Lands of Appropriate Scale – Part I

In addition to “painting with a broad brush” (see last posts), we find that the Mesoamerican approach to the scriptural record is to limit its meaning and down scale its distances. All of this is done to support the Mesoamerica model and landscape. As John L. Sorenson writes:

“In addition to writing, other social and cultural conditions required by the scriptural text to be present in the Nephite homeland area confirm Mesoamerica as the only plausible location of Book of Mormon lands.”

The only plausible location?

• What about the narrow neck not being narrow?

As shown in the map (left), this area only narrows over a 200 mile stretch (that’s the distance from Provo, Utah, to Cedar City, Utah, a mere 30 miles on each coastal area, or from 200 miles width to 140 miles width overall. That is a narrowing of only 1650 yards along a 6 mile coastal line, or 275 yards in a mile—less than three football fields—almost imperceptible to the human eye. And this very slight incline would be enough for a Nephite 2000 years ago to say, that the coast line cut in so significantly to create a “narrow neck.” Not only could such a tiny narrowing even be seen by the naked eye, it certainly would not be called a “narrow neck” of land. Without a satellite or aerial photograph, it wouldn’t even be known to exist. Even on a map today, it is not really significant.

And what about other discrepancies in Mesoamerica?

• What about the Land Northward being to the NORTH of the Land Southward (see map below)
• What about the Land Southward being restricted in size?
• What about the Land Northward being equally limited?
• What about Bountiful being to the east of Desolation instead of north?
• What about Cumorah being next to Desolation but nearly 300 miles away from the Land of Many Waters where Mormon places Cumorah?
• What about the climate of Guatemala not conducive to growing seeds from Jerusalem?
• Where are the two unknown animals?
• Where are the two unknown grains?
• Where are the plants and roots the cure fever?
• Where is the gold, silver and copper ore? (It is interesting that copper products being exported from Guatemala today use copper from Chile)

There are, of course, many more items in the scriptural record that are not found in Mesoamerica. But the above should suggest that Mesoamerican is not “the only plausible location,” it is not even a plausible one. (It is humorously interesting that one of the explanations of the word “plausible” is “superficially pleasing” and “appearing well at first view”). However, it might needs be that we should give this idea a second view.

But, before we do, let’s take a look at Sorenson’s follow-up comment: “In addition to the cultural criteria, only in that area can all of the geographical requirements be met. For example, only in Mesoamerica are there lands of appropriate scale (that is, several hundreds, but not thousands, of miles in extent) that can appropriately be said to be "nearly surrounded by water" (Alma 22:32), as well as an isthmus bounded by Pacific and Atlantic waters.”

First of all, “cultural criteria” may seem an unimportant phrase used here, but it actually means the society in general, the cultivation of that society, the shared knowledge and value of that society, or to the raising of plants and animals. None of these uses describes anything under question regarding the size, shape, or distances involved in describing or locating the Land of Promise. So let’s set that term aside. The rest of the statement is: “only in that area can all of the geographical requirements be met. For example, only in Mesoamerica are there lands of appropriate scale (that is, several hundreds, but not thousands, of miles in extent).” Obviously, Sorenson is telling us that only in Mesoamerica can the geographical requirements of the Land of Promise be met. The funny thing is, who set those geographical requirements such as: “only in Mesoamerica are there lands of appropriate scale (that is, several hundreds, but not thousands, of miles in extent).”

The problem with Sorenson’s thinking is that we do not know or have any really good idea of how large or small the Land of Promise was from the scriptural record—but despite this, Sorenson has come up with “hundreds of miles” and actually decided that the miles from “land of first inheritance” is known (despite Nephi telling us only that they traveled for many days), how many miles it was from the city of Nephi to the city of Zarahemla, despite the closest area of description is the 21 days from the Waters of Mormon to the Land of Zarahemla, etc. And, as shown in a previous post, Sorenson, where no description is given at all, arbitrarily uses 30 miles to round out his mileage calculation.

(See the next post, “Lands of Appropriate Scale – Part II,” to see the further unsupportable statements Sorenson makes about his Land of Promise model)