Mesoamerican Labels for Jaredites and Nephites – Part II

Continued from the previous post regarding the Olmec sites the Mesoamericans claim were the Jaredites. However, as shown, many of those sites were located in the Land Southward, and some deep in that land contrary to Moroni’s description in his abridgement of the Ether record.

The Olmec site of San Lorenzo, where the Olmec culture is said to have begun

As stated earlier, their main Olmec center was San Lorenzo, but the earliest evidence of Olmec occupation was the area of nearby El Manatí, located 9-miles east of San Lorenzo, with artifacts found dating to 1600 BC or earlier. The site was occupied by sedentary agriculturalists living in the area for centuries before San Lorenzo developed into a regional center.
    In addition, Sorenson (p110) tells us that “the rudiments of Mesoamerica’s two major traditions were on the scene by about 3000 BC in south-central Mexico, but that “we see nothing much of artistic and religious manifestations in public life until near 1500 BC. Using his dates, this means that though his Jaredites (Olmecs) arrived in 3000 BC, it took them 1500 years to develop any “artistic and religious manifestations in public life” that would be observable from what they left behind.
    That certainly does not suggest any match to the spiritual record of the Jaredite kingdom, since Jared’s 2^nd great grandson, Shule, was making steel swords (Ether 7:9). In the time of Shule’s grandson, the Jaredites had silks and fine linen, along with gold, silver and precious things, and all sorts of foods, herds and flocks (Ether 9:17-18). His son, Coriantum, was a righteous man and saw Christ (Ether 9:22); three generations later, Riplakish was taxing the people and building an exceedingly beautiful throne, and built many prisons, and caused those in prison to refine gold and perform all manner of fine workmanship (Ether 10:7). Surely, the works of art of which some record would have survived, would suggest that no more than 200 year or so had passed from the time the Jaredites arrived in the land. Again, not a match between the Olmec and the Jaredites.
    Now, ending the Olmec comparisons, let’s take a look at the Maya who, as the most dominant indigenous society of Mesoasmerica, who Sorenson and other Mesoamericanists claim were the Nephites. Unlike other scattered indigenous populations of Mesoamerica, the Maya were centered in one geographical block covering all of the Yucatan Peninsula and modern-day Guatemala, Belize and parts of the Mexican states of Tobasco and Chiapas, as well as the western part of Honduras and El Salvador. This concentration showed that the Maya remained relatively secure from invasion by other Mesoamerican peoples.

The Pacific Lowlands where numerous Olmec satellite sites were located along the coastal trade route; the Guatemala Highlands is where the Maya had their main center of population

In the tropical lowlands of what is now Guatemala, the Maya reached the peak of their power and influence around the sixth century A.D. (More than 100 years after the 1000-year-history of the Nephites had ended in their total demise).
    The Maya, who initially spoke a single language that over the centuries grew into a great linguistic diversity of 70 languages developed among the various peoples, which excelled at agriculture, pottery, hieroglyph writing, calendar-making and mathematics. They left behind an astonishing amount of impressive architecture and symbolic artwork, matched and even exceeded by only one other location in the Western Hemisphere—that of Andean South America.
    Most of the great stone cities of the Maya, whose earliest Maya settlements date to around 1800 B.C., or the beginning of what is called the Preclassic or Formative Period, were abandoned by 900 AD—again, hundreds of years after the demise of the Nephite Nation.
    During what is today called the Middle Preclassic Period, which lasted until about 300 B.C., when Maya farmers began to expand their presence both in the highland and lowland regions. Like other Mesamerican peoples, such as the Zapotec, Totonac, Teotihuacán and Aztec, the Maya derived a number of religious and cultural traits–as well as their number system and their famous calendar–from the Olmec. In addition to agriculture, the Preclassic Maya also displayed more advanced cultural traits like pyramid-building, city construction and the inscribing of stone monuments.
    In the Maya Classic Period, which began around 250 AD, which was the golden age of the Maya Empire, their civilization grew to some 40 cities, including Tikal, Uaxactún, Copán, Bonampak, Dos Pilas, Calakmul, Palenque and Río Bec; each city held a population of between 5,000 and 50,000 people. At its peak, the Maya population may have reached 2,000,000.
    Excavations of Maya sites have unearthed plazas, palaces, temples and pyramids, as well as courts for playing the ball games that were ritually and politically significant to Maya culture. There cities were surrounded and supported by a large population of farmers, who practiced a primitive type of “slash-and-burn” agriculture, though later they used more advanced farming methods, such as irrigation and terracing.
    At the top of Maya society were the kings, or “kuhul ajaw” (holy lords), who claimed to be related to gods and followed a hereditary succession. They were thought to serve as mediators between the gods and people on earth, and performed the elaborate religious ceremonies and rituals so important to the Maya culture. This can hardly be associated with the Nephites who lived the Law of Moses until the appearance of Christ in their land, and then lived under the Lord’s teachings.

One of the folds from the Dresden Maya Codex—the characters on all of the folds of the codices resemble this this

Codices were the primary written records of Maya civilization, together with the many inscriptions on stone monuments and stelae that survived. In 1540 Alonso de Zorita wrote that he saw numerous such books in the Guatemalan highlands that "recorded their history for more than eight hundred years back, and that were interpreted for me by very ancient Indians" (Zorita 1963, pp271-272). How he knew they dated back 800 years is not known, but even assuming that, these famed codices would have been created in the 8^th century AD, about 400 years after the demise of the Nephite Nation.
    As can be seen in the plate above, the characters are neither Egyptian nor Hebrew, and obviously do not represent any form of Egyptian or Hebrew writing, nor can they be attributed to a former Egyptian or Hebrew writing system. The fact that this information was found in Mesoamerica has nothing to do with the Reformed Egyptian or Hebrew writing of the Nepihtes as described in the scriptural record (1 Nephi 1:2; Mormon 9:32-33).
    The Classic Maya built many of their temples and palaces in a stepped pyramid shape, decorating them with elaborate reliefs and inscriptions. These structures have earned the Maya their reputation as the great artists of Mesoamerica. Guided by their religious ritual, the Maya also made significant advances in mathematics and astronomy, including the use of the zero and the development of a complex calendar system based on 365 days. Though early researchers concluded that the Maya were a peaceful society of priests and scribes, later evidence–including a thorough examination of the artwork and inscriptions on their temple walls–showed the less peaceful side of Maya culture, including the war between rival Mayan city-states and the importance of torture and human sacrifice to their religious ritual.
    Serious exploration of Classic Maya sites began in the 1830s. By the early to mid-20th century, a small portion of their system of hieroglyph writing had been deciphered, and more about their history and culture became known. Most of what historians know about the Maya comes from what remains of their architecture and art, including stone carvings and inscriptions on their buildings and monuments. The Maya also made paper from tree bark and wrote in books made from this paper, known as codices; four of these codices are known to have survived, with one, the Dresden Codex shown above.
    In all, there are no social structures or social interactions of either the Olmec or the Maya that reflect either Jaredite or Nephite social structure, religion or way of life.