One More Time—Malay is Not the Land of Promise Part V

Continuing from the last four posts regarding the clues Nephi and Mormon gave us to find their Land of Promise, and seeing that the winds and currents that drove their ship to the promised land (1 Nephi 18:2), we also have to see where those currents and winds took them and, therefore, where they landed, and what they found there.

As an example, the winds and currents would have taken Nephi’s ship down into the Indian Ocean, then twisting eastward along the westward moving southern arm of the Indian Ocean Gyre, and into the Southern Ocean and the Prevailing Westerlies and the West Wind Drift.

These currents and winds would have ended up along the eastern arm of the South Equatorial Gyre (South Pacific Gyre) to where they stopped at the Tropic of Capricorn along the 30º South Latitude, at the southern most point where the Sun is visible straight overhead. At this point, the ship would have landed—the Bay of Coquimbo and La Serena—or it would have been sent back along the course of the gyre out into the Pacific and back toward the west in this continually circling gyre of the southern Pacific Ocean (for a full account of these winds and currents, maps and diagrams, see the book “Lehi Never Saw Mesoamerica”).

Now with all this in mind, we can determine a legitimate landing area for the Lehi Colony. The next step, is to determine what the scriptural record claims they found in this Land of Promise and then see if there is a match, or if we need to look elsewhere.

Note that it is claimed in Ralph Olsen’s Malay Peninsula Theory that “Plants don't match. Barley, wheat and other grains are known to have been cultivated in Southeast Asia. Only corn (which is not mentioned in the Book of Mormon) is known to have been cultivated in the Americas."

First of all, corn is mentioned in the Book of Mormon: “And we began to till the ground, yea, even with all manner of seeds, with seeds of corn, and of wheat, and of barley, and with neas, and with sheum, and with seeds of all manner of fruits; and we did begin to multiply and prosper in the land” (Mosiah 9:9). It is obviously important to know the scriptural record if one is going to comment on it.

Secondly, two other grains are mentioned with “wheat and barley” and that is sheum and neas. We have posted extensively about these two grains, but in a nutshell, these two grains would have to have been unknown to Joseph Smith in 1829. In South America, in the Andean area, two extremely important supergrains known as quinoa and kiwichi have been grown and cultivated for thousands of years, dating to around 3000 B.C. These two grains are on a value at least equal to corn, wheat and barley, if not superior. Quinoa is considered one of the most, if not the most, important grain known to man. The fact that the Andeans of today do not export this grain keeps it from being known, even today, though it is becoming more and more popular in health food centers. So three of these five grains are found in South America, though wheat and barley can be grown there but are not grown in Mesoamerica even today.

And since in earlier posts it has been pointed out that the Malay Peninsula, despite Olsen’s claims, has poor soils and there main crop is rice—though not grown sufficiently to even feed their own people—and that wheat and barley have not been found in ancient times, though it is grown today, but only in very sparse areas. In fact, the climate necessary for rice paddies is not found in the Americas, and has always been the main crop of Malasia throughout the Malay Peninsula—but not mentioned in the Book of Mormon. In fact, most of the land in Malay is not capable of sustaining large crops, and the tropical rains, hot and humid temperature, and alluvium surface “washed” soils are not conducive to very many crops at all.

In addition, the seeds “brought from Jerusalem” would have needed a Mediterranean Climate to have grown exceedingly and produce an abundant crop as Nephi tells us (1 Nephi 18:24). Malay’s tropical climate would not have worked, yet in South American, along the 30º South Latitude as earlier mentioned, lies one of the five Mediterranean Climates of the world (the other four are southern tip of Africa, southern two tips of Australia, and Southern California).

Olsen also claims that “MesoAmerica did not have tillage agriculture. They had no beasts of burden, no tillage equipment. So they couldn't have raised plants that require tillage.” While this is true of Mesoamerica, it is not true of South America. Along the Andean strip the alpaca and its cousins were used as beasts of burden. But we need to be careful of getting carried away. Man learned to till the ground long before he used animals to do so. Planting and harvesting has been prominent in almost all ancient cultures, and many of these the work was done by human hands. Therefore, it is disingenuous to claim there was no tillage somewhere only because they did not have horses, oxen, etc., to do the work.

(See the next post, “One More Time—Malay is Not the Land of Promise Part V,” for more on the clues Nephi and Mormon gave us to find their Land of Promise and to know what was found there)