More Comments from Readers – Part IV

Here are more comments that we have received from readers of this website blog: 
    Comment #1: “In your disagreement over Lehi landing in Malay, you claim by 600 B.C. the Peninsula was occupied. There is no way this is possible. Archaeologists claim the Malay Peninsula did not have visitors until Indian traders arrived in the 5^th century A.D.”
    Response: According to Kallie Szczepanski, Asian History Expert for Malaysia: Facts and History, “Humans have lived in what is now Malaysia for at least 40 to 50,000 years. Certain modern indigenous peoples, named "Negritos" by Europeans, may be descended from the first inhabitants, and are distinguished by their extreme genetic divergence from both other Malaysians and from modern African peoples. This implies that their ancestors were isolated on the Malay Peninsula for a very long time. Later immigration waves from southern China and from Cambodia included the ancestors of modern Malays, who brought technologies such as farming and metallurgy to the archipelago between 20,000 and 5,000 years ago. And Indian traders arrived, bringing aspects of their culture to the early kingdoms of the Lalaysian peninsula.” Every history checked regarding the Malay Peninsula pretty much says the same thing.
    Comment #2: “Why are you so opposed to the Bering Land Bridge, and people of South America first entering the Western Hemisphere through this means?”
    Response: I suppose I could write an entire book on this answer. The reasons are varied and many, which I  have listed in former articles. However, let me just say for the moment that according to Danièle Lavallée (translated by Paul G. Bahn), The First South Americans, (2000), “The recent and now indisputable findings at Monte Verde in southern Chile present the strong possibility that people were living in South America more than 12,000 years ago. If so, the long-cherished scenario in which the Americas were populated by big-game hunters crossing the Bering land bridge and then making their way slowly down the Americas may no longer be true.”  In fact, The First South Americans presents all current evidence and claims for the early traces of human presence on the continent. Surveying the territory from Tierra del Fuego to the Caribbean shores of Columbia and from Brazil to Ecuador, Lavallée presents and discusses the cultural development of the entire continent from the first occupants through the hunters of the Holocene, the rise of horticulture and animal domestication in the Andes, Amazonian developments, maritime adaptations, the Andean development of ceramics, weaving, and stratified society, and finally the emergence of the first Andean civilization in Chavin.”

According to her, little by little, people occupied this mosaic of territories over the millennia, sometimes yielding to the constraints of the environment, sometimes controlling and transforming it. Lavallée shows how the first South Americans accomplished this at different rates and with methods whose diversity equaled that of their natural settings.
    Whether or not I agree with Lavallée in all her findings, the point is that archaeology has now found (as we have indicated in earlier posts) that man was in South America before the so-called Beringia Land Bridge was formed and supposedly used for the settlement of the Americas. Danièle Lavallée has worked in South American for over thirty-five years, directing and participating in archaeological research from Tierra del Fuego to Ecuador. She is Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France, and directs the Unité Mixte de Recherche,"Archéologie des Amériques," at CNRS and the University of Paris 1- Sorbonne. She holds teaching positions at the Sorbonne and Paris X-Nanterre and currently directs the Perou-Sud archaeological project in southern Peru. Sounds to me she is as knowledgable as those who claim Beringia--probably more so.
    Comment #3: “You wrote an article about the Paracas, which I found very interesting. Thank you. However, you did not include the famed double spout and bridge vessel from the Nazca culture which of course had two spouts and  a bridge across, a design first used by the Paracas culture. The vessel is amazing because it created whistling sounds when pouring liquids” Lillian Q.

Response: Yes, that is true. In fact, I left out a lot of fascinating things about most of the cultures I wrote about because of space restrictions and probable lack of interest on the part of a varied reader base. As for the vase (left) you mentioned, it was actually made by the Vicús culture sometime between 1000 B.C. and 200 B.C., though they are said to have continued on as late as 300 to 600 A.D. They were known for their ceramics, copper and gold, and lived in the Piura region in the far northernmost corner of Peru’s coast, at the opposite end of Peru and far from the Nazca in the far south.
    Their ceramics also resembled the ornamental motifs of the Moche culture, as well as the Salinar and Gallizano cultures from Ecuador. In addition, gold jaguars attributed to the Vicús are also similar to Chavin felines and the Chavinoid style–which all goes to add to our contention that these were not separate cultures, but the Nephite nation living in various parts of the Land of Promise. In fact, famous modern day pottery from the town of Chulucanas is said to closely resemble the ancient art of the Vicús.

The shape of the Vicús mace head (left) made of copper, resembles the sun, with possible animals with long noses and tails in the middle ring, but besides being an ornament or possibly a ritual object, as archaeologists suggest, could well have been used as a weapon (thrown disc) because of the outer pointed thongs.
    Comment #4: “I read Sorenson’s book and a few others, and my take on all this Book of Mormon stuff is that you Mormons attempt to prove the BOM exactly backwards of the way things work in the real world. Rather than researching and piecing together evidence that is actually found in the ground, Mormon apologists use the BOM, written in 1830, to try to force archaeology to fit it. If the BOM was authentic, we would not have to resort to these forced interpretations, and stretch logic to the limit, to make the puzzle fit. It would come together just as a jigsaw puzzle does, with each added piece making the remainder fall into place in quick fashion" Caroline R.
    Response: I couldn’t agree more. However, it is also possible to read the Book of Mormon and follow its comments to wherever that leads in order to find the location of areas mentioned, without forcing, changing, altering, etc., any of yhe clear and precise meanings. It is like following a treasure map. I hope that is what we do here in this blog—it is certainly our plan and very sacred intention.

