Book Of Mormon Geography

[Maya]

Charity says: That area now is called America's Breadbakset with a highly productive farming industry.

Isnt that kind of funny... and befor a waist land.... I wonder if we ever get something going in Sahara....

Poulsenll, this is so interestin I think... I wish I could join this hunt on the spot.... not just by computer but being there myself. Maybe after a few years when I am on my pension... At the moment I really cant think of any better than your assumptions.

I remember I read somewhere that Ainsworth was given some stones that had writting... and how he tried to get someone to find out the age of the stones and other stuff, and about a native that had many things in his position, but who died... I wonder where that story was... have not found it again...

I think it is like with the indians ... they do NOT tell everything they know to a white man. My best friends son was on mission and there his missionleader had been once in contact with some indians and they were allowed to go to ameeting of the medicinemen... which is not often for white men... they told about mormonsbook and suddenly the indians began to talk and argue a lot ... with their own language. Then they agreed to tell them a bit of their old knowledge... which was Mormonsbook told from the point of Lamanities.... Interesting!

Ned to study more....

[poulsenll]

Poulsenll, this is so interestin I think... I wish I could join this hunt on the spot.... not just by computer but being there myself. Maybe after a few years when I am on my pension... At the moment I really cant think of any better than your assumptions.

I remember I read somewhere that Ainsworth was given some stones that had writting... and how he tried to get someone to find out the age of the stones and other stuff, and about a native that had many things in his position, but who died... I wonder where that story was... have not found it again...

Maya

Jerry Ainsworth is a personal friend of mine. We have different points of view on cettain aspects of BofM geography but have agreed to disagree. Right now he has focused his attention on the Belize area. We both agree that some of the ruins there may have been connected to the BofM culture. If not the Nephite then most definitely that of the Lamanites. There are a number of sites there that date back to the time of Christ and were in continous occupation up till the Spanish conquest of the area.

He still has the stones but has been unable to get anyone to examine them critically. The usual response is that they must be frauds simply because they dont fit into the mainstream ideas about the ancient scripts used in mesoamerica. I have not seen them nor would it matter because I am no expert on ancient artifacts.

Interestingly enough we both attended the Maya meetings here in Austin this last spring and there was a growing consensus that there is evidence for a number of ancient scripts that are unrelated to the Mayan glyph system.

Most of what you are thinking of is found in his book "The Travels of Mormon and Moroni". It was something he wrote in that book that got me started to study about precolumbian concepts of directionality. He pointed out that in some areas of Mexico and Guatamala the Mayans still lay out there plots for cultivation based on the position of the sun on the horizon at the summer and winter solstices. They place a stone at the center of there chosen location and then draw lines to the corners of a rectangle oriented with landmarks known to indicate where the sum would rise and set at the two solstices.

Larry P

[Maya]

Nice. I wish I could get more books on this. I have one book, but cant remember what was the name and it is in my sons room... dont want to disturb him now ... I hope he sleeps... There are some photos in it too. Have to look it up tomorrow.

I think you two are pretty close to the sollution area.

Can you explain me WHY none of the scolars outside the Church seem to take seriously the evidence of the BM.

I remember having heard that lately they have found lines of bodies as if they had been executed, just around the years when Jesus was crusified. This was somewhere in south of Mexcico.

[poulsenll]

Can you explain me WHY none of the scolars outside the Church seem to take seriously the evidence of the BM.

To take the BofM seriously requires acceptance of its divine origins. This is a big stumbling block to most non Morman scholars. Those that do accept its divine origins either join the Church or keep their mouths shut to avoid ridicule. The recently named director of the Teotihuacan Archaeological site in Mexico is one who falls in the former group. Houston, who used to work at BYU, left BYU because of what he called pressure to accept the Book of Morman as historical.

Pat Simiskey has a good book which is available at this URL. He has given me permission to make it available for people to download. Just remember it is copyrighted and is for personal use, not further distribution.

http://poulsenll.org/puzzle.pdf

I dont agree with all his conclusions but most of them are quite sound. He thinks the BofM culture was located in a small area in Panama. Some of the text fits but when you get down to the details there is no explanation using his location.

Larry P

[Maya]

Thanks... I will read it. It will be interesting... May get to the details later... Maya

[poulsenll]

Larry, this sounds like a FAIR brochure or a FAIRwiki piece. Are you planning either one?

Charity

I just submitted a brief article to FAIR. Haven't heard any response yet.

I wrote a second one but decided it was better to publish it on my Blog on MAD&B. For those who may have an interest but seldom return to MAD&B.

http://www.mormonapologetics.org/index.php...;blogid=20&

Enjoy. I will be glad to respond to comments, if any, on this board.

Larry P

[dhilke]

<SNIP>

... in fact they did not even have compasses. We obtained the compass from the Chinese well into the middle ages, long after Lehi and his family left Jerusalem.

<SNIP>

In my opinion, too many bad assumptions.

Larry P

I think it's possible that you have stated a bad assumption yourself...

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, so we don't really know that Lehi didn't have a compass, and even use it when crossing the great waters. In fact, if you follow the whole article (starting here) written by Alan Miner you might see that it's even possible the Liahona itself was in part a magnetic compass.

Overall, I find your work fascinating - even if it doesn't affect our eternal salvation, this topic is very interesting to me.

I'm wondering what you think of the results of the work by V. Garth Norman Any comments on the map he has published?

Thanks,

DP

[poulsenll]

I think it's possible that you have stated a bad assumption yourself...

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, so we don't really know that Lehi didn't have a compass, and even use it when crossing the great waters. In fact, if you follow the whole article (starting here) written by Alan Miner you might see that it's even possible the Liahona itself was in part a magnetic compass.

Overall, I find your work fascinating - even if it doesn't affect our eternal salvation, this topic is very interesting to me.

I'm wondering what you think of the results of the work by V. Garth Norman Any comments on the map he has published?

Thanks,

DP

You are possibly right about the compass, although, I am not sure they had a magnetic compass based on orientation to the north. All of the maps that I can find for ancient cultures are oriented towards sunrise rather than north. This is true even among at least some modern mesoamerican amerind cultures. See Jerry Aims book "Travels of Mormon and Moroni".

Norman's map IMO, is based on two false premises. One is his assumption of the Usamacinta river as the River Sidon and the other is that the Nephite culture was located and coincident with the Maya. These two assumptions seem to go together. Those who favor the Maya as Nephites also faver the Usamacinta as the River Sidon. Sorenson's excellent book "An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon" details sound reasons for equating the Grijalva river with the River Sidon. Norman presents no such support for his choice other than that he disagrees with Sorenson on the basis that no significant ruins were found by the NWAF's excursion. His support for locating BofM sites is slim to non existent. For example, he locates Zarahemla to some yet to be excavated site near Palenque. The BofM describes the location of Zarahemla to be north of the narrow strip of wildersness and south of both Bountiful and the Land of Desolation. I find it wxtremely difficult to fit both the land of Bountiful and the land of Desolation to be north of Palenque and between it and the Gulf of Mexico.

If you are interested, you may want to look at my comparison between citations in the BofM text relative to the River Sidon and the satelite image based 3D geography of mesoamerica,

http://www.poulsenll.org/bom/grijalvasidon.html

I urge you to check it out using Google Earth and come to your own conclusions. I have made no attempt to make a similar comparison with the Usamacinta. I will leave that to others if they are so inclined.

Larry P

[kckern]

There's a really cool interactive Book of Mormon map you should check out:

http://bookofmormononline.net/map