Did the Nephite Nation Move Northward Into North America? – Part I

Some outlandish and not so wild ideas about the location of the Land of Promise have come and gone, such as Ralph Olsen’s Malay theory that Lehi landed on the Malay Peninsula in the area of Indonesia; David Rosenvall’s Baja California theory; the Comoros Islands theory; Emabaye Melekin’s African theory; James Lee Warr’s Nicaragua theory; the Hemispheric or Two-Continent theory; Michael M. Hobby and Troy J. Smith’s Panama/Central America theory; Blake T. Ostler’s Isle of the Sea model, and Robert B. Ellsworth’s Costa Rica theory.
    While there have been these and other theories stated and promoted, usually along with mapped locations, most of these have fallen by the wayside of Mormon thought.
    Of those that remain in discussion, and the most prominent theories, are John L. Sorenson’s Mesoamerican model and Rod L. Meldrum’s Heartland model, and to a lesser degree, Phyllis Carol Olive’s Great Lakes model.
    While there are few models in South America, three stand out: Venice Priddis’ model, George Potter’s model, and the “A little south of the Isthmus of Darien” model that straddles Panama. To this latter, we can add one presented by one of our readers, in which he lists twelve points to “prove” his theory, which he sent to us.
    We have taken his twelve points and listed them one by one in italics and written our “response” after each:
1. “I would say that regardless of where they landed it is so very clear that there was abundant civilization activity and development which took place in south America and only later was tracked upward through Mexico and into North America”

Lehi landed in Chile, Nephi traveled northward into Peru to escape his older brothers, Hagoth’s ships carried immigrants “to a land which was northward” into Central and Mesoamerica, and from there they moved northward into Mexico, Southwest U.S. and the Heartland

Response: There is no doubt that advanced civilization first took place in South America based on non-LDS Archaeologists, Anthropologists and historians, who cite Norte Chico in Peru is the oldest civilization in the Americas and one of the first six independent civilizations in the world. It is considered contemporaneous with the Egyptian pyramids, and predated the Mesoamerican Olmec by nearly two millennia, according to a Harvard-led research report (David Reich, et al., “Reconstructing Native American Population History,” Nature, vol.488, Springer Nature Publishing AG, 2012, pp370-374).
    In addition, metallurgy first began in Andean Peru, with its history dating to at least 2000 BC along the coast. Copper pieces by the Wankarani culture of the highlands, is dated from 1200 BC to 1000 BC (Herbert S. Klein, “A Concise History of Bolivia; Cambridge University Press, 2003, p11); early metallurgy has been found in Chile, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia, with its oxide and sulfide copper ores and tin as well as silver and gold (Karen Olsen Bruhns, “Ancient South America,” Cambridge World Archaeology Series; Cambridge University Press, 1994, p174).
    It is also noteworthy that “Andean civilization was one of five civilizations in the world deemed by scholars to be "pristine," that is indigenous and not derived from other civilizations (Gordon F. McEwan, “The Incas: New Perspectives,” W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2006, p5).
2. “Clearly Moroni was in North America in the end of his life…”
Response: We have no idea where Moroni was at the end of his mortal life and neither did he know where he would be, saying: “Therefore I will write and hide up the records in the earth; and whither I go it mattereth not” (Mormon 8:4). Whether he was translated or “a just man made perfect,” killed, or died naturally, is unknown—but we know of no travel of Moroni away from the land where the Lamanites were located in the Land of Promise, since he feared they would eventually kill him (Moroni 1:1). That he was in North America on September 21, 1823, when he first visited Joseph Smith is clear, but at that time it was long past his mortal lifespan, and that is the only time he can be connected to North America.
    The fact that the records were found on an unnamed hill in Manchester, New York, to which Joseph Smith was directed by Moroni is not, in and of itself, any indication that those plates were placed there during Moroni’s lifetime. He was on the run, had left the area of Cumorah 36 years or more before the plates were buried, and knew he could not remain around the Lamanites, to which he said, “wherefore, I wander whithersoever I can for the safety of mine own life” (Moroni 1:3). Obviously, he did not bury those plates when he was on the hill Cumorah at the conclusion of the battle with the Lamanites, for he still had them 36 years later when he abridged the record of the Jaredites (Moroni 1:1). From Cumorah he “wandered “whithersoever I can,” abridging the Jaredite record, and finally finished, then decided to write more himself,” concluding around 421 AD. After that, wherever he was, and at whatever time he did, he hid the records in the ground—or at least he said he was going to do that (Mormon 8:4).
3. “…and there have been many discoveries in the heart land that bolster the argument that large civilizations once thrived there as well.”
Response: There is no question that there were people in the American heartland, meaning the Mississippi Valley, etc., in North America. However, the largest settlement site in North America was Cahokia, near modern East St. Louis, Illinois, that “may have reached a population of over 20,000,” however, this site was not begun until after 1000 AD, and not its peak population until 1200 to 1300 AD. The Acoma Pueblo site in New Mexico had 4,989 people in 1200 AD, but not before.

Left: Choika in Illinois; Center: Teotihuacan, Mexico City; Chan Chan, near Trujillo, Peru. Note the construction between a mound in North America and that of Mesoamerica and South America

There were 26 settlements established in the Americas before the first settlement appeared in the U.S. (Cahokia, Illinois) and one in Canada (L’Anse aux Meadows). The next sites in the U.S. were built in AD, one in Arizona (Oraibi) and two in New Mexico (Acoma Pueblo and Taos). The point is, when talking about settlements in the Heartland, there are few within the Jaredite and Nephite time periods—and only one of any size. The largest city in the Americas was Chan Chan in Peru.
    The idea of large civilizations in the Heartland or anywhere in North America in erroneous when comparing it to the overall Americas. The fact that they could built platform mounds of dirt, or rounded dirt mounds to bury their dead, has no reference to the Book of Mormon, plus the Heartland lacks most of the descriptive facts described by Mormon.
4. “One possible conclusion may be that they landed in the South the Laminates split off and were driven northward into the land desolate…”
Response: The Lamanites never at any time were in the Land of Desolation (Land Northward), nor were they at any time to the north of the Nephites. Mormon makes this quite clear (Alma 22:33).
5. “…and both lands were separated by the narrow neck of land which today is central America.”
Response: The Narrow Neck of Land separated the Jaredites and the Nephites—it never separated the Nephites and the Lamanites until around 350 AD, when the Lamanites drove the Nephites into the Land Northward. However, even then, the separation was the Nephites in the north and the Lamanites in the south (Alma 22:31-33).
(See the next post, “Did the Nephite Nation Move Northward Into North America? – Part II,” for more information on the development of the Americas and the need to have facts, statements, opinions, beliefs and models match the scriptural record)