Is the Small and Narrow Neck of Land Misunderstood? Part VIII

Continuing with George Potter’s article on the Narrow Neck of Land, and the specific points he raises as to why the Lurin Valley qualifies as a candidate for the narrow neck or passage of land).
    Following are Potter’s list of items to qualify the Lurin Valley as the narrow neck of land:
1. The border between the Incas’ northwest and southwest quarters was located roughly at the Lurin Valley.”
    Response: The Inca came along about 1000 years after the fall of the Nephite Nation. What they did and where they did it has nothing to do with the makeup of the Land of Promise known to the Nephites.
2. “As noted, Sullivan informs us that the area the Incas called the land of the people of desolation had “…a single high pass.” In both Inca and Spanish colonial times, the main road from the southern {land Bountiful} and south-central Andes {City of Nephi and Zarahemla} to the central Pacific coast {Desolation and the land Northward} lay through the pass, where the Incas carved steps into “living rock.”
    Response: First of all, it is doubtful the Inca built much of anything, for two reasons:
1) The work they did in repairing Sacsayhuaman and other locations that had been built long before them show a lack of building ability as we have shown in these articles many times,

Red Arrow: Typical Inca construction as they tried to repair walls that had been built long before their time; White Arrow: Stonework built in B.C. times by a much earlier civilization than the Inca

2) The Inca came into existence as a people around 1438 A.D. and were overrun by the Spanish in 1528 A.D., meaning their span of time was less than 100 years. Beginning as a small, inconsequential tribe in Cuzco, in that time, about 90 years of existence, they conquered an area 690,000 square miles. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, they began in 1448 A.D. with an area 155,000 square miles and spent their entire time conquering, battling, and traveling over an area almost three times the size of Texas, fighting for almost every foot to set down, in most cases, very stubborn tribes and people. They neither had time to build roads, nor could have spared the man-power to do so, and certainly did not have the know-how to build such fantastic roads, some of which were cut through solid granite mountains. After all, the roads were 24,800 miles long, according to Donald E. Thompson and John V. Murra, (“The Inca Bridges in the Huanuco Region,” Society for American Archaeology, 1966), and their construction required a huge expenditure of time and effort, and the quality of that construction is borne out by the fact that they are still in quite good condition after over 400 years use since the time of the Spanish arrival, plus the centuries before (Terence N. D’Altroy, The Incas, Blackwell Publishers, 2002, p 242).
    In fact, had those roads not already been in existence, there is no way the Inca army could have marched from one end of the Empire to the other in their conquest—a distance of about 3200 miles. The swiftness of their advances, the ability to surprise and defeat an enemy, would not have been possible had they been bogged down building roads, some of which, according to Gary Upton and Adiana von Hagen (Encyclopedia of the Incas, 2015, p 243) contained stairs cut in living rock, tunnels through mountains, and widths up to fifty feet wide. Of the main road from Cuzco northward to Quito, Ecuador, an area the Inca did not even know about, let alone enter, until the mid-16^th century, Pedro de Cieza de Leon, in 1540 wrote: “Oh, can anything comparable be said of Alexander, or of any of the mighty kings who ruled the world, that they built such a road.” No other road “featured more centers, boasted longer stretches of formal construction or the greatest widths (up to 50 feet wide), embellished with stone paving, culverts, drainage canals, and causeways that raised the road surface above swampy ground, and steep sections had stone paving for steps.”
    It should be considered, when an Army is on the march, even if they are building a road through virgin territory like Hannibal did over the Alps, the roads are narrow, roughly built, and seldom long-lasting. This road, and the other so-called “Inca roads” were built with care, engineering knowledge, and very permanent—hardly a thing expected to find from a culture less than 90 years in existence who was on the march over an area so vast it covered four entire countries of today.
    We see this type of construction in the B.C. era buildings of Peru (Land Southward) and Ecuador (Land Northward), as a result of Nephi teaching his people “to build buildings, and to work in all manner of wood, and of iron, and of copper, and of brass, and of steel, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious ores, which were in great abundance. And I, Nephi, did build a temple; and I did construct it after the manner of the temple of Solomon save it were not built of so many precious things; for they were not to be found upon the land, wherefore, it could not be built like unto Solomon's temple. But the manner of the construction was like unto the temple of Solomon; and the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine” (2 Nephi 5:15-16). Obviously, in the Land of Promise would be such buildings and such magnificent roads. Consider the magnificent work of the dressed and cut stone making up much of the land, and compare it with the much more sloppy work of the Inca. There is simply no way the Inca could have built such magnificent buildings and roads as Potter and other uninformed historians claims.
    Potter Comment: “The pass is found in the Andes at the eastern end of the narrow Lurin Valley that runs from the mountains down to the shoreline. The Lurin valley was extremely important for military reasons. Not only did the passage to Cuzco run through it, but it was also the junction with the Incas’ shoreline highway from the south. The Inca coastal road was along a sixty-mile narrow passage that led from what appears to be the land Bountiful north along the sea. This shoreline passage does not widen until it reaches the Lurin Valley. Losing control of the Lurin valley would have meant that the Lamanites could attack the land northward from both the southeast (the land southward) and the south (land of Bountiful).”

The Red Arrow shows the location of Cuzco on the small map, far to the east of Lima (square) on small map. On the large map, the areas being discussed are shown. As can be seen, the area of Potter’s Desolation (Lima in darkened area) is to the north of the Lurin Valley, but the Pass he discusses is to the east of Cienegguilla (off the map), which leads to the east, to Cuzco, which is actually southeast, yet the scriptural record tells us the pass leads into the Land Northward—to the north!

  
Response: First of all, we need to place the Lurin Valley in connection with the area of Peru and also show the division of the land based on Potter’s claims. To do that, we need to recognize that there is no narrow neck of land in this area, meaning any type of isthmus, land bridge, or connecting land between two larger land masses, nor is there any such land with the sea on both sides.
    There is a narrow pass through the Andes, but then there are numerous such passes through the rocks and mountains of the Andes scattered around the area of Peru, most particularly in the Sacred Valley beyond or northward of Cuzco, far to the east of the Lurin Valley.
(See the next post, ”Is the Small and Narrow Neck of Land Misunderstood? Part IX,” for the continuation of the Lurin Valley as Potter’s division between the Land Northward and the Land Southward)