Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7
Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13
How well do the Mesoamerican and Heartland models fit with the text’s requirements for population and social complexity? As background, we should cover what the text says about those two aspects of Nephite society.
At the time of the Nephite destruction at Cumorah, Mormon records:
And it came to pass that they came to battle against us, and every soul was filled with terror because of the greatness of their numbers.
And it came to pass that my men were hewn down, yea, even my ten thousand who were with me, and I fell wounded in the midst; and they passed by me that they did not put an end to my life.
And when they had gone through and hewn down all my people save it were twenty and four of us, (among whom was my son Moroni) and we having survived the dead of our people, did behold on the morrow, when the Lamanites had returned unto their camps, from the top of the hill Cumorah, the ten thousand of my people who were hewn down, being led in the front by me.
And we also beheld the ten thousand of my people who were led by my son Moroni.
And behold, the ten thousand of Gidgiddonah had fallen, and he also in the midst.
And Lamah had fallen with his ten thousand; and Gilgal had fallen with his ten thousand; and Limhah had fallen with his ten thousand; and Jeneum had fallen with his ten thousand; and Cumenihah, and Moronihah, and Antionum, and Shiblom, and Shem, and Josh, had fallen with their ten thousand each.
And it came to pass that there were ten more who did fall by the sword, with their ten thousand each; yea, even all my people, save it were those twenty and four who were with me, and also a few who had escaped into the south countries, and a few who had deserted over unto the Lamanites, had fallen; and their flesh, and bones, and blood lay upon the face of the earth, being left by the hands of those who slew them to molder upon the land, and to crumble and to return to their mother earth. (Mormon 6:8–15)
It is always possible that numbers in battle may not be precise counts, or that they may have been exaggerated for hyperbolic effect. Nevertheless, Mormon was fearful of the great number of Lamanites, plausibly exceeding the number of Nephites who could be fielded. For the Nephites, that perhaps “smaller” number was around 230,000. That is a large number. Again, it is probable that there is some explanation for the number that would show that it was an exaggeration. Nevertheless, the intent was to demonstrate large numbers regardless of the count.
Although it is to be expected that the Nephite population at the end may have been larger than during earlier times, the Book of Mormon nevertheless indicates fairly large populations even earlier. For example, during the Lamanite war in the war chapters of Alma, twelve thousand men are sent as reinforcements to troops already in the field:
And it came to pass in the commencement of the thirty and first year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, Moroni immediately caused that provisions should be sent, and also an army of six thousand men should be sent unto Helaman, to assist him in preserving that part of the land. And he also caused that an army of six thousand men, with a sufficient quantity of food, should be sent to the armies of Lehi and Teancum. And it came to pass that this was done to fortify the land against the Lamanites. (Alma 62:12–13)[1]
Early in the reign of the Judges, a large number of Nephites migrated north. With this large number leaving, it is certain that a larger number remained:
And it came to pass that in the thirty and seventh year of the reign of the judges, there was a large company of men, even to the amount of five thousand and four hundred men, with their wives and their children, departed out of the land of Zarahemla into the land which was northward. (Alma 63:4)
When the brothers Nephi and Lehi preached to the Lamanites:
Therefore they did speak unto the great astonishment of the Lamanites, to the convincing them, insomuch that there were eight thousand of the Lamanites who were in the land of Zarahemla and round about baptized unto repentance, and were convinced of the wickedness of the traditions of their fathers. (Helaman 5:19)
Note that these were Lamanites, but only those who were in the land of Zarahemla. There were certainly Lamanites in that land who were not converted and even more certainly more Lamanites farther south. The Book of Mormon consistently speaks of large populations.
In addition to the large populations, the Book of Mormon discusses political and religious organizations that are appropriate to large populations. Even during the time of the first Nephi, the people request that Nephi become a king, not a headman, not a village leader, but a king. The Nephites continued with kings, and when the sons of Mosiah return to the land of Nephi to preach, they encounter Lamanite kings (and even a king over kings, as Lamoni is a king but is beholden to his father who is apparently a more important king). During the reign of the judges, local judges are under the authority of more centralized judges, and all governmental positions are headed by the Chief Judge.
Religion is also complex. There are sufficient people with sufficient differences that Alma1 can introduce the concept of churches onto Mosiah’s government (and persisting during the reign of the Judges). There are classes of officiators, with Alma2 as the head of the churches, but with other teachers and priests.
