5. Our post said, "This land is so barren, not much else than cacti and other succulents grow. At times, the vegetation all but disappears, even the succulents cannot survive the frequent prolonged droughts. Baja is considered Mexico's most arid regions. Water is scarce. Extracting water from the ground for agriculture and population causes sea water to intrude into the aquifer, making it brackish and unusable."
Elbeau's Comment: "Baja is considered Mexico's most arid regions. Water is scarce." This is true of most of the peninsula, just like the Baja model describes. Remember, the Book of Mormon describes vast wilderness areas and a great land of desolation."
Response: There are two very important points here: 1) Regarding "Vast wilderness areas" in no way means the same as "desert" or unlivable regions like most of Baja. As has been pointed out and described in these posts on numerous occasions, in Joseph Smith's time the word "wilderness" was defined as "a tract of land or region uncultivated and uninhabited by human beings, whether a forest or a wide barren plain. In the United States, it is applied only to a forest." Obviously, this is not a desert, or unlivable area or region. In the interpretation we have in the scriptural record, these areas of wilderness were uninhabited areas where permanent cities, towns or villages were not previously located. As the description is given, only Lamanites lived in the "east wilderness" in tents, and Moroni drove them out of that area of the southeastern shore of the Land of Zarahemla, then moved Nephites into the area where they build cities (Alma 50:7). The word "wilderness" is derived from the word "wildness" i.e., that which is not controllable by humans. In the United States, the word "wilderness" is generally applied to "a large wild tract of land covered with dense vegetation or forests."
2) The Land of Desolation was not so named because of being desolate or an unlivable area. The scriptural record tells us exactly why it was called desolate: "Yea, and even they did spread forth into all parts of the land into whatever parts it had not been rendered desolate and without timber, because of the many inhabitants who had before inherited the land. And now no part of the land was desolate, save it were for timber; but because of the greatness of the destruction of the people who had before inhabited the land it was called desolate." In fact, the record of Ether tells us at one time two million men had been killed in the fighting just on one side--and the final battles had not yet taken place. The number, once completely totaled, would be in the area of five to ten million Jaredites just in the Land Northward (hard to imagine that many people living in the northern state of Baja California. Thus, the vast Jaredite building was the cause of there being no trees in the Land Northward and the later destruction and death of millions upon millions of people was the cause for it being called "the Land of Desolation." Once again, Elbeau's critique is far off base on this point--the Land of Promise was NOT mostly a desert region as is the Baja Peninsula.
Elbeau's further comment: "If we DIDN'T find inhospitable areas then it would seem more contradictory than the fact that we DO. That being said, the areas of Baja model proposes as the lands NOT described as wilderness are also the areas of the Baja (and they are LARGE areas) where water is plentiful."
Response: According to the World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, and the Renewable Energy for Agriculture and Sustainable Ranching Programmes in Mexico, the Baja Peninsula is in dire need of water and water programs, just to sustain ranching, let alone public consumption of water. They are planning to spend millions of dollars to try and create deep wells through FIRCO (Mexican Trust for Shared Risk). This problem is both in the northern Baja California state as well as in the southern state of Baja Calfiornia Sur. The biggest area of need is in the area that Elbeau claims has plenty of water in the southern area. With only 3.8 million people on the Peninsula today (and only 638,000 in the southern half), can you imagine what the need must have been in the Jaredite and Nephite eras when easily ten millions of people covered the Land of Promise?
Left: FIRCO map showing the area where natural moisture, rainfall and potable water are extremely scarce in Baja California Sur (the proposed Land Southward); Right: Map 1) Area of map left, 2) Narrow Neck of Land [actually not so narrow], 3) area of the Colorado River, 4) Mexicali, 5) Tijuana, 6) Ensenada [these three areas have 75% of the population]; 7) Land of Desolation, 8) Land of Bountiful [not much reason to call it bountiful]For areas with far more natural water, such as the Tijuana metropolitan area, which relies on the 120-mile long Tijuana River as their source of water, still has to purchase water from San Diego County. The rural area relies predominantly on wells and man-made dams. In fact, the two states making up the peninsula, consider potable (drinking) water "the largest natural resource issue of the state." About sixty miles south of the U.S. border, the Ojos Negros valley has sustainable ground water in the aquifer but it is easily over-exploited by the population (which is perhaps about one-third of the Jaredite population), and today a special management effort is required to maintain water in the area.
Baja California claims only two permanent rivers (this, by the way, in the Land of Promise's "land of many waters"), and they are the Rio Colorado, and the Rio Mulege, with the former not really in Baja territory, but the boundary between the Peninsula and Sonora (Mexico); and the latter is really only a brackish arm of the Sea of Cortes. There are only two sizable lakes in Baja, Laguna Salada, in the lowlands south of Mexicali, and the Laguna Hanson, in the Sierra de Juarez, which is less than a mile across and is shallow and muddy. How could this possibly be the Land of Many Waters?
