L.E. Hills, you could perhaps explain your thoughts a bit more. On the face of it I am not sure how the identity of the first source of a particular theory shows its value. Perhaps RLDS were right, perhaps they were not.
To answer your earlier question, L.E. Hills was a member of the RLDS First Quorum of Seventy and was acting on his own.
Hills had come up with his maps and theory on his own and was using his General Authority position to preach and promote it in different RLDS Congregations in Missouri and Iowa. The RLDS members were confused. They wrote to the RLDS First Presidency asking for clarification. This was their response.
This entry from 1921 proves he was acting on his own:
He was present in an earlier meeting in 1911 discussing the location of The Hill Cumorah on RLDS Hemispheric Maps.
To solve the problem, by April 1918 he introduced his yellow 1917 map in a Priesthood Meeting in the Stone Church located directly north of The New Jerusalem Temple lot. Given is the exact Year, Month, Day and Hour that his map was introduced.
Thursday April 12, 1917 at 10:45 am. The Saints' Herald was published on Wednesdays. Look up a 1917 Calendar.
(April 6, 1917 is when the US Congress declared war on Germany entering the US into WWI.)
As you can read, a Committee was appointed to review the map a "year hence."
It didn't happen until 1923. His map was rejected.
This is the final report by that Committee. Hills' maps were rejected by 1923.
He never even visited Central America. He made up his theory from Maps, the same as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made up his novel "Lost World" from reports by European Explorers of Venezuela.
Despite the rejection, L.E. Hills persisted. He published his final book, "New Light on American Archaeology," in 1924 to convince his fellow RLDS Saints.
He died a short time later in June 1925 from being struck by an automobile while walking near his home.
His obituary is available on line.
His 3 books persisted, (actually 4 + an annotated RLDS Book of Mormon with Maya imagery) and crept into the membership of the LDS Church, since RLDS congregations existed in Utah.
By 1938 Elder Joseph Fielding Smith rejected the Two Cumorah Mesoamerica theory.
He did so again in 1954, published in the Deseret News:
https://newspapers.lib.utah.edu/details?id=25569779
Our Scholars are so *** stupid, it's unbelievable.
John Sorenson
Jack Welch
Dan Peterson
Kirk Magleby
Brant Gardner
Sperry what's his face, deceased and his past Sperry Symposiums. Whom no one cares about any longer.
And their hired employees.
I don't live in Utah nor met any of them.
But they get on the World Wide Web and misrepresent The Church to which they belong, like a bunch of oafs that they are.
They all claim to be scholars, but can't even figure out this simple history within the RLDS Church.
Instead, they use their silly imaginations and make up excuses for this geography theory.
Baird Tapirs are Nephite horses. Concreate Pyramids made of stone are cement. Hebrew, Egyptian were spoken among the Maya.
Maya glyphs proves the Book of Mormon "caractors" shown to Professor Anthon.
Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery were speculating on Book of Mormon geography.
Joseph Smith changed his mind some 2 years before his death and plagiarized John Lloyd Stephens as evidence for The Book of Mormon in Central America.
Etc, ad infinitum
I can't tell if these guys are friggin idiots or are trying to hustle people.
A bunch of Utah County clowns - among the highest per capita of members anywhere and BYU - which also promotes this.
Then you have their followers:
Michael Ash, Ugo Perego, John Clark, etc etc.. some whom are now deceased.
They wrote numerous books on the subject, with conjecture about the location of Cumorah.
None of them ever mentioned L.E. Hills. Search his name on the search feature at Book of Mormon Central - he doesn't appear in the results.
Sorenson mentions him in his "Source Book" as the first to come up with Two Cumorahs restricted in Mesomerica, then never acknowledges him since.
How "sophisticated" they all were and are.
L.E. Hills, by profession, was a Railroad Conductor. He was no scholar.
But he was honest. He admitted his sources. Rand McNally maps of Central America and Smithsonian Ethnology reports of the Maya.
Dr. Michael Coe, famous Yale Professor on the Maya, now deceased, knew of L.E. Hills, and mentioned him in a 1973 article.
He thought Joseph Smith was an idiot because he took the LDS Scholars at their word that Joseph Smith learned from John Lloyd Stephens. He nor any of his extended family ever joined the Church because of it.
Our LDS Meso scholars are Low IQ. Take Brant Gardner, for example. His volume of books. He notes that he attended the University of Rochester some 100 miles east the Hill Cumorah in New York, to study Maya Civilization, so he can tell everyone The Book of Mormon occurred in Mesoamerica.
He hasn't figured out this simple RLDS history but spends hours writing tomes about his imaginations.
Thomas Stuart Ferguson left the Church over it:
https://www.science.org/content/article ... -his-faith
Two Cumorahs is mentioned in the CES Letter under Book of Mormon geography.
The retort is Mesoamerican Geography is accurate. Brilliant!
They all ignore the teachings of Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery in 1834 in Cowdery's Eight Letters which was a response to the anti-book, "Mormonism Unvailed."
What a joke.
Dan Peterson was so rabid in defending this garbage, that some of you that haunt this board have the left Church over it.
Brilliant, all around!