As a side thought, it is amazing to me that anyone could think that Lehi sailed to or through Indonesia in 600 B.C. with just his family as hands at the helm. The cross currents, shoals, maneuvering, sailing ability and degree of difficulty to do so would have been so far beyond Nephi's crew, even with the Liahona, is beyond description. Even experienced mariners today with all the advantages of GPS, radar, engines and depth charts, find this one of the most dangerous routes known in the world
    Comment #5: “The Kedah Annals of Merong Mahawangsa from which you quote were works of fiction that came a millennia or two later. Nobody considers them history.
There are plenty of extant legends in SE Asia talking about buried golden books bearing ancient histories that have been lost. There is no way this voyage and landing, in an area that had been inhabited, according to archaeologists, for thousands of years before Lehi" ... India, yes, but there is very little evidence of advanced human settlement on the Malay Peninsula at that time. Indian traders didn't arrive until around 5th century AD” Sithu Mon
    Response: You may be right about the Merong Mahawangsa, tough the jury still seems to be out, with one group saying it is and another groups haying it is not. However, when it comes to people living on the Malay Peninsula, according to the Original Official Homepage of the Malasia Tourism Promotion Board, Malay was peopled 2500 B.C. by a group called the Proto-Malays, who were seafarers and farmers from China, who forced the Negritos (original inhabitants of the peninsula) into the hills and jungles. They were followed by the Deutero-Malays, a combination of many peoples, Indians, Chines, Siamese, Arabs, and Proto-Malays, who are considered to be the racial basis for the group which today is called the Malay. All these were on the Peninsula in large numbers before Lehi sailed.

More Comments from Readers – Part III

Here are more comments that we have received from readers of this website blog: 
    Comment #1: “I can see where you are trying to tie together the early cultures in Peru with the Nephites, however, in your article about the Paracas people, you mention their elongated heads. This was a practice that was done on people while living, no doubt from their youth, where their heads were bound, forcing the skull to grow in a long manner (like shown in one of the Indiana Jones movies). I read up on this and a very young child’s skull is pliant at birth and remains that way for months. They lashed a rope around the head with a board placed at the back of the skull, and maybe the front, that altered the shape over time, a practice that took from six months to 3 years. This certainly does not seem like a Nephite practice whose religion was based upon that of the Hebrews/Jews. I understand that this was a practice on infants of the congo of Africa. Hard for me to see a connection between these people of ancient Peru and the Nephites” Dianne G.

The Paracas Peninsula today. The original Paracas settlement  stretched for over a mile along the coast
    Response: Paracas was a large city area, their ruins now stretching for a mile along the peninsula. In the Book of Mormon, those people who were defectors from the Nephite religion usually occupied cities of some size, as did the Zoramites, who were a so-called “sect” and had separated themselves from the Nephites, either before, during or after a bloody civil war initiated by Amlici, a follower of the Nehor sect, who after losing a popular election to be made king, made an alliance with the Lamanites. Therefore, when Zoram settled his people in Antionum near a large body of Lamanites, there grew considerable concern that the Zoramites would make a similar pact and bring about another war. Alma went there to preach to the Zoramites rather than sending an army to force them back into the “fold” (Alma 31:4).
     When he arrived, the Zoramite religious practices astounded him and those missionaries he brought with him. The Zoramites had perverted the ways of the Lord, created a way of religious practice that was completely foreign to the Nephite Church, and quite perverted in nature. While I was not drawing a conclusion that the Paracas were the Zoramites (though Paracas was located in the south, near the border with the Lamanites), I was using the Zoramite example to show that dissenters of the Nephites were capable of such activity as head-binding. I realize it is merely an assumption, but I think the parallel is obvious.