Also, keep in mind, that today there are 3.1 million in Baja California, and another 638,000 in Baja Califonria Sur, for a total population on the Peninsula of about 3.8 million. In the Land of Promise, there were two or three times more Jaredites than that, and the Nephites, Mulekites and Lamanites numbered in the millions. Where did the water come from to satisfy the drinking and agriculture water of that day?
Elbeau can say "where water is plentiful," but there is almost no place in the entire Peninsula where that can be applied--certainly not in the amount to support a population in the millions without modern-day water technology.
(See the next post, "A Reader's Exception to Baja Critique--Part IV," for more of Elbeau's disagreements to our earlier series of posts about Baja California not being the Land of Promise)
As I mentioned in my recent response to your article:
ReplyDeletehttp://nephicode.blogspot.com/2011/01/fallacy-of-extremist-theoriesthe-baja.html
I only recently realized that more than a year after my comments you wrote these responses, so please excuse my delay in responding.
I think the initial part of the definition you gave for a "wilderness" is accurate enough:
"a tract of land or region uncultivated and uninhabited by human beings, whether a forest or a wide barren plain."
That definition is good enough for our purposes, but you expounded on this with some less-than-compelling arguments. You said:
"In the United States, it is applied only to a forest. Obviously, this is not a desert, or unlivable area or region,"
It is entirely inappropriate to slap such an exclusive and strict interpretation onto the end of the previous definition. The idea that the barren, uninhabited, uncultivated deserts of Baja can be called "wildernesses" is perfectly reasonable. On my model's website you will see that I recently wrote some articles describing how people tend to inject unjustified requirements into arguments against external models by pretending that their interpretations are the only possible interpretations. The idea that the term "wilderness" should be "applied only to a forest" is a nice example of this. A forest could be termed a "wilderness", but so could any other "tract of land or region uncultivated and uninhabited by human beings, whether a forest or a wide barren plain."
continued below...
..continued from above:
ReplyDeleteRegarding the subject labeled "2)" above, you quoted Helaman 3:5-6. Verse 5 starts out by saying "Yea, and even they did spread forth..." Who is the "they" that verse 5 is talking about? They are the dissenters from verse 3. Verses 3 and 4 say "there was much contention and many dissensions; in the which there were an exceedingly great many who departed out of the land of Zarahemla, and went forth unto the land northward to inherit the land. And they did travel to an exceedingly great distance, insomuch that they came to large bodies of water and many rivers."
It's important to remember that these dissenters weren't the first group to migrate into the land northward. They were the first group to "travel to an exceedingly great distance" and to "spread forth into all parts of the land, into whatever parts it had not been rendered desolate and without timber".
These dissenters didn't just step across the fortified line between Bountiful and Desolation, they traveled through the land of Desolation to another land northward. This can be further evidenced by the following verses:
"even until they came to the land which they called Bountiful. And it bordered upon the land which they called Desolation, it being so far northward that it came into the land which had been peopled and been destroyed" (Alma 22:29-30)
Please notice that the land Desolation was not the "land which had been peopled and been destroyed" in this description. Instead, it "came into" that land by existing so far northward.
The Nephite and Lamanite migrations that are described in the closing chapters of Alma and the opening chapters of Helaman are migrations into a land that was northward. Perhaps this included some or all of the land Desolation, but it definitely includes lands that were "exceedingly great" distances northward. This was the land that Desolation "came into" and it had "large bodies of water and many rivers". Helaman 3:6 tells us that this land "exceedingly great" distances northward was also called "desolate" because of the destruction of the Jaredites, not because it was actually "desolate" in the sense that Mormon would normally mean when using the term.
Whether you agree or disagree with the interpretation that the Nephites were migrating past the land Desolation to get to a land northward of it, I hope that we can agree that the land with "large bodies of water and many rivers" an "exceedingly great distance" north of Bountiful. Either way, Desolation was not a small geographical feature and varying hydrological conditions are represented by those verses.
The verses that you quoted in Helaman, as well as the other references that the Book of Mormon makes regarding the land Desolation and the Nephite and Lamanite migrations northward are a good description of conditions in the Baja peninsula and northward to the Colorado River delta and southern California and possibly beyond into the greater North American Southwest.
I agree that the Baja California peninsula's carrying capacity is inadequate to account for the hundreds of thousands of Nephites and millions of Jaredites that are described at certain times in the Book of Mormon's narrative. This is a primary point where my model is very different from the geography presented on achoiceland.com.
Since my model is quite different than the model you were referring to when you made your comments on the subject, I won't go into a lengthy discussion in response to your comments at this point other than to say for now that my model places the Jaredite lands largely (but not entirely) outside of the peninsula and it places the final battle of the Nephites at Cumorah also outside of the peninsula.