Saturday, August 13, 2011

Additional Clues to the Land of Promise Location-Part II Mountains-Topography of the Great Lakes Region

Continuing from the last post on the mountains illustrated by Samuel the Lamanite, who “prophesied unto the people whatsoever things the Lord put into his heart” (Helaman 13:4), and “behold, an angel of the Lord hath declared it unto me” (Helaman 13:7), prophesied that “there shall be many mountains laid low, like unto a valley, and there shall be many places which are now called valleys which shall become mountains, whose height is great” (Helaman 14:23), both within the Land Southward and especially in the Land Northward of the Land of Promise where the Nephites dwelt.

This prophesy was given around 6 B.C. and dealt with an event that would occur around 33 A.D.—approximately 2000 years ago. Thus, any way you look at it, the Land of Promise is going to have mountains “whose height is great” and such mountains would obviously still be present—since very tall mountains cannot possibly erode much in 2000 years. So, if the Great Lakes is the area of the Land of Promise as some Theorists have been touting lately, then we should find mountains there—not just hills as so many people in the east call “mountains,” but mountains “whose height is great.”

The recent trip I took around the Great Lakes and through the so-called Land of Promise area of the Great Lakes Theorists

Take, for example, the so-called Endless Mountains (just south of the Finger Lakes and Cumorah), which is part of the Appalachian Uplands, located on the Allegheny Plateau, which is little more than a series of broad rolling hills, valleys and streams. It is a magnificent sight, and having driven through these mountains on a recent swing through the eastern U.S., I can say it is both an easy and charmingly forested drive. However, these are not mountains. In fact, geologically speaking, they are a dissected plateau—a flat land with eroded valleys and no orogeny and is a peneplain, a low-relief plain caused by fluvial erosion.

While the Appalachian mountains average about 3,000 feet in height, and the Allegheny Plateau, which covers most of the area claimed to be the Land of Promise by Great Lakes theorists, ranges between 900 and 1500 feet in height, with the highest point no more than 4,000 feet, one cannot consider these areas to have any mountains “whose height is great.”
These pictures I took show the horizon as a constantly flat line in any direction. And having driven through this entire area around the Great Lakes, from Wisconsin through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, the area can only be described as astonishingly “flat as a pancake.” While rivers have cut some valleys in the area, there are no hilly areas close to the lakes area at all, especially south of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario—the so-called Land of Promise area.

In fact, geologically speaking, this entire area was flattened by glaciers during the Wisconsin glaciation that left widespread impacts on the North American landscape. The Great Lakes and Finger Lakes were carved by ice deepening old valleys. Most of the lakes in Minnesota and Wisconsin were gouged out by glaciers and later filled with glacial meltwaters. The old Teays River drainage system (northern Ohio and Indiana) was radically altered and largely reshaped into the Ohio River drainage system. Other rivers were dammed and diverted to new channels, such as the Niagara, which formed a dramatic waterfall and gorge, when the waterflow encountered a limestone escarpment. Isostatic rebound (leveling of once depressed land) continues to reshape the Great Lakes and other areas formerly under the weight of the ice sheets.

Also, according to geologists, before Lake Michigan and Lake Huron formed, there were Lake Chippewa and Lake Stanley in those areas around 7000 years ago—yet, at this time, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario were completely formed with the former two draining into Lake Erie, the Niagara, and into Lake Ontario and finally into the St. Lawrence River and eventually the North Atlantic Ocean.

About 2500 years ago, when the Nephites arrived, the glaciers of course were gone and what are called the Finger Lakes today existed as wide rivers flowing into Lake Ontario.

(See the next post regarding the Finger Lakes--what the Theorists call the Sea East)

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