Responses to Malkie's questions below are based on more than 2 years of living and working, at times with my family in-country, in Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and Oman on three different assignments between 1986 and 2012. During that time, I traveled along the coast of Fujairah and Oman, driving on the inland and coastal roads, as well as on boats off the coast. From direct onsite observations, and as supported by satellite imagery, most of the romantic imaginings of the Book of Mormon Central authors regarding this area, as quoted below, have little or no basis in reality. Some of the information below was previously posted on the old board but is unavailable for reference.
malkie wrote: ↑Tue Aug 09, 2022 7:31 pm
A few questions spring to mind:
1. What would it have taken to import trees that could provide the wood required to build the Lehite sailing ship or any bluewater oceangoing vessel?
We know that Mesopotamian shipbuilders in ancient times imported cedars from present-day Lebanon for shipbuilding. Cedar was especially important keels, the main structural member of sailing ship hulls. Other ship-building wood was available from India and is still used for dhow shipbuilding in Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Oman.
For reference as to the scale of sailing ships used for trade along the coastal waters of present-day West Africa, Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, and India, please see the upthread image of the dhow hull under construction. Please ask yourself if you can realistically imagine such activity taking place at any of the wadi sites shown below and proposed as Bountiful by apologists.
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From Wikipedia: "Bountiful is described as a lush land on the (Arabian) coast containing "much fruit and also wild honey" where Lehi and his party settle temporarily before building their ship (1 Nephi 17:5). After the ship is completed, Lehi's party departs Bountiful and sails to the Americas."
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Salalah, in the Dhofar governorate of Oman, is the only place along the southern coast of the Arabian peninsula with sufficient rainfall to support year-round green vegetation, a possible source of "much fruit and also wild honey". (Like much of the African plain, the area "browns off" during the dry season with trees and irrigated gardens as the main source of green.)
The area has two wadis with the required (not quite) year-round water flow proposed by apologists as possible sites for Bountiful in the Book of Mormon. However, there is no wood usable for shipbuilding in the area. Regarding the import of wood for shipbuilding, please recall that the area of Bountiful was supposedly uninhabited when the Lehites arrived.
2. Would the building of the Lehite ship likely have left any evidence that we could find today?
The best criteria for determining if a bluewater ocean vessel could be sourced and built in a given location along the Arabian coast would be the presence of coastal geographical features from which such a vessel could be launched. Wood rots away, and stone structures are reduced to walls or foundations or completely buried over time. However, the geology of a suitable harbor as a launch site does not naturally deteriorate over time the way that human-built structures can.
While natural harbors can silt up, this is not an issue along the Arabian coast where the geology is karst limestone. The main issue for the deterioration of possible harbors formed at the mouth of wadis is wave action causing shifting beach sand and pebbles to block the harbor entrances over time (see Khor Rori image below).
In modern times, the nearest dhow building shipyard to Salalah is in present-day Sur, Oman, approximately 480 miles up the coast. A satellite image of the harbor facility at Sur is shown below. Note the large, well-protected harbor.
Shown below, at higher magnification, is an image of present-day Khor Kharfot, one of the wadi candidates for Bountiful. The image comes from a
Book of Mormon Central publication. Compare this site as a possible shipbuilding and launch site to the one shown for Sur above. I have no idea why someone would nominate Khor Kharfot. The vegetation seen on the surrounding hills is mainly scrub brush, which might be green for three months in a wet year. There is no land there suitable for agriculture and no place to build or launch a bluewater sailing ship.
Note that there is not sufficient water flow from the Wadi to create a channel to the sea. Creating a harbor at Khor Kharfot where a bluewater ship could be built and launched would mean excavating thousands of tons of beach sand and pebbles, as is shown for Khor Rori below. Unlike Khor Rori, there is no evidence that such excavation has ever taken place at Khor Kharfot.
Below from the same publication is a fanciful painting of what apologists believe Khor Kharfot may have looked like in ancient times. The free-flowing water with trees and a garden-like shoreline is not reflected in the image of the actual wadi above, which shows what is essentially a small shallow stranded freshwater estuary behind a coastal barrier of sand and rock.
https://knowhy.bookofmormoncentral.org/ ... discovered
Book of Mormon Central writes:
Some have suggested that other inlets in the Dhofar region are a better match for Nephi’s Bountiful. Most prominently, George Potter and Richard Wellington have argued that Khor Rori is a better fit based on what they call the crucial “maritime requirements. While these proposals have their own strengths, Khor Kharfot remains the best candidate in the eyes of many Book of Mormon scholars.
Shown below is an image of Khor Rori, the other Wadi candidate for Bountiful. There are written contemporary records of coastal fishing boats being built at Khor Rori in earlier modern times using imported wood. Also, as can be seen in the Salalah area image, there is agricultural activity on the Salalah headlands not far from the harbor. Again, however, there is no wood suitable for shipbuilding in the region. In fact, BYU Professor Terry Ball, an internationally recognized expert on the flora and fauna of Arabia has stated that there are not now, and never have been, trees in Arabia that would produce wood suitable for shipbuilding.
Note that the mouth of the Khor Rori "harbor" entrance has been blocked again by beach sand and pebbles. If the area were uninhabited when the Lehites arrived, they would have been obliged to excavate thousands of tons of this wet material before they could have launched their ship. Excavated material from earlier modern times can be seen on the images on each side of the wadi mouth.
3. What evidence would you expect to find that the wood had been imported?
The only positive evidence I can think of as to whether wood could have been imported in ancient times is if it is imported in modern times, or if the import of wood is indicated in contemporary written historical records. Records exist for the import of cedar from Lebanon and hardwood from India to Arabia in ancient times. Today hardwoods from India are still imported to Oman (mainly Sur) and to UAE (mainly Abu Dhabi) for dhow shipbuilding.
Below is a satellite image of the Salaah geological feature on the coast of Oman. The natural bowl or amphitheater formation of the mountain escarpment around the coastal plain funnels seasonal monsoon winds off the sea and west coast of Africa and lifts them. This upwelling cools the air and causes rain. Salalah is considered the Garden Region of Oman due to fruit and vegetable production. The area is lush green each year during the monsoon season in July, August, and September. However, the trees there are small and do not produce wood suitable for producing blue water sailing ships.
Hiking up the wadis a few hundred meters from the coast at places like Dhalkut (Khor Kharfot), one encounters the kind of mainly standing water shown in the image below.
The conclusion of the Book of Mormon Central authors below on the subject essentially states that we have no real evidence as to precisely where Bountiful might have been. However, along 50 miles of coastline, we can find a few of the features (flowing fresh water and a coastline) mentioned in the Book of Mormon. Therefore since we firmly believe in the historicity of the Book of Mormon, the Salalah area wadis (Khor Rori and Khor Kharfot near Dhalkut) are the best we could find and as good a place as any.
Book of Mormon Central authors wrote:
Regardless of which specific inlet was Lehi’s campgrounds, Aston stressed, “Researchers generally agree that Nephi’s Bountiful must lie somewhere on the fertile southern coast of Oman.” Aston even felt “that several locations (all within a few miles of each other) being proposed as Bountiful actually strengthens the Book of Mormon’s claims” because, “None of these places was known in Joseph Smith’s 1829 environment.”
I would point out that since none of the wadis mentioned by Book of Mormon Central could have ever been a site for the construction, provisioning, and launching of a coastal sailing vessel as shown upthread - let alone a bluewater sailing vessel, their claims do not support belief in the Book of Mormon. In fact, this information supports quite the opposite conclusion.