“The findings of science provide positive evidence that pre-Nephite peoples were culturally, linguistically and biologically continuous with those found in Mesoamerica after the date for the Nephite arrival. We have seen that in coastal El Salvador and Guatemala, where Lehi's group probably reached shore, data about peoples who might have been present right around 600 B.C. is ambiguous.”
Though the “data” is vague, he goes on to write: “Drastic changes were then being completed as a result of the death of the civilizational tradition of which the Jaredites had been part. Those final throes affected life all the way south to the Nephite "land of first inheritance," so the archaeological evidence indicates (this would be around Pajon on the map above). It seems possible that the population present in the immediate vicinity where the Israelites landed was small and weak enough to be no serious hindrance to the colonizers. Indeed, like the relationship of the Indians of Massachusetts to the Pilgrims, the indigenes may well have passed on the skills and crops necessary to the success of the new colony.”So now we not only have the large, physical, war-like Jaredite survivors too weak and disorganized to put up any resistance to the farmer-merchant Lehi colony landing (see last post), now we find that they were the reason that colony survived, like the Pilgrims survival based on help from the Indians around 1620.
In addition, Sorenson adds a parenthetical note, “Diseases brought by Lehi's group, to which they had built up immunity, might soon have affected the locals, further weakening them, but would not have eliminated their genetic and cultural contribution to the subsequent population.”
An interesting speculative idea that has no basis in anything whatsoever in the scriptural record. But not satisfied with making up an unsupportable scenario, Sorenson goes on: “In the south-central Mexico and isthmus area, localized cultures are shown by archaeology to have persisted across the Jaredite-Nephite time boundary despite the spectacular collapse of the main "Olmec" civilization. The people of Zarahemla must have been involved in one of those bridging groups (making Omni 1:17 understandable).”
Leave it to Sorenson to tell us that Omni 1:17 would not be understandable to the reader of the scriptural record without his injection of sectarian history, as speculative as it is, for no records of any kind have come from the period of time Sorenson notes except for the Book of Mormon itself. In any event, let’s take a look at Amaleki’s writing in that verse. Speaking of the people of Zarahemla, which Mosiah found, and after stating an eye witness account of Zarahemla’s ancestry “Behold, it came to pass that Mosiah discovered that the people of Zarahemla came out from Jerusalem at the time that Zedekiah, king of Judah, was carried away captive into Babylon. And they journeyed in the wilderness, and were brought by the hand of the Lord across the great waters, into the land where Mosiah discovered them; and they had dwelt there from that time forth (Omni 1:15-16), Amaleki goes on to describe a brief history by stating in the verse Sorenson referenced, “And at the time that Mosiah discovered them, they had become exceedingly numerous. Nevertheless, they had had many wars and serious contentions, and had fallen by the sword from time to time; and their language had become corrupted; and they had brought no records with them; and they denied the being of their Creator; and Mosiah, nor the people of Mosiah, could understand them“ (Omni 1:17).
Thus, Sorenson tells us that the Mulekites had been absorbed into the Jaredite society, had many wars, not among themselves, but with the Jaredites, and finally survived as the dominant people. He adds that the Mulekites “would have combined genetic and cultural elements of the earlier civilization with whatever the Mulek group of voyagers from the Mediterranean had introduced. The scientific information is unmistakable; there was definite continuity of population from earlier times into the days of the Nephites. The Book of Mormon account neither contradicts nor confirms it, but neither does such continuity pose any particular problems for the scripture, as I read it.”
It would seem that Sorenson should go back and re-read the scriptural record. There is no support of any such alliance, and plenty of contradictions.
(See the next post, “Were the Olmecs Jaredites—Part III,” to see how the scriptural record contradicts Sorenson on every count regarding the above claims)
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