but is elsewhere. This is in direct contradiction to what Joseph Smith and other prophets have taught. It also makes little sense in light of the Church’s visitor’s center near the Hill Cumorah in New York and the annual Church-sponsored Hill Cumorah pageants.CES Letter. [CES Letter is one Latter-day Saint’s honest quest to get official answers from the LDS Church on its troubling origins, history, and practices. Jeremy Runnells was offered an opportunity to discuss his own doubts with a director of the Church Educational System (CES) and was assured that his doubts could be resolved. After reading Jeremy’s letter, the director promised him a response. No response ever came.]

    Here at Book of Mormon Evidence, and FIRM Foundation, with a lot of help from Jonathan Neville, we continue to try and answer this CES Letter. Jeremy Runnells asked many difficult questions that this CES director was just not the one to answer them. Our Church Leaders of course share with us doctrine, and the historians share researched opinion, but some of the answers Jeremy wanted were apologetic type questions such as, the age of dinosaurs, belief in evolution, method of translation and geography of the Book of Mormon. Our church leaders should teach doctrine as it is up to each of us individually to seek non-doctrinal answers on our own, followed with a lot of prayer. These are all questions we at FIRM Foundation strives to answer for you with the best information we can discover and research, and those that make sense. We each need to read and pray on our own for all answers in which the Lord has not reveled. Just keep looking as Moroni says, “we may know the truth of all things’” Keep searching.

    The Geography Bible of Mesoamericanists

    FAIR LDS loves John Sorensen’s book titled “Mormons Codex”, as they say, “as far as the New World evidences go, John Sorenson wrote an 850-page book detailing all of the evidence he’d personally compiled, with approximately 400 correlations between the Mesoamerican peoples and the peoples of the Book of Mormon.” FAIR LDS 

    Jonathan Neville responded and said, “It’s funny, I’ve had people cite me this book based on its size and weight as well, as if that matters in the least. Sorenson is an awesome guy, smart and faithful, etc., but Mormon’s Codex is an exercise in blatant bias confirmation. Much of it involves the “Sorenson translation” of the text, where he inserts his own opinions about what the text means or should have said to correspond with Mayan culture and geography. I don’t have to ask Michael Coe for all the reasons why the Book of Mormon doesn’t fit Mesoamerica; all I have to do is read the text and observe the absence of jungles, jaguars and jade, not to mention pyramids and Mayans. Then, like everyone else, I can read Mormon’s Codex and see the semantic gyrations Sorenson resorted to (e.g., his “narrow neck”) to cram the Nephites into Mayan society. And, of course, Mormon’s Codex contains the infamous passage in which Sorenson ridicules the prophets who have taught the New York Cumorah.” Jonathan Neville Blog

    Christ Visited the Nephites in the Land of Promise in North America

    FAIRLDS asks the question, “Question: Does the Book of Mormon fit best in a geography located around the Great Lakes, between the United States and Canada? Unfortunately, the geographical details of the Book of Mormon do not fit terribly well in models presented thus far.” FAIR LDS


    I love the readers of this blog to have as much information as I can share with them. Both sides of research about the Book of Mormon geography have value. I invite you to read FAIR LDS and others as you may not realize there are many wonderful people that have also known about a geography in North America that I mention below.

    A good friend of Rod Meldrum’s and Wayne May’s, Delbert Curtis proposed a limited geography around the Great Lakes region of North America in about 1993. His narrow neck of land lies between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. He states his position as follows:

    “The geography of the Book of Mormon was not important to the author until the Ensign printed an article suggesting there were two hills named Cumorah. That suggestion caused the author to become engrossed in the geography of the Book of Mormon. The author had never been able to believe a loving God would promise Nephi North America and land him thousands of miles from that land, or that the Nephites could have lived in Mesoamerica and died in New York State.

    Search the History and Standard Works of the Church

    Rather than looking to the works of man, the author [Curtis] searched the history and standard works of the church. To this was added the landmarks near and to the west of the Hill Cumorah as the source of information. All questions were answered, and each confusing passage become [sic] clear. All the landmarks in the area prove the Hill Cumorah in New York is the Hill Cumorah of the Book of Mormon. [Thus] the history and standard works of the church, along with the landmarks near the Hill Cumorah, offer proof positive that the Hill Cumorah in New York State, was and is the Cumorah of the Book of Mormon. . . . The invention of a second Hill Cumorah creates far more questions than it answers.” (Front cover & Back cover). Delbert W. Curtis “Christ in North America: Christ Visited the Nephites in the Land of Promise in North America”, Resource Communications, 1993.

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