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The link below may be interesting to look at (or laugh at?) since the LDS church's famous book claims to be about 3 civilizations that lived somewhere in north,
by utefan001 9y ago
The link below may be interesting to look at (or laugh at?) since the LDS church's famous book claims to be about 3 civilizations that lived somewhere in north,central or south america. As far as I understand, one or more LDS leaders years ago decided (for arguably valid reasons) that all of the Book of Mormon events occurred between 600 BC to about AD 400.
This has made it more difficult for the church to say "look, we were right!" when discoveries like this are made because the timeline in several cases doesn't align with 600 BC to AD 400.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology_and_the_Book_of_Mormon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology_and_the_Book_of_Mo...
- mholt 9y agoThe Book of Mormon never claims that everyone died in the Americas at AD ~400. Nor does it claim that its account of the peoples there is comprehensive. In fact, it says the opposite: that splinter groups settled elsewhere, that there were other bands of people in the land, and that after the destruction of the Nephites, the millions of remaining Lamanites continued to sprawl over the land.
- ga_golfnut 9y agoAnd it also says things like horses, chariots, steel, and other anachronistic things existed in the pre-Columbian Americas. There is no evidence (to date) to support any of those claims. You might want to look into the history of NWAF and Thomas Ferguson. Michael Coe, a renowned expert in this field and also mentioned on this post, was friends with Ferguson. It's an interesting history.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> And it also says things like horses, chariots, steel, and other anachronistic things existed in the pre-Columbian Americas. There is no evidence (to date) to support any of those claims. Horses definitively existed in (far enough) precolumbian America. The dominant belief seems to be that they died out (perhaps due to human hunting) at or shortly after the end of the Pleistocene, ca. 10-12kya, but there is some evidence there may have been some populations around as late as ca. 3kya, IIRC. EDIT: of course, one must keep in mind that the horses of precolumbian America were much smaller than Old World horses, so it's not really plausible that they'd be being ridden, pulling chariots, or generally being used like Old World horses even if it is (just barely) plausible that they were around at the right time.
- ga_golfnut 9y agoI should have qualified that with "during the Book of Mormon timeline".
- dragonwriter 9y ago3kya is just about at the Book of Mormon timeline.
- ga_golfnut 9y agoJust about is fair but still short by ~400 years, unless you count the Jaredites. They purportedly fled the Old World around the time of the Tower of Babel (~2000 BCE IIRC?). EDIT: I wasn't sure if the Book of Ether even mentioned horses, but it did, along with elephants. [1] [1] https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/ether/9.19?lang=eng&clang=eng#p18 https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/ether/9.19?lang=eng&clan...
- crobertsbmw 9y agoCould it be that maybe some things were lost in translation? Maybe a “chariot” isn’t exactly the way we think of a chariot now. Maybe it was just a saddle?
- ga_golfnut 9y agoYou might want to look into the loose vs. tight translation theories. There are resulting consequences with sticking with either one.
- Krich123 9y agoJohn Sorenson ( Professor of Anthropology at BYU) addresses most of your speculations in this article. I found his responses very well written: https://www.fairmormon.org/archive/publications/an-open-letter-to-dr-michael-coe https://www.fairmormon.org/archive/publications/an-open-lett...
- mholt 9y agoThere certainly is, you just have to look for it. https://bookofmormoncentral.org/blog/new-evidence-for-horses-in-america https://bookofmormoncentral.org/blog/new-evidence-for-horses...
- ga_golfnut 9y ago> While the evidence for horses in pre-Columbian America is encouraging, it still requires some caution. Additional C-14 dating from other samples will be needed to change the prevailing view. Until then, this evidence should be considered provisional, but promising. And was that peer reviewed?
- Krich123 9y agoYou may find the responses in this article intriguing: https://www.fairmormon.org/archive/publications/an-open-letter-to-dr-michael-coe https://www.fairmormon.org/archive/publications/an-open-lett...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- utefan001 9y agoNot being critical, only pointing out every time their is a big discovery like this, some level of time and effort is spent trying to align the discovery with the BOM. The wiki article has a lot of references in it that are related to the topic.
- greeneggs 9y agoYou might enjoy this recent Science story: "How a Mormon lawyer transformed archaeology in Mexico—and ended up losing his faith" http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/how-mormon-lawyer-transformed-archaeology-mexico-and-ended-losing-his-faith http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/how-mormon-lawyer-tra...