The Final Jaredite Battleground – Part I

There are probably as many different views of the placement of the Land of Promise as there are people interested in it. To the early Saints, the belief was centered in the overall Western Hemisphere, with North America being the Land Northward, South America being the Land Southward, and Central America being the narrow neck of land. When BYU began its anthropology/archaeology department in 1946, the first occupant of the new Chair brought with him a firm, fixed belief that the actual size of the Land of Promise was far smaller than the Western Hemisphere—so small an area that it became known as the Limited Geography Theory.
    This limited area was isolated to Mesoamerica, and first established by H. Wells Jakeman, who had written his thesis at UC Berkeley, on The Origins and History of the Mayans, bringing that bias with him to BYU. He is sometimes described as “the father of Book of Mormon archaeology” ("Memorial," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, vol.7, Iss.1, Neal A. Maxwell Institute, University of Illinois Press, FARMS).

BYU Archaeology reduced the entire Western Hemisphere down to a tiny area they call the Limited Geography Theory of the Land of Promise

His ideas of a Limited Geography, and thus that of basically all Mesoamerican theorists today, stems from four basic points taken from the scriptural record:
1. The United States is the Land of Promise. This is based on the gentile who was led by the Spirit to cross many waters to come to the remnant of Lamanites in the “promised land.”
2. The Hill Cumorah/Ramah must be located relatively close to Zarahemla. This is based on Limhi’s 43-man expedition that went in search of the city of Zarahemla and discovered the Jardite remains.
3. The short distances between major locations in the Book of Mormon. This is based on the travel of Alma and his group would have covered in their 21-day trip between the Land of Nephi and the Land of Zarahemla.
4. The final battles of the Jaredites took place over a very limited area. This is based upon Ether seeing the results of the battles from his isolated cave.
    Almost single-handedly, Jakeman changed the landscape of the Land of Promise from the entire Western Hemisphere to a tiny area between Southern Mexico and Central America, including Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras and El Salvador—the area Mesoamerican theorists claim is the area in the Book of Mormon that the Jaredites, Nephites, and Lamanites (and Mulekites) occupied.
    On the other hand, Heartland theorists claim the area of the Land of Promise covered the area of first landing in Florida or Alabama along the Gulf of Mexico coast. From there, they expanded into the central United States from Tennessee to western New York, including Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The Great Lakes theorists reduce this area to a landing along the east coast of Lake Erie, and including western New York and western Pennsylvania and that area around Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, including southern Canada.
    As Andrew H. Hedges, an associate professor of Church history and doctrine at BYU, points out: “In recent years, many scholars interested in Book of Mormon geography have argued that the events of the Book of Mormon played themselves out in a Mesoamerican setting. Repudiating earlier and widespread assumptions that the “narrow neck of land” that figures so prominently in the book’s geography was the Isthmus of Panama and that the Nephites’ and Lamanites’ history ranged over the whole of North and South America, many now think that a restricted geography around the Isthmus of Tehuantepec provides the best setting for the book’s events in light of such considerations as recent archeological discoveries and the distances and geographical features mentioned and implied in the book itself” (Hedges, “Cumorah and the Limited Mesoamerican Theory,” Religious Educator, vol.10, no. 2, 2009, pp111–134).

So, if “most” or “many” LDS geographers accept the Mesoamerican theory, let’s take a look at their four-point argument supporting such a Land of Promise location. First, is the one about Columbus. As most members accept, the gentile spoken of by Nephi was to have been Columbus and his voyages to the New World.
1. Columbus. Nephi makes it quite clear that the gentile he saw in vision, saying: “I beheld a man among the Gentiles, who was separated from the seed of my brethren by the many waters; and I beheld the Spirit of God, that it came down and wrought upon the man; and he went forth upon the many waters, even unto the seed of my brethren, who were in the promised land” (1 Nephi 13:12, emphasis added). It should be noted that there were “many waters” separating this (and other) gentiles from the “seed of my brethren,” the Lamanites. Thus we follow Columbus voyage across the Atlantic to the region of the Bahamas and his discovery of America.
    However, and this is extremely important, both Heartland and Great Lakes theorists ignore the unquestionable fact that Columbus, in all four of his voyages, never set foot or even saw the land that is now the United States. He never even set foot in North America. His voyages focused on the Bahamas, the Caribbean islands of Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, as well as the northern part of South America and the eastern coast of Central American. Yet, Nephi saw him in vision reaching “the seed of my brethren, who were in the promised land” (1 Nephi 13:12).

It should also be noted, that the next gentile to cross the many waters to the seed of Nephi’s brethren was Amerigo Vespucci who sailed to South America in 1499. By 1502, Vespucci, unlike Columbus, realized that the lands they both visited were part of a New World and not the eastern shores of Asia, and by 1507, cartographer Martin Waldseemüller was publishing a map of the New World, which he called America after Vespucci.
    The point is, if only the United States was the Land of Promise, then 1 Nephi 13:10-19 is in error.
2. The Hill Cumorah/Ramah. As Hedges further claims, “the geographical descriptions provided in the Book of Mormon itself require that the final battles of the Jaredites and Nephites took place relatively close to both peoples’ centers of civilization near the narrow neck of land.” In addition, Sorenson and Sidney B. Sperry agree that the Hill Cumorah/Ramah must be located relatively close to Zarahemla, basing this on several pieces of textual evidence—one of the most important being provided by the small group of men Limhi sent from the land of Nephi to Zarahemla to enlist the Nephites’ aid against the Lamanites, who were holding the people of Limhi in bondage.
    The general assumption by Mesoamericanists regarding this venture is that these 43 men who were uncertain where to travel to find Zarahemla, became lost and stumbled into the Land Northward and upon the remains of the last battle site of the Jaredites: “a land which was covered with bones of men, and of beasts, and was also covered with ruins of buildings of every kind” (Mosiah 8:8). In this, these theorists make two erroneous conclusions:
1) That the site they encountered was the last battle site of the Jaredites;
2) That this site was close enough to Zarahemla for travelers from Nephi to confuse the two sites.
    Both of these beliefs are merely opinions and not founded on any scriptural references. As an example, the 43 men were lost (Mosiah 8:8); they were trying to find the land of Zarahemla (Mosiah 8:7), therefore they did not know where it was to begin with; these men were diligent (Mosiah 8:8), meaning they did not give up after becoming lost, but persisted for many days since they were on a desperate mission.

For a testimony that the things that they had said are true they have brought twenty-four plates which are filled with engravings, and they are of pure gold

These theorists presuppose that the 43-man rescue mission would not have traveled far, and certainly not beyond where they thought Zarahenmla would have been; however, they did not know where Zarahemla was, how far away, and how long it would have taken them to reach it. Even if there were any left from the original group that left the city of Nephi to find Zarahemla with Mosiah, they did not originally know where they were going, or where they had been when they found Zarahemla, for they “were led by the power of [God’s] arm through the wilderness” (Omni a 1:13), and very likely had no idea where they were at any given time, having no points of reference and no familiarity with the region.
(See the next post, “The Final Jaredite Battleground – Part II,” for more on the points Mesoamericanists use to defend their Limited Geography theory for the Land of Promise; and where exactly was the last Jaredite battleground)