Left: Actual skull from Paracas funerary; diagram shows how it is accomplished
    The Zoramites had, after all, rejected Christ, worshipped idols, rejected the Law of Moses, rejected sacraments and daily prayer, offered public prayer on raised platforms, thought themselves the chosen people, ignored and rejected the poor, and had a state, political religion (Alma 31, 32, 38). Head-binding, as well as other perversions, would have fit right in with their way of thinking. It might also be of interest that such head-binding was also practiced in Egypt during the Amarna period, also the Sudan, Iraq and Syria (the latter two being Mesopotamia). While this is not conducive to standard practice or normal religious practices of those times and locations, it does show a connection between the areas that would have been known to the Nephites.
    Comment #2: “It is surprising to me that so many people today in trying to locate the land of promise in the eastern U.S. try to claim “sea” means a rive or lake or something else other than an ocean. Basically, according to Greek mythology, the Greek god Oceanus was a serpent like being that looked like a river and encompassed the entire world – so, picture that – and you get an ocean. I do like the image because it is a sharp reminder that all of our oceans, estuaries and rivers are connected” Rylie J.
    Response: Most etymologies trace the word "ocean" back to the Greek, but where the Greeks got the word Oceanus is unknown—perhaps it is a story of which came first, the chicken or the egg, though it is thought to have been derived from the name of the body of water anciently thought to surround the Earth. Today, we look at “ocean” and claim it is from the Old French “occean” later reborrowed from Middle French ”ocean,” then from Latin “Oceanus,” and finally from Ancient Greek “Okeanos” (Oceanus, which was a water deity). The term today is applied to one of the five large bodies of water separating the continents—an immense expanse; any vast space or quantity without apparent limits.
    The ancient Greek image of a mighty sea or river encircling the world is common in the beliefs of many Eastern peoples (including the Babylonians), and it also occurs in the mythology of the Indo-Europeans. Actually, their “ocean” originally denoted the whole body of water regarded as encompassing the earth's single land mass. Homer placed the entrance to Hades on the shore of the Ocean. In German, its early form, recorded in fourth-century Gothic, is saiws, and, as far as can be determined, means a body of water. One of the Indo-European words for “sea” from Latin mare (compare such our marina, marine, marital, maritime, and marinade, etc.) The German for “sea” is still Meer, a synonym of Sea.

Red Arrows point to the area labeled “sea” though it is obviously part of the overall ocean; Left: Bering Sea and Pacific Ocean; Right: Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean
    The major issue with the type of historians or theorists you indicated is with the word “sea,” not “ocean.” Many people use the terms "ocean" and "sea" interchangeably when speaking about the ocean, but there is a difference between the two terms when speaking of geography, i.e., the Earth's surface. Seas are smaller than oceans and are usually located where the land and ocean meet. Thus you have the Sea of Arabia and the Indian Ocean—the same body of water, one is closer to shore than the other; the same for the Bearing Sea and the Pacific Ocean—same body of water, one is closer to land and partially surrounded by the land. The point being that they are basically the same body of water, connected, and obviously one being part of the other.
    Consequently, when Jacob told the Nephites: “We have been driven out of the land of our inheritance; but we have been led to a better land, for the Lord has made the sea our path, and we are upon an isle of the sea“ (2 Nephi 10:20, emphasis mine). This cannot be interpreted in any other way than that the Land of Promise was an island upon the very sea over which they had sailed from Bountiful (the Arabian Peninsula).
    Comment #3: “I can see where you might be able to draw a connection between Egypt and the Nephites (through Lehi), but how can you draw one between the Jaredites and Egypt, since the Jaredites, according to you, arrived in the promised land around 2100 B.C.?” Evan W.
    Response: You might find it interesting that according to Egyptologist Georges Posener, the Egyptian Period of Reunification—the Middle Kingdom’s cultural interactions and interferences extended into Syria (Mesopotamia) and Palestine, and were quite extensive, between 2160 and 1780 B.C. (Cambridge Ancient History, Cambridge University Press, 1965). The earlier date places that interaction into Mesopotamia (home of the Jaredites) at least fifty years before the Jaredites left the area.
    Comment #4: “You talk about there being a division of land during Peleg’s time, yet when we look at geological setting of a once combined super-continent called Pangea, which shows how the continents fit together, leaving at least half of the earth in water, which they label the Pacific Ocean, circling the land mass. Is this what you are talking about?” Ralph C.

Response: No. The concept you mention was proposed by Alfred Wegener, the originator of the theory of continental drift, in his Origin of Continents (Die Entstehung der Kontinente, 1912), which was later expanded this hypothesis into his theory in his book The Origin of Continents and Oceans (Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane, 1915). From this super-continent, called Urkontinent, the land broke up and drifted to its present, various locations—something he claims took a million years.
    What I talk about is what is in the Doctrines of Salvation, in which Joseph Fielding Smith said: “There was no Atlantic Ocean prior to the earth being divided,” and Orson Pratt said in The Seer, that “The waters were in the Polar Regions” before this division of the land. The amount of oceans we have today is far larger than the ocean that existed before the Flood—that water came from “the fountains of the great deep were broken up” and from the “windows of heaven were opened” (Genesis 7:11). This would suggest that subterranean waters came up and waters of the firmament (above the earth) came down, as well as the waters of the ocean in the north country (for a clear understanding of this most unusual combination of events, see the book Scientific Fallacies & Other Myths, which covers the method how the Flood occurred (See Chapter 13 “Was There a Flood?”).

This is Our 1800th Post

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More Comments from Readers – Part II

Here are more comments that we have received from readers of this website blog: 
    Comment #1: “If there was such a connection between Lehi and Nephi with the Egyptians, why don’t we see Egyptian influence in the city of Nephi that Nephi built with that of Egyptian construction” Denzel L.
    Response: Actually, there is considerable examples, but let me show you one that is unique and not expected to be found just anywhere, and that is the joining of large stonework, for which both Egyptian construction and that of the city of Nephi (Sacsayhuaman) and other Nephite sites are well known.

