Regarding Nephites crossing through Panama as Some Theorists Claim – Part I

Theories abound about the location of the Land of Promise and have for decades. In fact, as early as Joseph Smith’s time, articles in Church publications have claimed that Joseph said: “When we read in the Book of Mormon that Jared and his brother came on to this continent from the confusion and scattering at the Tower, and lived here more than a thousand years, and covered the whole continent from sea to sea, with towns and cities; and that Lehi went down by the Red Sea to the great Southern Ocean, and crossed over to this land, and landed a little south of the Isthmus of Darién [Isthmus of Panama]" (Times & Seasons, vol.3, no.22, September 15, 1842, p927).
    Also, “Since our 'Extract' was published from Mr. Stephens' 'Incidents of Travel,' we have found another important fact relating to the truth of the Book of Mormon. Central America, or Guatemala is situated north of the Isthmus of Darién and once embraced several hundred miles of territory from north to south—the city of Zarahemla, burnt at the crucifixion of the Savior, and rebuilt afterwards, stood upon this land as will be seen from the following words in the book of Alma:—'And now it was only the distance of a day and a half's journey for a Nephite, on the line Bountiful, and the land Desolation, from the east to the west sea; and thus the land of Nephi, and the land of Zarahemla was nearly surrounded by water: there being a small neck of land between the land northward and the land southward.'”

Map showing Don R. Hender’s idea of where Lehi landed, which is south of the Darién Gap, with Zarahemla to the north of this location

In fact, as one current theorist, Don R. Hender wrote: “the neo-traditional site of Lehi's landing at the Darién Isthmus to the New York hill of Cumorah can be made. This reduces the objectionable size of the 'Hemispheric Model' to a half the size of what it was from the supposed Chili landing sight.”
    In several of these theorists’ maps, their Land of Promise is located on both sides of the Darién Gap, also known as El Tapón (“the plug”), a wild, 10,000-square-mile rectangle of impenetrable swamps, mountains, rainforest and tough, nasty, pristine jungle that spans both sides of the border between Colombia and Panama, stretching all the way from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean. This means that thousands upon thousands of Nephites and later Lamanites would have had to pass through this Gap, trudging for days through muck in muggy 90º temperatures, climbing over fallen trees and then endless hills and switchbacks, stumbling over tangles of root systems while hacking through spider-infested mangrove swamps and jungle filled with thorns, wasps and venomous snakes, as well as fruit bats, jaguars and disagreeable wild animals, all the while fighting off mosquitoes and other insects, in their movement between the Land Southward and into the Land Northward.
    Obviously, those who have never been to the Gap, but claim it was part of the Land of Promise through which Nephites regularly passed, have no concept of its difficulty and dangers. Experienced trekkers, explorers, and adventurers claim its sheer, arduous walk through and across the Gap is the most difficult and dangerous journey in the Western Hemisphere.
    It is an area that defied the Spanish invaders in 1510 who conquered the Amazon and the Andes, but gave up trying to tame the Gap. On the south edge of the Gap is Colombia’s Chocó Department—a dirt-poor sliver of land in northwestern Colombia that overlaps the Gap and is one of the wettest places on earth.

Another theorist’s map showing an even lower landing in South America, requiring a crossing of the Darién Gap into his Land of Desolation and Land Northward

In fact, Mormon, as an eleven-year-old lad “was carried by my father into the land southward, even to the land of Zarahemla” (Mormon 1:6), a journey of which he states, “The whole face of the land had become covered with buildings, and the people were as numerous almost, as it were the sand of the sea” (Mormon 1:7).
    This hardly describes his passing through the jungles and almost impassable Darién Gap that exists in these theorists’ Land of Promise location.
    It is not that a person could not and cannot pass through the Gap, a few have accomplished it compared to the thousands who have made the attempt, but for men, women and children, to move from one side to the other of this more than 100-mile wide and nearly 100-mile-long Gap, as well as the heavy jungle on both sides, especially in Panama, is highly unlikely, let alone done so on a repeated basis as they traveled back and forth in this area according to the scriptural record.

