Continuing
with this last segment on another comment from a new reader, evidently
promoting his own book “Finding Zarahemla,” to which we are responding and
continuing with an understanding of this entire Delmarva Peninsula that
Franklin Reid claims was the Land Southward.
The
geologic background and development of this area simply does not fit the Land
of Promise and its many descriptions from the scriptural record. We continue
here with this development and bring it up to date to the time of the Nephites.
Middle Ordovician
Paleomap 485 Million Years Ago showing the Taconic Island arc complex
If we go back in geologic
periods, to a time when the current Delaware area was forming, it was a series
of tiny islands off a ragged, peninsula strewn east coast, during the period
known as Taconic Orogeny and referred to as Ancestral North America. Beginning
510 million years ago, the current Delaware area was a solid coastline
northeast of the Taconic Arc, with the Lauentian land mass along the east coast
subducting beneath the Taconic arc, and off the coastal area to the east was a
series of mountains.
The
eastern (northern) portion of Avalonia was sandwiched between both eastern
Canada and parts of Baltica. Contact
between Avalonia and Proto (New) North America progressed to the south and west over
the next 40 million years.
Ongoing collisions created the
Northern Appalachian mountains. The event is known as the Acadian orogeny (or sometimes the
Appalachian or Avalonian
orogeny)
According to Dr. Ron Blakely,
Northern Arizona University, there was a multi-step process that added New
England to Proto North America and added land to the coast as far south as the
Carolinas. This Taconic island chain began to collide with North America about 470 to 450 million years ago, the energy of ongoing impacts was
still raising mountains from Canada to Virginia 430 million years ago.
It should be kept in mind that
at this time, the Proto North America was straddling the equator and the
present east coast was actually the south then.
The
Iapetus Ocean, which had been the shoreline for Proto North America, is closing
as Western and Eastern Avalonia, following behind the Taconic arc, are heading
for collision with the recently-extended coast of Proto North America. The
first impact was against what is now Greenland and eastern Canada, then moving
southward, the collision zone moved through New York near the present Hudson
River valley. The Taconic mountain chain was created as the arc rode up and
onto the Laurentian landmass, a part of which was subducted below the Taconic arc. A wide swath of Iapetus Ocean seabed material will
be pushed onto this mainland as the Avalonian islands push against and onto
Proto North America.
Prior to
the Taconic orogeny, the "east" coast of what is now the United
States was located near the Hudson River valley, Philadelphia, Washington, DC
and extended to western South Carolina. The Taconic orogeny added land to Proto North America that
is now the western portions of New England and the Canadian Maritime provinces.
This collision added land and raised mountains southward through northern
New Jersey, south-eastern Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina. The
orogeny ended about 445 million years ago.
Paleontologists have developed maps
of eastern North America covering the last 550 million years of geologic
history, with time slices of more than 100 maps of about 5-10 million years
apart, these images bring us up to the last ice age
Once
the east coast was formalized, about 370 million years ago, the eastern coast
from Main to Connecticut was filled with volcanic material and Iapetus Ocean
sediments as the land masses converged, forming a band of younger terrane
between the older Laurentian and avalonia terranes. It is also found in South
Carolina (Carolina Terrane) as well as north in New Brunswick and Newfoundland.
By
this time, the area of present day Delaware was pretty much set, which is
easily seen as a peninsula, not an island. And as already discussed in this
series, a peninsula with a “narrow neck of land” only 12 miles across which
does not fit Mormon’s day-and-a-half-journey width requirement (Alma 22:32).
In
addition, as stated earlier, the winds and currents of the Chesapeake Bay would
not have allowed Nephi’s ship “driven forth before the wind” to have even
entered, and the very shallow shoaling along the peninsula’s west coast would
not have allowed his ship to dock anywhere in the West Sea South (Alma 22:28).
With the entire eastern United States
to move into in an effort to escape the lamanite horde, why would Mormon and
the Nephites stand and fight somewhere in the Land Northward—after all, in
Franklin’s model, they could have retreated in any direction quite easily; and why
would those who did escape, go back into the Land Southward into the south
country rather than northward into the mainland interior?
