Those Who Went North in Hagoth’s Ships – Part IV

Continued from the previous post, regarding those who went north in the ships that Hagoth built that is recorded in Alma 63:5-7.
    Throughout their history, the Nephites were involved in ship building and shipping (Helaman 3:14). This undoubtedly involved the Nephites extensively in trade with one another, as did the Lamanites, once they were “taught to keep their record and write to one another” (Mosiah 24:6). It was the Nephite rebel priests of Noah, Amulon and his brethren, who were appointed teachers over the lands of Shemlon, Shilom and Amulon by the Lamanite king Laman (Mosiah 24:1,3,7), that led to this change and trade among themselves. How long it lasted, we are not told, but since the Lamanites eventually broke into individual tribes and commenced a long-lasting civil war (Mormon 8:8; Moroni 1:2).

The Nephite Hagoth built “exceedingly large” ships and launched them into the West Sea

Mormon informs us that in about 55 BC, at the conclusion of the extended conflict between the Nephites and the Lamanites, and during the time of the Nephite ship building, a shipwright named “Hagoth built exceedingly large ships on the borders of the land Bountiful, by the land Desolation, and launched them into the West sea by the narrow neck of land that led into the Land Northward” (Alma 63:5). The Nephite ships that had been built up to that time were undoubtedly for fishing, and for trade endeavors along the coastal areas from city to city. No doubt they were also used along the larger rivers as far as they could travel, again for trade purposes and possibly short transportation hauls, like from one city to another. However, when Hagoth built his ships, they were much larger. In fact, Alma makes a specific point that they were not only larger, but that they were “exceedingly large,” and obviously meant for long-distance populous transport, since that is how they are described. At one point, many Nephites, no doubt immigrating families, traveled northward in Hagoth’s ships. (Alma 63:6-7)
    What is unusual about this is that in one case, a specific number is given: “And it came to pass that in the thirty and seventh year of the reign of the judges, there was a large company of men, even to the amount of five thousand and four hundred men, with their wives and their children, departed out of the land of Zarahemla into the land which was northward” (Alma 63:4, emphasis added).
    Now, while many theorists want us to believe that all these went into the Land Northward, where the Jaredites had originally settled and were later destroyed, there is an important point that belies that view. First of all, the distance of travel from the narrow neck of land northward by ship would be limited to the coast, and on a river or two for short distances—hardly worth the cost of building large ships to transport people such short distances and limited areas. Nor would it be worthwhile for people to pay a price to sail a short distance which they could cover on foot almost as fast and certainly free of cost.
    Secondly, when Alma tells us that the company of men that went north was 5,400, we should ask why, in this single case, numbers are associated with migratory movement. We also find that in addition to that number of men, they took their wives and children, numbers that could be somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000 to 25,000 people. The point is, if these people went overland into the Land Northward, their number would not be known, or especially be listed since how many immigrated into a large, more-or-less vacant or near-empty land as the Land Northward would not have mattered.

Nephites boarding one of Hagoth’s ships in preparation for emigrating to “the land which was northward”

However, if they went by ship, their numbers would be critically important since ships require weight considerations, which includes exact numbers of people. This is because the capacity of any ship is limited, and in order to take people on board, the ship’s captain or leader has to know the weight distribution of the people and baggage coming aboard. Today, that also is a requirement of flight in an airplane.
    It should also be noted that in no other place in the scriptural record are we made aware of the numbers of people who traveled into the Land Northward. Only in connection with shipping is a specific number given. In fact, note that in Alma 63:5 a number is given and then the means of their transportation is listed in the next verse, but a few verses later, when it is mentioned “And it came to pass that in this year there were many people who went forth into the land northward. And thus ended the thirty and eighth year” (Alma 63:9, emphasis added), no number is listed, nor is a number given “in the forty and sixth [year], 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” (Helaman 3:3, emphasis added). Also note, that in order to inherit land, you have to go to an ares where the land was yours to begin with, such as within the Land of Promise—not mentioned in the case of the 5,400 men, and their wives and children.
    It is also a known fact that people moving overland from the south through Colombia into Central America or eventually Mesoamerica, as some theorists claim, could not have taken place once the Panama land arose from the sea and connected Central and South America. The reason is simple, the narrow strip of land that lies between then Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean that connects Panama to Colombia, known as the Isthmus of Darien (later the Isthmus of Panama), is currently and always has been impassable.
    This area is claimed by geologists to have formed 2.8 million years ago, which is quite recent geologically speaking. An understanding of the formation of this narrow strip of land and its rise to the surface was first proposed in 1910 by North American paleontologist and geologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, a long time member of the U.S. Geological Survey and who was president of the American Museum of Natural History for 25 years. He claimed this rise and formation which closed the Central American Seaway, resulted in forming the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean, bringing warmth to northern Europe (Osborn, The Age of Mammals, MacMillan Co., New York, 1910, pp80-81).
    This eventual rise was the result of two plates colliding, forcing the Cocos Plate to slide under the Caribbean Plate, with the pressure that caused the collision first leading to the formation of underwater volcanoes, some of which grew large enough to form islands, as well as pushing up the sea floor that eventually forced sufficient area above sea level to create the isthmus, which led to the Great American Interchange. It might be of note that this interchange, which resulted in opossums, armadillos, and porcupines to come northward across this bridge, and horses, bears, cats, dogs, and raccoons to cross to the south. All of this provided the foundation for Alfred Wegener, a German polar researcher geophysicist and meteorologist, to form his 1912 theory of continental drift (Alfred Wegener, “The origins of Continents,” Milestones in Geosciences, Springer, Berlin, 1912, pp4-17).

The notorious Dariėn Gap is a large swath of swampland and forest-jungle on the border of Panama and Colombia, which is an area outsiders never visit, let alone enter 

 

The point is, when this isthmus rose, it was a huge swamp and still is, now called the Darién Gap, which is a hot, humid area typified by tropical rainforests, mangrove swamps, and low mountain ranges with cloud forest vegetation, much of it covered by cedrela and mahogany cover before these trees were logged. It is impassable to both foot and vehicle traffic, with the 19,000-mile Alaska to Tierra del Fuego in Chile, Pan-American Highway, not finished through the Gap, with the highway ending at Yavia and beginning again 75-miles away at Turbo, Colombia. To get past the Gap, people take a piragua or dugout canoe along the coast of the Uraba Gulf, referred to as the “Lion’s Arm of the River Atrato,” and across to Turbo, a city anciently called Pisis.
(See the next post, “Those Who Went North in Hagoth’s Ships – Part V,” regarding the people who preceded the Maya, Aztec and Inca, and who built those vast advanced cities and pyramids that still stand in Meso-, Central, and South America, and more importantly, how those civilizations began and from wench they came)