The Darién Gap is a dense jungle type rain forest. While one side is a delta of the Atrato River creating a flat, marshy swampland fifty miles across, the other side in sharp contrast is a mountainous rainforest with terrain reaching from 200 to 6000 feet in height

In history, there are no real crossings recorded prior to the twentieth century of this Gap, and then not until 1960, after numerous illegal logging enterprise had deforested some of the area. The rain forest and jungle were the home of numerous logging enterprises in the latter part of the 19^th and long into the 20^th century, with numerous trails and roads laid down across this Gap into isolated indigenous villages. However, there is no road through the entire Gap even today.
    Of the thousands who have made the attempt to cross from either Panama to Colombia, or from Colombia to Panama, through the infamous Darién Gap, very few have ever made it, and most of those have had extensive military and commercial assistance in modern vehicles and especially those with special capabilities to handle such difficult terrain.
    An exception to the latter was the ten-year vehicular crossing of the Gap, made by three Brazilians, Leonidas Borges de Oliveira, a lieutenant from the Brazilian army, Francisco Lopez da Cruz from the Brazilian air force and Marió Fava, a young mechanic. They crossed in two vehicles, one a 1919 Ford Model-T, and the other a 1926 truck. They left Rio de Janeiro in 1928 and arrived in USA in 1938.
    Over twenty years later, a Land Rover, La Cucaracha Cariñosa (The Affectionate Cockroach) and a Jeep in the Trans-Darién Expedition of 1959–1960, crewed by Amado Araúz of Panama, his wife and two others crossed the Gap in 4½ months, averaging 220 yards per hour over 136 days; however, during the trip, their axles exploded like shells throwing shrapnel dangerously up through the floorboards, and spare remodeled spare parts had to be parachuted in. In addition, custom-built inflatable rafts had to be provided to float the vehicles most of the way across the problem area of the vast Atrato swamp.
    The first crossing of a standard two-wheel drive vehicle took place in 1961 with three Chevrolet Corvairs and several support vehicles. After 109 days, two of the Corvairs made it through, the other had to be abandoned in the jungle.
    In 1972, a pair of Range Rovers, with substantial support by the British Army, was used on the British Trans-Americas Expedition led by John Blashford-Snell, which claimed to be the first vehicle-based expedition to traverse both American continents north to south through the Darién Gap (crossing the Atrato Swamp with the cars on special inflatable rafts.
    The first fully overland wheeled crossing of the Gap (others all used boats for some sections), was British cyclist Ian Hibelel, who rode from Cape Horn to Alaska between 1971 and 1973, including an overland crossing of the Atrato Swamp with two cycling companions.

Robert “Bob” Webb, traversing the Darién Gap in  his Rokon motorcycle, here crossing through the jungle mud 

(Photo: Bob Webb, at http://www.motivation-tools.com/downloads/men_mud_and_motorcycles.pdf)

  
In 1975, the first motorcycle crossing was by Robert L. Webb. In his first three attempts, he failed in the attempt, finally making the crossing on his fourth effort on a two-wheel drive Rokon motorcycle. He and a companion followed a bulldozer path that had been cut all the way to the Santa Fé road project. Some of the distance covered was by large dugout canoe.
    Another four-wheel drive crossing was in 1978–1979 by Mark A. Smith and his team, which drove the 250 mile stretch of the Gap in 30 days using five stock Jeep CJ-7s. However, they traveled many miles up the Atrato River on barges.

    The first all-land auto crossing was in 1985–87 by Loren Upton and Patty Mercier in a CJ-5 Jeep, taking 741 days to travel 125 miles. This crossing is documented in the 1992 Guinness Book of Records.
    Ed Culberson’s ”Arnigo,” a BMW R80G/S motorcycle was the first vehicle to fully navigate the Darién Gap proposed route on a motorcycle, enroute to completing his 1986 full navigation of the Pan-American Highway by land.
    There seems little doubt that while some have crossed the Darién Gap, the sheer difficulty of it far exceeds the simple mention of land in the scriptural record.
(See the next post, “Regarding Nephites crossing through Panama as Some Theorists Claim – Part II,” for more on why Lehi never landed just south of Panama, and the Land of Promise was not on both sides of the Darién Gap)