The two photos on left are in Ghiza, Egypt; the two right photos are in Peru (top: Sacsayhuaman; bottom: Machu Pichu; Top: Earthquake notching, a rare joining technique not found in many areas; Bottom: Folding technique, a unique joining of corners where a stone is curved, or “folded” around the corner
    You can also see the same technique of “metal block-ties,” the recessed connector brackets used to tie large stones together out of site once set—they are found both in Egypt and Peru (Tiahuanaco and Ollantaytambo); and also “quarry-marks” for splitting stone (drilled into rock along straight, evenly spaced lines) found in both Menkaure’s Giza and also Aswan in Egypt and at Cuzco (city of Nephi) and Machu Pichu. There are also numerous examples of “maneuvering protuberances” on large stones at Menkaure’s pyramid at Giza and at the Aswan granite quarries in Egypt as well as in Peru at Ollantaytambo. There are others, and though archaeologists ignore these comparisons and science holds to the dogma there is no connection between Egypt and Peru, several such unique connections are easily found and as connections between Egypt and Peru cannot be disregarded.
    Comment #2: “The parallels in Book of Mormon phraseology suggests a single author, not the various writers indicated in the various books within it” Sylvia S.
    Response: When something is abridged, it means a single author (Mormon) took all the writing of the others (from Mosiah to Mormon) and placed it in his own words. Obviously, phraseology would be the same from the one single abridging writer. His son, who would most likely have very similar phraseology abridged Ether and Moroni. Only Nephi, Jacob, Enos down through Omni could be different, which is only about 1/5^th of the overall writing. It should also be kept in mind, from Nephi through Moroni (since Moroni abridged Ether), we are dealing with a closed society of a singular language unaffected by outside languages, groups or people. The similarity is more of a proof to its authenticity than a rebuke.
    Comment #3: “You seem to have a belief that Nephi built his ship by himself and the help of his brothers, yet it seems clear that for him to have done so, he would would have needed a nearby population for construction help. He could not have built the ship without expertly trained carpenters, ropemakers, shipbuilders, sailors” Cheryl D.
    Response: There are many who think that way, especially since the Irish Adventurer Tim Severin’s book, The Sinbad Voyage, showed that in constructing the Sohar, which was completely man-made, using traditional boat-building techniques, under the direction of Ali Manikfan, who reconstructed an ancient Arab trading ship, for a 5,965-mile, 7 ½ month voyage in 1981 from Oman, across the Sea of Arabia to the Malacca Straits, and on to Canton, China. It took one year to build the 88 ½ feet long ship, using coir to sew the planks of its hull in the same way that ancient Maldivians had built ships.

Left: Ali Manikfan, the builder of (Right) The Shofar, the type of ship used by Sinbad the Sailor, and the ship itself was based on a drawing of a boom (type of dhow) in a 16^th century A.D. Portuguese manuscript
    However, it should be kept in mind that Nephi tells us a couple of things thst should show the fallacy of this idea: 1) Nephi’s ship was built in 600 B.C., approximately 2100 years before this style ship was known (at least 1000 to 1100 years before Sinbad’s claimed time); 2) Nephi did not build his ship after the manner of men (1 Nephi 18:2); and the timbers (which would have included how they were made and connected) were not worked after the manner of men (1 Nephi 18:1). Consequently, the manner in which Sofar was built, the length of time and the craftsmen needed really is not applicable; 3) Nephi had 3 brothers, Zoram, 2 brothers in law, and several nephews of at least teenage years, not to mention his younger brothers, and perhaps some women who would have made other parts, rigging, sails, etc.
    All of this was done under the design and manner in which the Lord instructed Nephi—it is not likely that experienced craftsmen would have been amenable to building a ship being instructed by a novice, no matter where he claimed to have gotten the design and method. It seems far more likely that this ship was built without the involvement of anyone outside Lehi and Ishmael’s family and those who came with them. It is also not a good idea to start adding things to the scriptural record that are neither written in it, or implied by suggestive writing.
    Comment #4: “If another model of the Land of Promise had overwhelming compelling evidence that it was the correct model, I could accept that the internal evidence that it was an isle of the sea was part of the imperfections of men that the BoM title page admits. But the other models all fall flat on their face over and over, and this model (of South America) comes through over and over. This should be the model taught at BYU” George W.
    Response: I couldn’t agree with you more—but don’t hold your breath until it happens.
    Comment #5: There is no way Jacob or Nephi could have known they were on an island. Even a land only a couple of hundred miles wide would not have been understood to them as an island. Maybe much later in time, say around Mosiah or Alma’s time when the Nephites were building on the east coast—but in Alma, I think he was assuming it was an island because they came by sea” Denny B.
    Response: “Given the course the winds and currents would have taken Nephi’s ship, when they turned up into the Humboldt Current, it is possible they could see from that viewpoint the land they saw was disconnected from another land at least in the south. But once moving up the land, they would not have known anything more. On the other hand, when they left the site of their first landing and Nephi took those who would go with him northward, and if they came to the area now known as Cuzco (Sacsayhuaman) as we have written here, it would have been basically on the east coast (very close to it) at the time and certainly a knowledge of the west and east coasts would have become well known in Jacob’s time, as well as having seen the southern disconnect. An island might have been surmised from this and the Spirit testified to its accuracy to them as Prophets.  On the other hand, Nephi could have been shown that in one of his vision sequences when he was shown the coming of the Europeans; or Lehi could have been told that by the Spirit and passed it on to Nephi. The point is, Jacob knew it and Nephi acknowledged that it was correct by writing it down in the record.”
    Comment #6: “Time Dating" is measure with several techniques not just Carbon dating. Half-Life methods are also statistically correct. A culmination of the sciences are used to make significant claims like the age of the universe or earth. The only thing you are correct about, is the fact that Scientist do hold their noses up at unsubstantiated claims and will only accept the claim after substantial review and testing has been done according to the guidelines of the Scientific Model. In other words, PROVE IT! You know, just like we have proved we breath air, or how fruit spoils, (that's called "radioactive decay")
    Response: Rather than take up room here to repeat something I have written an entire  book about and would take a lot of repetition to repeat sufficient here to answer your comment, let me just direct you to the book Scientific Fallacies & Other Myths.

