More Comments from Readers – Part IV

Here are more comments that we have received from readers of this website blog: 
    Comment #1: “In your disagreement over Lehi landing in Malay, you claim by 600 B.C. the Peninsula was occupied. There is no way this is possible. Archaeologists claim the Malay Peninsula did not have visitors until Indian traders arrived in the 5^th century A.D.”
    Response: According to Kallie Szczepanski, Asian History Expert for Malaysia: Facts and History, “Humans have lived in what is now Malaysia for at least 40 to 50,000 years. Certain modern indigenous peoples, named "Negritos" by Europeans, may be descended from the first inhabitants, and are distinguished by their extreme genetic divergence from both other Malaysians and from modern African peoples. This implies that their ancestors were isolated on the Malay Peninsula for a very long time. Later immigration waves from southern China and from Cambodia included the ancestors of modern Malays, who brought technologies such as farming and metallurgy to the archipelago between 20,000 and 5,000 years ago. And Indian traders arrived, bringing aspects of their culture to the early kingdoms of the Lalaysian peninsula.” Every history checked regarding the Malay Peninsula pretty much says the same thing.
    Comment #2: “Why are you so opposed to the Bering Land Bridge, and people of South America first entering the Western Hemisphere through this means?”
    Response: I suppose I could write an entire book on this answer. The reasons are varied and many, which I  have listed in former articles. However, let me just say for the moment that according to Danièle Lavallée (translated by Paul G. Bahn), The First South Americans, (2000), “The recent and now indisputable findings at Monte Verde in southern Chile present the strong possibility that people were living in South America more than 12,000 years ago. If so, the long-cherished scenario in which the Americas were populated by big-game hunters crossing the Bering land bridge and then making their way slowly down the Americas may no longer be true.”  In fact, The First South Americans presents all current evidence and claims for the early traces of human presence on the continent. Surveying the territory from Tierra del Fuego to the Caribbean shores of Columbia and from Brazil to Ecuador, Lavallée presents and discusses the cultural development of the entire continent from the first occupants through the hunters of the Holocene, the rise of horticulture and animal domestication in the Andes, Amazonian developments, maritime adaptations, the Andean development of ceramics, weaving, and stratified society, and finally the emergence of the first Andean civilization in Chavin.”

According to her, little by little, people occupied this mosaic of territories over the millennia, sometimes yielding to the constraints of the environment, sometimes controlling and transforming it. Lavallée shows how the first South Americans accomplished this at different rates and with methods whose diversity equaled that of their natural settings.
    Whether or not I agree with Lavallée in all her findings, the point is that archaeology has now found (as we have indicated in earlier posts) that man was in South America before the so-called Beringia Land Bridge was formed and supposedly used for the settlement of the Americas. Danièle Lavallée has worked in South American for over thirty-five years, directing and participating in archaeological research from Tierra del Fuego to Ecuador. She is Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France, and directs the Unité Mixte de Recherche,"Archéologie des Amériques," at CNRS and the University of Paris 1- Sorbonne. She holds teaching positions at the Sorbonne and Paris X-Nanterre and currently directs the Perou-Sud archaeological project in southern Peru. Sounds to me she is as knowledgable as those who claim Beringia--probably more so.
    Comment #3: “You wrote an article about the Paracas, which I found very interesting. Thank you. However, you did not include the famed double spout and bridge vessel from the Nazca culture which of course had two spouts and  a bridge across, a design first used by the Paracas culture. The vessel is amazing because it created whistling sounds when pouring liquids” Lillian Q.

Response: Yes, that is true. In fact, I left out a lot of fascinating things about most of the cultures I wrote about because of space restrictions and probable lack of interest on the part of a varied reader base. As for the vase (left) you mentioned, it was actually made by the Vicús culture sometime between 1000 B.C. and 200 B.C., though they are said to have continued on as late as 300 to 600 A.D. They were known for their ceramics, copper and gold, and lived in the Piura region in the far northernmost corner of Peru’s coast, at the opposite end of Peru and far from the Nazca in the far south.
    Their ceramics also resembled the ornamental motifs of the Moche culture, as well as the Salinar and Gallizano cultures from Ecuador. In addition, gold jaguars attributed to the Vicús are also similar to Chavin felines and the Chavinoid style–which all goes to add to our contention that these were not separate cultures, but the Nephite nation living in various parts of the Land of Promise. In fact, famous modern day pottery from the town of Chulucanas is said to closely resemble the ancient art of the Vicús.

The shape of the Vicús mace head (left) made of copper, resembles the sun, with possible animals with long noses and tails in the middle ring, but besides being an ornament or possibly a ritual object, as archaeologists suggest, could well have been used as a weapon (thrown disc) because of the outer pointed thongs.
    Comment #4: “I read Sorenson’s book and a few others, and my take on all this Book of Mormon stuff is that you Mormons attempt to prove the BOM exactly backwards of the way things work in the real world. Rather than researching and piecing together evidence that is actually found in the ground, Mormon apologists use the BOM, written in 1830, to try to force archaeology to fit it. If the BOM was authentic, we would not have to resort to these forced interpretations, and stretch logic to the limit, to make the puzzle fit. It would come together just as a jigsaw puzzle does, with each added piece making the remainder fall into place in quick fashion" Caroline R.
    Response: I couldn’t agree more. However, it is also possible to read the Book of Mormon and follow its comments to wherever that leads in order to find the location of areas mentioned, without forcing, changing, altering, etc., any of yhe clear and precise meanings. It is like following a treasure map. I hope that is what we do here in this blog—it is certainly our plan and very sacred intention.

As a side thought, it is amazing to me that anyone could think that Lehi sailed to or through Indonesia in 600 B.C. with just his family as hands at the helm. The cross currents, shoals, maneuvering, sailing ability and degree of difficulty to do so would have been so far beyond Nephi's crew, even with the Liahona, is beyond description. Even experienced mariners today with all the advantages of GPS, radar, engines and depth charts, find this one of the most dangerous routes known in the world
    Comment #5: “The Kedah Annals of Merong Mahawangsa from which you quote were works of fiction that came a millennia or two later. Nobody considers them history.
There are plenty of extant legends in SE Asia talking about buried golden books bearing ancient histories that have been lost. There is no way this voyage and landing, in an area that had been inhabited, according to archaeologists, for thousands of years before Lehi" ... India, yes, but there is very little evidence of advanced human settlement on the Malay Peninsula at that time. Indian traders didn't arrive until around 5th century AD” Sithu Mon
    Response: You may be right about the Merong Mahawangsa, tough the jury still seems to be out, with one group saying it is and another groups haying it is not. However, when it comes to people living on the Malay Peninsula, according to the Original Official Homepage of the Malasia Tourism Promotion Board, Malay was peopled 2500 B.C. by a group called the Proto-Malays, who were seafarers and farmers from China, who forced the Negritos (original inhabitants of the peninsula) into the hills and jungles. They were followed by the Deutero-Malays, a combination of many peoples, Indians, Chines, Siamese, Arabs, and Proto-Malays, who are considered to be the racial basis for the group which today is called the Malay. All these were on the Peninsula in large numbers before Lehi sailed.