There are sufficient numbers to begin social hierarchies as early as Jacob, Nephi’s brother. It is in that early period that Jacob recognizes that the people are beginning to wear costly apparel, which becomes a thematic warning about developing social hierarchies throughout the Book of Mormon. All of these features of the text require large populations with a stable food source.
Mesoamerican Population Density and Political and Social Complexity
The Preclassic periods of Mesoamerican culture are those that correspond to Book of Mormon times. As with most of the ancient world, city populations were smaller than modern readers expect of cities. For example, the archaeological site of Los Cerros was a Preclassic site with an estimated population of only around 1,000 people.[2] Nevertheless, there were hundreds of other similar sites, many with larger populations. The archaeology of Mesoamerica during Book of Mormon times easily allows for populations that compare well with those the Book of Mormon requires.
More important than just the numbers of people is that populations of that size require more complex governmental structures. Modern studies of the Maya have found that the early assumption that the Maya were primarily chiefdoms has had to be revised. Lynn V. Foster notes:
As data accumulated from excavations, settlement surveys, and deciphered texts, however, a deeper appreciation of Maya urban society resulted. Mayanists have learned that from at least the Late Preclassic Period [300 BC. to A.D. 250], Maya society was considerably more complex than previously believed, and that by the end of that period, its political organization had developed into preindustrial states.[3]
Mesoamerican kings have been noted as early as the Preclassic (2000 b.c. – a.d. 250), and monarchies were typical of the Late Preclassic (400 b.c. – a.d. 250).[4] An interesting study is Cerros (noted above), dating to the Preclassic. This village was transformed into a city center complete with monumental architecture. That transition from village to city, from simple architecture to monumental and symbolic architecture, suggests that there was also a shift in the government of the village. Anthropological data indicate that villages typically have headmen as rulers and kings require large populations.
Although representing a time period later than the Book of Mormon, or at least late in the Book of Mormon, the following graphic shows how clothing distinguished Maya social statuses. While the specific dress might be a little more elaborate than what people wore in Jacob’s time, it clearly shows how costly apparel could become the harbinger of social stratification throughout the Book of Mormon:
The figure above[5] is a visual representation of the way that costly apparel can differentiate social classes. Important to the correlation between the Book of Mormon and Mesoamerica is that both Mesoamerica and the Book of Mormon had sufficient populations that there were hierarchical divisions that separated people into classes.[6]
Heartland (Hopewell) Political and Social Complexity
One of the current archaeologists specializing in the Woodland cultures is Brad Lepper. The Adena and the Hopewell are part of the overall designation of Woodland cultures. He writes:
Like their Late Archaic ancestors, Early Woodland people lived in small dispersed communities. However, Early Woodland houses were larger and more substantial than anything built by Archaic foragers, suggesting a greater degree of permanence. A typical Early Woodland house was a circular structure between 10 and 15 feet in diameter built of log poles interlaced with twigs and probably covered with bark. Often there would be from one to five such houses in a settlement. Sometimes there could be much larger structures.[7]
Los Cerros in Mesoamerica had a population of only around 1,000, but that is much larger than can be supported in a village with only one to five houses. In addition to the smaller size of the village, they were dispersed. They could not be much closer together because the Woodland peoples still lived a heavily hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Without an agricultural product that could produce sufficient calories, the Hopewell settlements could not support large populations. As Jared Diamond noted: “Availability of more consumable calories means more people.”[8]
Brad Lepper continues: “Hopewell societies were becoming increasingly dependent on farming, but, in many ways, they still were grounded in the hunting and gathering way of life.”[9] It is perhaps of note that the Book of Mormon Nephites looked down upon their Lamanite brethren who lived that lifestyle. Note how Enos separated the Nephites from the Lamanites based on the way they supplied their foodstuffs:
[The Lamanites] became wild, and ferocious, and a blood-thirsty people, full of idolatry and filthiness; feeding upon beasts of prey; dwelling in tents, and wandering about in the wilderness with a short skin girdle about their loins and their heads shaven; and their skill was in the bow, and in the cimeter, and the ax. And many of them did eat nothing save it was raw meat; and they were continually seeking to destroy us. And it came to pass that the people of Nephi did till the land, and raise all manner of grain, and of fruit, and flocks of herds, and flocks of all manner of cattle of every kind, and goats, and wild goats, and also many horses. (Enos 1:20–21)
Even though Enos was himself hunting (Enos 1:3), he nevertheless characterizes the Nephites by their agricultural stability and the Lamanites by “wandering about in the wilderness.” Enos’s Lamanites better fit the Hopewell than do the Nephites.