More Comments from Readers – Part I

Here are more comments that we have received from readers of this website blog: 
    Comment #1: “Recently, you wrote several things about Phyllis Carol Olive and her book “The Lost Lands of the Book of Mormon.” I found it interesting that she seems to see things far different from your take on things. As an example, she says that Hagoth’s curiosity got the better of him for he built a ship, launched it forth into the west sea and headed north. But you say he didn’t go anywhere” Thelma G.

Response: The scriptural record tells us Hagoth launched his “first” ship into the West Sea (Alma 63:5) during the 37^th year with many Nephites in it (Alma 63:6). The following year, the 38^th year, while that ship was at sea, Hagoth built other ships (Alma 63:7a), and during that same year, the 38^th year, the first ship returned, refitted, and set out again northward with more people (Alma 63:7b). Hagoth did not go on either voyage of this ship, he was home building more ships while the first one sailed, returned and sailed again—it was never heard from again, that is, it did not return from its second voyage (Alma 63:8), so obviously Hagoth was not on that one, either, since he had to have built other ships later that Alma tells us sailed north later with Corianton taking provisions to those who had gone before (Alma 63:), and later timber (Helaman 3:10). In fact, Helaman describes that the Nephites were heavily involved in the building of ships and in shipping (Helaman 3:14), which must have been a very large industry, since Helaman mentions it three times in a few short verses, and lists it as one of the major industries of the Nephite people.
    As for Olive having a different take on things than me, perhaps, as the above shows, it is because she does not really read the scriptures.
    Comment #2: “The references you alluded to by the brethren in conferences, etc. as to the whole of the Americas as the “choice land” were made during a time when the church, it’s manuals, etc. “unofficially” put the Book of Mormon lands in central America, which conflicted with prior statements about the United States being the “choice land” even with the records coming from New York. Of course, there are statements also, as numerous by the brethren putting the Book of Mormon lands and the actual Hill Cumorah in the United States and New York, “unofficially”, so it’s safe to conclude that these statements are circumstantial generalizations and are inconclusive. Otherwise, the church would have an official position” B.
    Response: I was not referring to General Conference talks of the 19^th century, but much closer to now—such as Ezra Taft Benson’s talk in October Conference of 1979, which can be found on the Church website (https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1979/10/a-witness-and-a-warning?lang=eng) entitled: “A Witness and a Warning,” Ezra Taft Benson, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, October 1979 General Conference, said, “The Lord has declared this “a day of warning, and not a day of many words” (D&C 63:58)."
    Now, you might want to take note that in this General Conference world-wide address, Pres. Benson spoke of two places referring to “this land,” i.e., 1) America, and 2) the United States. Of course, whenever the brethren in the modern era speaks of America, it is almost always referring to north and south America as opposed to Europe, Asia, Pacific Islands, etc. They do not see the United States quite like some of us…they head up a world-wide Church, not a U.S. church.

President Benson’s address: “My message is a witness and warning about some of the evils which threaten America—a land I love with all my heart. There are other countries with this same problem. You who have seen these dangers in the land you love will have a deep feeling for what I will say.
    “America is a place of many great events. Here is where Adam dwelt, where the Garden of Eden was located. America was the place of former civilizations, including Adam’s, the Jaredites’, and Nephites.’ America is also the place where God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, appeared to Joseph Smith, inaugurating the last gospel dispensation on earth before the Savior’s second coming…”
    Though Pres. Benson refers to events that took place, for the most part, in the United States, Garden of Eden, Adam’s home, the First Vision—he did not refer to it as the United States, but America.
    “This consecrated land has been placed under the everlasting decree of God. That decree is recorded in the sacred Book of Mormon, a new witness for Christ, in these words:
    “For behold, this is a land which is choice above all other lands; wherefore he that doth possess it shall serve God or shall be swept off; for it is the everlasting decree of God…Behold, this is a choice land, and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall be free from bondage, and from captivity, and from all other nations under heaven, if they will but serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ" (Ether 2:10, 12).