Another
very important point is found in Mormon when we are told: “And the three hundred and forty and ninth year had passed away. And in
the three hundred and fiftieth year we made a treaty with the Lamanites and the
robbers of Gadianton, in which we did get the lands of our inheritance divided”
(Mormon 2:28)
When
Mormon and the Lamanite king entered into a treaty, and the Lamanites were
given the tiny area of the Land Southward in Franklin’s model, and the Nephites
were given all the land to the north, which encompasses over 220,000 square
miles in just immediately surrounding area as can be seen on the map above,
though the land to the north would not be limited even to that small of an area.
The
point is, in this scenario, with unlimited land easily accessible to the north
of the treaty line, why would Mormon and the Nephites stand and fight a battle
they could not possibly win against overwhelming odds when they could have continued
to retreat, which they had been doing for several years before the treaty
(Mormon 2:3,5-6,16,20) and after the treaty (Mormon 4:3,20-21,22; 5:5.7;6:1).
So why stop at Cumorah and fight a foe whose overwhelming numbers caused “every
soul was filled with terror because of the greatness of their numbers” (Mormon
6:8).
No,
it simply does not make sense to place the Land of Promise in an area like
Delmarva where there is no delineated Land Northward that did not contain the
Nephites and force them to fight a last, desperate battle they had no chance of
winning.
The
problem with writing about the Book of Mormon is when someone tries to sell a
setting that makes no sense related to the descriptive material of the
scriptural record. The Nephites were hemmed in within the Land Northward. They had
retreated as far as they could go. The Land of Many Waters, Rivers and
Fountains, which land also contained the Land of Cumorah and the hill Cumorah—as
Mormon tells us: “And I, Mormon, wrote an
epistle unto the king of the Lamanites, and desired of him that he would grant
unto us that we might gather together our people unto the land of Cumorah, by a
hill which was called Cumorah, and there we could give them battle” (Mormon
6:2), and “we did march forth to the land
of Cumorah, and we did pitch our tents around about the hill Cumorah; and it
was in a land of many waters, rivers, and fountains; and here we had hope to
gain advantage over the Lamanites” (Mormon 6:4).
First
of all, there simply is no location in Franklin’s Land Northward that could be
called a land of many waters, rivers and fountains. To reach any sizable water
source, it is 332 miles to Lake Erie, and also 332 miles to Seneca Lake of the
Finger Lakes which, by the way, are not fountains at all, nor are the Great
Lakes, which receive their replenishment from rainfall and snowfall, not from
natural fountains. What rivers supply the lakes are found in the sources far to
the north in Canada.
The
point is, you cannot look at a map, no matter how detailed it might be, and
decide where the Land of Promise might have been. This is especially true when
one starts out looking for a peninsula as the location—since a peninsula is not
how the entire Land of Promise is described, but as an island (2 Nephi 10:20).
Consequently,
one then cannot start looking for where Zarahemla was located when one starts
out in the wrong area to begin with—after all, the only way to find the Land of
Promise is to trace Nephi’s ship’s course as he describes it, i.e., a ship that
is driven forth before the wind (1 Nephi 18:8,9), that is, being pushed forward
by wind currents, and obviously having to follow sea currents which the winds
direct.
In
1828, “forth” meant “forward”; and “driven” meant urged forward by force,
impelled to move, constrained by necessity, and “before” meant “in front
of.” That is, “driven forth before the
wind” meant exactly what is sounds like: Nephi’s vessel was “moved forward by
the force of the wind” as well as being constrained within that path, i.e., it
could not go elsewhere than where the wind blew it within the ocean currents.
Since
winds move ocean currents, the idea is that Nephi is telling us that his vessel
was driven forth before the wind along the ocean currents also driven forth
before the wind. All we have to do, then, is follow the ocean currents and
where the winds blew from off the southern coast of Arabia to follow the path
Lehi took and, therefore, where he landed. And those currents certainly did not led down around the horn of Africa through the worst ship's graveyard on the planet, nor up local rivers along the eastern seaboard of the U.S. against winds and currents as we have explained here many times over the past six years.
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