Has Olmec Iron Been Found in Mexico?
Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2007 6:17 pm
The fun just doesn't end. In the original "LDS Scholarship" thread, solomarineris has been challenging DCP on the issue of Mopologetic legitimacy. Here is the critical post:
I found this interesting for a couple of reasons: 1) It reinforces my observation that LDS faith is highly dependent upon empirical evidence (of the hope of finding it), and 2) I thought that this claim about "worked Olmec iron" sounded rather dubious. A quick search turned up an article by DCP himself entitled, "Yet More Abuse of B.H. Roberts," which you can read here:
http://farms.BYU.edu/display.php?id=248&table=review
The article is devoted to countering the claims of a pamphlet which had attempted to debunk certain Book of Mormon claims. Here is the relevant passage from DCP's article:
If you are like me, then you are curious about where The Good Professor has gotten his evidence. Here is the utterly jaw-dropping footnote to the "tons!" claim:
In other words, DCP is using a dropped bit of academic gossip to advance his claim about there being "tons!" of worked metal is mesoamerica. This supposed tidbit of Cyphers Guillen's was quickly circulated around the world of LDS apologia, and can be found at Jeff Lindsey's website as well. But where is Cyphers Guillen's actual article? DCP published his FARMS piece in 1997, and yet I was unable to turn up Cyphers Guillen's article, which would have been rather ground-breaking, if I'm not mistaken. Does anyone know whether this "site report" exists?
(emphasis added)Daniel Peterson wrote:solomarineris wrote:If you could only base your speculations on some empirical facts, you have none of it.
I guess you're right. The NHM altar piece doesn't really exist, the Witness testimonies were never really written down, if/and conditional sentences don't actually occur in the Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon, Asherah imagery didn't actually involve a tree, worked Olmec iron hasn't really been found, and etc. There's nothing. Nothing at all.
I found this interesting for a couple of reasons: 1) It reinforces my observation that LDS faith is highly dependent upon empirical evidence (of the hope of finding it), and 2) I thought that this claim about "worked Olmec iron" sounded rather dubious. A quick search turned up an article by DCP himself entitled, "Yet More Abuse of B.H. Roberts," which you can read here:
http://farms.BYU.edu/display.php?id=248&table=review
The article is devoted to countering the claims of a pamphlet which had attempted to debunk certain Book of Mormon claims. Here is the relevant passage from DCP's article:
(emphasis added)3b. There was no iron smelted in the Americas until after the Spanish conquest.
The verb to smelt does not occur in the Book of Mormon, in any of its forms, so it is not entirely clear what we are to conclude from this "question." Only once, in early Jaredite history, do we seem to find a reference to the process (Ether 7:9). Iron was, evidently, relatively rare in the ancient New World, as the Book of Mormon itself attests.13 But iron of one origin or another was indisputably present and used in pre-Columbian America, and the question of whether or not iron was ever smelted in Mesoamerica is by no means closed.14 Several tons (tons!) of worked iron ores were very recently found at the Olmec site of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, in southern Mexico.
If you are like me, then you are curious about where The Good Professor has gotten his evidence. Here is the utterly jaw-dropping footnote to the "tons!" claim:
(emphasis added)15 Professor Ann Cyphers Guillán [sic], of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, shared information on the San Lorenzo find during an October 1996 visit to Brigham Young University. Her site report is forthcoming, but preliminary information on the discovery is available in her article on "San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan," in Los olmecas en Mesoamérica, ed. John E. Clark (Mexico City: El Equilibrista, 1994), 43-67 (see especially fig. 4.26, on p. 63). I am grateful to Dr. William J. Hamblin for initially bringing Professor Cyphers Guillán's work to my attention.
In other words, DCP is using a dropped bit of academic gossip to advance his claim about there being "tons!" of worked metal is mesoamerica. This supposed tidbit of Cyphers Guillen's was quickly circulated around the world of LDS apologia, and can be found at Jeff Lindsey's website as well. But where is Cyphers Guillen's actual article? DCP published his FARMS piece in 1997, and yet I was unable to turn up Cyphers Guillen's article, which would have been rather ground-breaking, if I'm not mistaken. Does anyone know whether this "site report" exists?