“The eventful destiny of America has also been revealed to God’s prophets. To Joseph Smith the Lord revealed that “the whole of America is Zion itself from north to south” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Joseph Fielding Smith, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1938, p. 362). Further, the Lord decreed this land to be “the place of the New Jerusalem, which should come down out of heaven…the holy sanctuary of the Lord” (Ether 13:3). To serve God’s eternal purposes and to prepare this land for Zion, God “established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom [He] raised up…and redeemed the land by the shedding of blood” (D&C 101:80).
    “The Constitution of the United States was ratified in 1789. The priesthood of God was restored in 1829. Between those two dates is an interval of forty years. It is my conviction that God, who knows the end from the beginning, provided that period of time so the new nation could grow in strength to protect the land of Zion.
    “In the decade prior to the restoration of the gospel, many countries of South America fought wars of independence to free themselves from European rule. Russia, Austria, and Prussia, however, urged France to aid Spain and Portugal to restore their monarchies in South America. This effort was repulsed by a proclamation from the United States government known as the Monroe Doctrine. The heart of the Monroe Doctrine consists of these words: “The American continents…are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.”

“The Lord had promised, “I will fortify this land against all other nations” (2 Nephi 10:12). President Joseph Fielding Smith said that “the greatest and most powerful fortification in America is the ‘Monroe Doctrine’…It was the inspiration of the Almighty which rested upon John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson and other statesmen, and which finally found authoritative expression in the message of James Monroe to Congress in the year 1823” (The Progress Of Man, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., pp. 466–67).
    Note that Pres. Benson refers to the greatest and most powerful fortification in America is the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine was not meant to fortify the United States, it was to fortify all of America, specifically Latin America to keep European countries from meddling in America!
    “Thus, in that four-decade period the United States had grown to sufficient strength that she was able to provide a cradle of liberty for the restored Church of Jesus Christ…”
    The rest of Pres. Benson’s talk is the “warning” against communism. The point being, that President Benson himself, and in quoting Joseph Smith, referred to both North and South as America, not just the United States.
    As a citizen of the United States, we may feel very parochial toward our country, but the Church does not consider itself a Untied States Church, but a world-wide Church, centered in (North and South) America, which is the promised land, but a Church of the world for all the peoples of the world.

Why Are they Unknown?

Joseph Smith, when translating the abridged record of Ether, came across the following sentence:    
    "And they also had horses, and asses, and there were elephants and xxxxxxx and yyyyyyy; all of which were useful unto man, and more especially the elephants and xxxxxx and yyyyyyy” (Ether 9:19). Why did Joseph Smith not fill in the names of these two animals? They were not some minor animal of the time, for they were as important unto man as the elephant. It is also not that Joseph would not have know much about animals—he was a farmer, around 24 years of age at the time of translation, having worked on his father’s farms. His father, Joseph Smith, Sr., was married at the age of 25 in 1796, where he settled on one of the family farms in Tunbridge. Born in 1771, Joseph Sr. was 25 when he married Lucy Mack, was over six feet tall and powerfully built, as had been his father, Asael.

Five generations of Smith’s lived in Topsfield, a small township about 20 miles north of Boston, Massachusetts. Five generations, beginning with Joseph’s third-great-grandfather, Robert, who had emigrated from England in 1638, while still in his teens. Robert’s son, Samuel, was listed as a “gentleman,” and apparently held a public office. He and his wife, Rebecca Curtis, had nine children, with one of their sons, Samuel, Jr., a distinguished community leader and a promoter of the American War of Independence. Samuel, Jr., married Priscilla Gould, one of Topsfield Massachusetts’ founders, and their son, Aesel, born in 1744, was Joseph Smith’s grandfather.

Joseph Smith was born in a farm house (left) in Sharon, Vermont, in 1805. The farm house has been replaced in this photo and the granite memorial to the right erected to commemorate the area
    Aesel married Mary Duty of Rowley, Massachusetts, but later moved back to Topsfield and worked for five years to liquidate the debts his father had been unable to pay before his death. They remained in Topsfield until 1791, when Asael, Mary, and their eleven children moved briefly to Ipswich, Massachusetts, and then on to Tunbridge, Vermont, in quest of inexspensive, virgin land. There Asael held public office and served the community in almost every elective office.
    Joseph’s father, Joseph Sr., and Lucy Mack lived on a family farm in Tunbridge, but later moved to Randolph in 1802 where they opened a mercantile establishment. He sold his farm to pay off a debt, then moved to Sharon, Vermont, where he farmed in the summer and taught school in the winter. During Joseph Jr’s early years, his parents moved frequently, looking for fertile soil for farming or some other way to earn a livelihood.
    Joseph Jr. was tall and athletic, and when they moved to Norwich, the family began to farm on the property of Esquire Murdock. With several crop failures, and killing frosts, numerous people left Vermont, including the Smiths, and settled on available lands in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, that were said to be “well-timbered, well-watered, easily accessible and undeniably fertile—all to be had on long-term payments for only two or three dollars an acre.”
    Joseph Smith, Sr., after settling his accounts, moved his family to Palmyra, New York. At Palmyra, Joseph again took up farming and Joseph Jr. once again worked on the family farm (left) in Palmyra, New York, adjacent to the Sacred Grove.

