DiscussMormonism.com

About 10 years ago, before any hints of disaffection, I got into a fairly heated argument with a friend and co-worker about the historicity and archeology of the Book of Mormon.
He was a very intelligent guy and had been dating a Mormon girl so he started doing research into the church. He argued that, not only was there no archeological evidence for the Book of Mormon, but that most Mormon scholars (I remember him mentioning Nibley) agreed that there was no archeological evidence for the Book of Mormon.
His contention seemed absurd to me. I countered with my understanding that South and Central America were literally filled with Mayan and other ruins that proved that the Book of Mormon was historical.

A few months ago I was thinking about that argument and wondering why I was so sure that the Mayan ruins and other ruins in Meso America were proof of the historicity of the Book of Mormon.

Last week I was browsing the religion section of a local used book store and I literally tripped on my answer. I looked down to see what I had stumbled on and staring back up at me was the enlarged version of the Book of Mormon I had grown up with in our house. It is the 1957 enlarged version of the Book of Mormon. It is filled with the usual Book of Mormon pictures (Lehi guiding the ship to the Promise Land, Nephi rebuking his brothers, Abinidi testifying to wicked king Noah), but also about 18 pictures of Mayan ruins and artwork. There are pages proving that there were in fact horses, elephants, wheels and concrete. Other pages proved that there were light and dark skinned people, baptisms by immersion and Lehi’s tree of life. All of this had been proven by archeological finds in Meso America.

Suddenly it all became clear why I had made a fool of myself arguing with my friend. I had flipped through these pages countless times as a kid. What other conclusion would I have drawn than Mayan ruins point to the historicity of the Book of Mormon? Guess that is just my childhood naïvété getting the better of me.

Below are a few of the highlights I am talking about. There are about 18 scans I made of the images, if anyone wants all of them just let me know and I will email a zip of all the images.



http://i53.tinypic.com/k0ljxt.jpg
http://i51.tinypic.com/w8vo02.jpg

http://i51.tinypic.com/mlsdq9.jpg

http://i54.tinypic.com/a2lxi.jpg

http://i53.tinypic.com/2lvcjk5.jpg


Edited to Add: If anyone wants all the scans I uploaded them here:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=URQT7LVZ

nice find. i do find the depictions of lighter and darker skinned people interesting. what's the significance understood to be?

A quick google search shows that there are people in the church today still claiming that the murals of Chichen Itza depict Nephites and Laminites.

I think my favorite is the church's claim on the "tree of life" stone found:

"The resemblance of this sculpture to the Book of Mormon account cannot be accidental….It practically establishes…a historical connection…between the ancient Central American priests responsible for the sculpture and the Lehi people of the Book of Mormon! Indeed the accurate and detailed knowledge of Lehi’s vision…displayed by these priests in this scripture can be explained only their identification as an actual group of the Lehi people."

Why has the church backed down from all of these claims?

On an interesting side note...i have actually had the opportunity to tour several central and south american "lamanite" ruins....While in Belize and Guatemala, our tour-guide happened to be one of the founding archeologists of the lamani ruins...someone in our group was actually stupid enough to ask him if he has ever heard of the Book of Mormon...After a very diplomatic eye roll, he suggested that the individual might be interested in one of the other tours that delve into Mormon mythology/folklore....I actually had the chance to chat with him during and after the tour and he not only acknowledged that the Book of Mormon is a joke, but he admitted that he, regularly, gets questions/emails/calls about the Book of Mormon which he openly and happily lets people know is nothing more than an inaccurate work of fiction that has nothing to do with any discoveries by archeologists in the Americas....

Willy Law wrote:
Why has the church backed down from all of these claims?

So as not to seem even more ridiculous?

I'm a devotee of American history (South and Central America, included). The ludicrous claims of the Mormon apologists over the years are far too numerous to type out.

My guess is that the powers that be in the Church hierarchy would rather not deal with "inconvenient truths". Even they know that Book of Mormon history will not stand up to scrutiny.

Quasimodo wrote:

Willy Law wrote:
Why has the church backed down from all of these claims?

So as not to seem even more ridiculous?

I'm a devotee of American history (South and Central America, included). The ludicrous claims of the Mormon apologists over the years are far too numerous to type out.

My guess is that the powers that be in the Church hierarchy would rather not deal with "inconvenient truths". Even they know that Book of Mormon history will not stand up to scrutiny.

I'm guessing they also made a conscience choice to back away from all archeological arguments after the Furguson fiasco of the early 60's.

i guess i meant how do historians/archeologists interpret the different skin colors? just different tribes of differing skin like you find in africa?

This site seems to think the dark people are Olmecs of African origin.

"In what is now Southeastern Mexico, in 918 AD, artistic representations and hieroglyphs were painted on the walls of the Temple of the Warriors (Templo de Los Guerreros) in the ancient Mayan city of Chichén Itza depicting black skin men paddling, poling and sitting as passengers in river canoes. There are other brown skin men and women doing various things on land on these same walls, and there are light complexioned people doing various things also, such as paddling black skin warriors. Chichén Itza is in the Northernmost part of the State of Yucatan . It is served by a harbor island named Isla Cerritos, which though small (200 meter diameter) possessed a bustling town that functioned as a stopover and trading post for early boat traffic. It is situated between what is now the Mexican States of Vera Cruz, Tabasco , Campeche , and from the Southern side of the peninsula Honduras , Guatemala , Belize and the State of Quintana Roo .

What is important to note about this little island on the top of the Yucatan Peninsula is the concept that the Olmecs might have been the original settlers, since legend has it that they came by ship and were traders. The Olmecs are represented by those African head statues in Tabasco and Vera Cruz. Amongst the products passed along this route were honey, cotton, corn, obsidian, jade, turquoise, spices, cacao and going in both directions were slaves. Because of this last word [slaves] no question is raised about the black warriors and sailors nor brown merchants. It is sort of like when you have eight African heads and one Phoenician carved representation Thor Heyerdahl tried to find how the Phoenician arrived in the " New World ". As a matter of fact, if you see Heyerdahl’s possible pre-Columbian routes they circle Africa but does not touch it. So it seems that the black warriors being paddled by light skin Mayans are not important enough to investigate, I mean they were probably warrior slaves, right?"

http://www.essaysbyekowa.com/olmecs.htm

schreech wrote:On an interesting side note...i have actually had the opportunity to tour several central and south american "Lamanite" ruins....While in Belize and Guatemala, our tour-guide happened to be one of the founding archeologists of the lamani ruins...someone in our group was actually stupid enough to ask him if he has ever heard of the Book of Mormon...After a very diplomatic eye roll, he suggested that the individual might be interested in one of the other tours that delve into Mormon mythology/folklore....I actually had the chance to chat with him during and after the tour and he not only acknowledged that the Book of Mormon is a joke, but he admitted that he, regularly, gets questions/emails/calls about the Book of Mormon which he openly and happily lets people know is nothing more than an inaccurate work of fiction that has nothing to do with any discoveries by archeologists in the Americas....

This reminded me of what that Yale archeologist said on the MS podcast about how Mormon archeologist have learned to not bring up Book of Mormon archeology around real archeologist if they want to be taken seriously. He seemed to think they save their spin for the fireside circuit back in UT.