Criticism of the Mesoamerican Geography Model

According to non-LDS archaeologists who have made a comparison between the Book of Mormon and their archaeological work in Mesoamerica, they claim there are three basic disagreements.

1. The Limited Mesoamerican Geography Model has been critiqued by a number of scholars, who suggest that it is not an adequate explanation for Book of Mormon geography and that the locations, events, flora and fauna described in it do not precisely match. In response to one of these critiques in 1994, Sorenson reaffirmed his proposal for a limited Mesoamerican geographical setting.

Obviously, despite all to the contrary, Sorenson continues to doggedly hold to the belief that Mesoamerica is the Land of Promise in the Book of Mormon. This, despite so much showing that Mesoamerica could not possibly be Lehi’s promised land, Mesoamerican theorists continue to try and ram the idea down everyone’s throat. From the wrong directions, to the lack of a workable narrow neck of land, to not finding in all of Central America such things as metallurgy in B.C. times, these theorists tenaciously hold to their model—an act that brings down critic after critic on the Church and the Book of Mormon because anyone reading the scriptural record and studying Mesoamerica can see without any difficulty at all, that the two do not match. Metallurgy alone should disqualify Mesoamerica as the Land of Promise since “The emergence of metallurgy in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica occured relatively late in the region's history, with distinctive works of metal apparent in West Mexico by roughly AD 800, and perhaps as early as AD 600” and that in Guatemala even later, basically around 900 A.D.

2. Establishing connections between ruins of the Mayan civilization (for example, Quirigua, Kaminaljuyu, and Tikal in Guatemala, and Copan in Honduras, and Palenduras and Palenque in Mexico) and the cities and civilizations mentioned in the Book of Mormon has been difficult for Mormon apologists on a number of fronts, the most significant issue being dating. Conventional archaeology places the pinnacle of Mayan civilization several centuries after the final events in the Book of Mormon supposedly occurred.

This has always been understood by non-LDS archaeologists—that is, that the dating of Mesoamerica really begins around the first century B.C. in dating the hard evidence of civilization there like buildings and visible constructions. The early dating of sites in Mesoamerica, especially by LDS archaeologists, is based on infusion and pottery shards, etc., not on the construction of temples and structures. Of course, the Mesoamerican theorists hold to the infusion belief, of the Lithic stage (before 10,000 years ago, based on the first appearance of lithic flaked stone tools—that is, “a portion of rock removed from an objective piece by percussion or pressure, and can be referred to as a chip or spall or collectively as debitage—waste material”); the Archaic stage (8000 to 2000 B.C., based on sedentary farming—which “can vary significantly across the Americas”); the Formative stage (1000 B.C. to 500 A.D., based on pottery, weaving and food production); the Classic stage (500 to 1200 A.D. based on craft development and metallurgy, ceremonial centers and government, and the Post-Classic stage (1200 A.D. to modern times, based on advanced metallurgy, social organization, complex urbanism and militarism). According to Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips in their 1958 book, “Method and theory in American Archaeology,” the Aztec and Maya were in this latter stage, the Post-Classic period. This can hardly be said to cover 2200 B.C. to 400 A.D. where the Jaredites would have had buildings of all types in the so-called Archaic Stage.

3. Among apologists, there have been critiques - particularly around the location of the Hill Cumorah, which most Mormons consider to be definitively identified as a location in New York. In a Mesoamerican Limited Geography model, this would require there to be two Cumorahs (which some consider preposterous.)

In addition to these cities that are found in the area of Jerusalem, the Land of Promise, and the settlements of Utah, there is also Midian in Palestine and in the Land of Promise, Manti in Egypt, Jordan in Israel, etc., and Zarahemla, Jershon and Cumorah can be traced to their Hebrew origins. The idea of names showing up in both the Old World, the Land of Promise and in the United States is not only very common, but easily found.

Some may consider naming new locations after old ones, but history has shown this to be the case more often than not. From the two Bountifuls, two Jerusalems, etc., in cities and lands from the Old World to the Nephite New World, to naming lands and hills after other lands and hills. The idea of every name in the Book of Mormon, whether a person, land, city or hill, as a unique name never used elsewhere, is preposterous.

(See the next post, “Criticism of Mesoamerican Geography—Part II,” for more on this issue, and the two Cumorahs)