As a result, we see that during the vast majority of Joseph’s young life, he lived on a farm and worked as a farmer. This would have placed him in direct contact with plants, grains, herbs, and fruits, as well as all the animals known in his day that would have been helpful to man, such as beasts of burden like riding, draught or draft horses, donkeys, mules, oxen, bulls, bullocks, and other animals needed for farming, planting, harvesting, hauling, transportation, etc.    Thus we come back to the question of why did Joseph Smith, in translating the Ether record, not know what animals were being described that were so necessary and beneficial to the Jaredites. Not only would he have known about the farm animals mentioned above, but also animals used for food that were raised for such (cows, steers, goats, sheep, and pigs), but also hunted, such as deer, moose, elk, fowl, etc. It is also unlikely he would have known or heard about such animals as water buffalo, carabaos, tamaraw (dwarf buffalo), yak, or other animals of the Eastern Hemisphere, though it is likely he would have heard of the western buffalo (bison) and probably the camel.

Joseph was living in the frame home on this farm when he received the plates from the Angel Moroni in 1827
    So in the translation process, Joseph came across these two names listed in Ether 9:19 and ran through his repertoire of animals he knew or had heard about, but the Spirit did not acknowledge any of them—so he had to use the names that appeared in the original record.
    So what possible animal could that have been written about in the Ether record that could be described as more useful to man than the horse or donkey (ass)?
    It is interesting in the list of such helpful animals, along with the elephant, is the camel. And a type of camelid (camelidae) that is also listed that is very helpful to man are the two animals: Llama and Alpaca, domestic descendants of the wild vicuña and guanaco.
    So when Joseph came to cureloms and cumoms, he did not know to insert Llama and Alpaca, two names that were unknown in the United States in 1830, and little known anywhere in the world outside of Andean South America, and certainly not by the names the Jaredites and Nephites would have known them.

To early man, the llama and alpaca in Andean South America were to them what the horse, donkey, and cattle were to the people of North America
    So how would the Jaredites have known about these two animals? The answer is quite simple, since they would lived in agrarian times and themselves would have been herdsmen for the Lord to tell them to “gather together thy flocks, both male and female” (Ether 1:41), and they went down into the Valley of Nimrod “with their flocks which they had gathered together, male and female, of every kind” (Ether 2:1). We also know they still had their flocks and herds a thousand years later or more (Ether 9:31; 10:12), and thus capable of breeding the camelids that became indigenous after the Flood in the Land of Promise, i.e., Andean Peru.
    Thus, the verse: “And they also had horses, and asses, and there were elephants and cureloms and cumoms; all of which were useful unto man, and more especially the elephants and cureloms and cumoms” (Ether 9:19); could have been accurately rendered: “And they also had horses, and asses, and there were elephants and Llamas and Alpacas; all of which were useful unto man, and more especially the elephants and Llamas and Alpacas” (Ether 9:19).

Land of Many Waters and Fountains – Part III

Continuing from the last two posts about where the Land of Many Waters was located within the Land of Promise and Mormon’s meaning of the words “many waters,” “rivers,” and “fountains.”
   As we discussed in the last post, the word “fountains,” has a specific meaning. We also mentioned that it is important to keep in mind when reading the scriptural record, not only what is written, but why that specific language is used.
    In the case of the word “fountains,” we should ask ourselves why did Mormon use this descriptive term? It is not a common phrase in connection with natural water locations, though it appears to have been more common in Old Testament times. So why did Mormon include it?

   Of what value would it be for his future reader to know that fountains, or springs, existed in the Land of Many Waters?  And they were the source of the waters in the area? And why might it have been important to him?

In the are of the Land of Many Waters in Ecuador are over 237 individual lakes, ponds, springs, rivers, waterfalls, and other bodies of water 
    The only other connection we have at this time with Mormon’s use of this phrase is that he was hoping to find some advantage over the Lamanites in this land leading up to their final battle. It was, after all, Mormon’s idea to wage this battle at Cumorah. As he put it: “I wrote an epistle unto the king of the Lamanites, and desired of him that he would grant unto us that we might gather together our people unto the land of Cumorah, by a hill which was called Cumorah, and there we could give them battle” (Mormon 6:2). After getting agreement from the Lamanite king, Mormon added, ”And it came to pass that we did march forth to the land of Cumorah, and we did pitch our tents around about the hill Cumorah; and it was in a land of many waters, rivers, and fountains; and here we had hope to gain advantage over the Lamanites” (Mormon 6:4).
    What advantage might Mormon have hoped to achieve?
    In this area of Andean South America, where the Land Northward would have been located, north of the Bay of Guayaquil (Mormon’s small or narrow neck of land), and a little south of Quito, is located an area that even on ancient maps of the area is called in ancient Quechua, the “Land of Many Waters.” Here, in what is today labeled the “lagoons of Ozogoche” or the “Ozogoche Lakes,” in the center of the highlands of Ecuador, and important because their waters feed the Pastaza River, which flows into the Amazon River.

In this area of Ecuador are 45 individual springs that feed the lakes, lagoons, ponds and rivers 
    Here in the central Andes is the province of Chimborazo where extraordinary wildlife, floriculture, archaeological and cultural landscapes are found, with more than 327 lagoons, lakes and ponds, among which are some “forty-five natural water springs that are in the Sangay National Park,  (where is also found the newly discovered Pyramid of Punay) which offer tranquility and peace in this remote culture of the unique grasslands in the Andean highlands.” 
    This wet and cold region, covering an area 2000 square miles, is considered a “mysterious and isolated place,” in an area of Wetlands—a high, treeless plateau called a paramo. These natural fountains, or springs as they are known today, are the sources of more than sixty lakes, lagoons, rivers, and waters scattered across the region, nestled at 12,000 feet in Ozogoche among volcanoes and differing elevations of the Andean peaks that even today isolates Ecuador’s remote and vast natural beauty. Within this land of many waters is found countless valleys, lagoons, small waterfalls, rivers, and dense vegetation, and numerous springs that feed the various water ways from underground aquifers.

Migrating Plover birds “commit suicide” in the “many waters” lakes of central Ecuador each year 
    The lakes and lagoons of Ozogoche are one of Ecuadors most enigmatic and sacred sites which are infamous for being an “Elephant Cementary” for birds. Beginning at the end of August and for all of September thousands of migrating Plover birds leave their breeding habitat in the arctic islands and coastal areas of Alaska and Canada to make the great journey south to Argentina and Chile. When they reach the Ozogoche Lakes thousands of these Plover birds seemingly “commit suicide” by diving into the icy waters in a mysterious and sacred tribute to the indigenous Quichua people of the region.
    For unexplained reasons to-date, thousands of these migratory birds gather over Verdecocha Lake, making terrible noises and paying tribute to death as observers watch these "Cuvivíes” (a name the locals give the birds because of the sound they make), fall into the water in a form of mass suicide.
    Recent research that has been done by the Biology Department at the Universidad Católica de Quito determined that the migratory birds belong to the Bartramia Longicauda family or upland sandpiper in the English language. This phenomenon has been named ‘The Tribute’ by the local indigenous populations, but so far no one seems to know why the birds “swoop down into the water” where they die upon impact, though some suggestions have been postulated.
    According to one scientific theory trying to put sense to this mysterious natural phenomenon is that the birds that “commit suicide” by diving into the lake are older and weaker and are tired from their migratory journey, falling to their death into the lake after a change of air pressure above it—the icy water evidently instantly kills them. Whatever the reason, this has been going on for more than a thousand years and could even date back to the time of the Nephites, and for a very long time the locals have been gathering each year at the lakes to collect the birds, which are meaty enough to eat, in a type of festival (Fiesta de Culturas Vivia). In a speculative thought, perhaps a part of the advantage had to do with the feeding of his half a million troops and families from the availability of these diving birds. Certainly, over time, this place has become known as a place of death.
    The history of “the many waters” of the Ozogoche Lakes and the surrounding region is the history of the Quichua people. These indigenous natives call the Andean highlands home and have done so for thousands of years. Although the Quichua were one of the first groups to be conquered by the Inca Empire, their population did not decline until the drastic fall that was catalyzed by the Spanish colonization of Ecuador. Some Quichua escaped from central Ecuador and migrated south down the Andes mountain range, leading to the population of places like the Ozogoche Lakes. These indigenous cultures still play a huge role in the region today.
    This region, one of the very few places in the world where so many separate, yet connected bodies of water like lakes, lagoons, ponds, waterfalls, rivers, and most importantly, so many feeder springs give rise to an area called “the Land of Many Waters,” can be found. Not far from this region is another, similar area of 230 more lakes called El Cajas, and several others in the central highlands of Ecuador fit into the picture that Mormon appropriately called ‘the Land of Many Waters’ and of it said, “and it was in a land of many waters, rivers, and fountains; and here we had hope to gain advantage over the Lamanites” (Mormon 6:4).
    What advantage he might have felt he could obtain, he does not mention; however, in seeing this land one can only wonder at its unusually topography of numerous hills and valleys, water ways, falls, and other features that a commanding general might think he could use to his advantage in deploying his troops.

The land in this region is filled with variances in levels, growth, and numerous places to form up troops to battle. If you are going to face overwhelming odds in a hand-to-hand type battle, this land would have provided an ideal setting such as narrow approaches, traps, ambush, including trees for protection from arrows, etc.