In contrast to the early Nephite desire for a king, Hopewell villages show no indication of the presence of any hierarchy:
Hopewell villages are small, and the dwellings tend to be simple and somewhat uniform. In other words, there are no palaces or especially large houses fit for a chief, and the population was not collected together in a large town where a leader could easily exercise control over his, or her, people.[10]
Nevertheless, there was some distinction in villages as some men, and at times women, were buried with greater pomp and circumstance indicated by the richness of their burial goods.[11]
Contrasting with the Churches we see beginning with Alma the Elder in the Book of Mormon, the Hopewell religion was much more primitive. From the Early Woodland period (the Adena), the dominant religious practices were shamanistic.[12] As Brad Lepper notes: “The world’s most ancient religions are based on shamanism.”[13] Shamanistic religions are dominated by the person of the shaman more than a dedicated class of religious practitioners.[14]
Conclusions
The Book of Mormon describes cities and political structures that are much more complex than any attested in Hopewell (or the earlier Adena) sites. While the Hopewell were more complex that the Adena, the Book of Mormon descriptions of the Jaredite kings is more complex than any Adena or Hopewell community. By the time we see the kings over kings in Alma (king Lamoni’s father was “king over all the land” Alma 18:9), the Book of Mormon is a dramatic departure from even the most complex of the Hopewell communities.
Comparing the two cultural areas, the complexities in the text are reflected in Mesoamerican cultures and completely foreign to Woodland cultures of any time period.
Estimating the age of the initial construction of the earthen mounds is highly subjective. In the construction of mounds, the dirt from which they were made came from pits and trenches dug into the soil around them. Every basket of dirt that went into the building of a mound was contaminated with the carbon-bearing particles and pieces of previous ages. Most samples for radiocarbon age estimates of the Ancient American mounds are retrieved by coring and auguring. With these conditions, deciding which particles are from the time of construction and which came from earlier ages out of the dirt pits would be nearly impossible, and at best, subjective.
Consider the following statement by archaeologist Joe W. Sanders, regarding the selection of material for radiocarbon estimates of the mounds at Watson Brake, Louisiana:
“One charcoal sample in Mound D proved to be a historical intrusion, presumably a burnt tree root, and this date has been omitted. One date was run on charred bone from Mound B, but results were discouraging and no further bone samples were submitted.” (Joe W. Sanders, American Antiquity, 1-Oct-05)
What does archaeologist Sanders mean by “a historical intrusion,” or by, “the results were discouraging”?” It appears that he was selecting for the results he was seeking. By such subjective selection of samples, Watson Brake was estimated to be constructed in 3,500 BC, and therefore the oldest mound complex in America. For archaeologist Saunders to openly admit his sampling selection process, indicates that it is common practice.
Radiocarbon age estimates of many Ancient American mounds show them to have been built during the Nephite period. The 200-acre mound complex of Marksville, Louisiana is estimated about 100 BC. Marksville is 75 miles south of Watson Brake and of similar construction and surface finds, but they are estimated to be 3,400 years apart. This does not seem reasonable.
Many American mounds have been estimated to be after the Nephite period. Archaeologists have noted that many of the mounds of America have been rebuilt over succeeding generations of inhabitants, and many mound sites were still being used when the European explorers arrived. The earthen mounds would have constantly eroded from the footsteps of their inhabitants, coupled with the effects of wind and rain. These towers, therefore, were rebuilt from time to time to maintain their defensive value. For those sites that continued to be inhabited, the carbon footprints of earlier inhabitants could well have been eroded away, distorting the radiocarbon estimate of the original mounds.
Therefore, archaeological tower/mound sites that fit the location of the text of The Book of Mormon should not be discredited because their radiocarbon age estimate does not fit the Nephite period.
Jon L. Gibson, preeminent archaeologist at Poverty Point, wrote these words at the end of his booklet, “Poverty Point: A Terminal Archaic Culture of the Lower Mississippi Valley:”
“The preceding view of Poverty Point is a patchwork of facts, hypotheses, guesses, and speculations. Many equally sound interpretations can be drawn from the same data. This is the nature of archaeology. Trying to describe an extinct culture, especially its social and political organizations and its religion by means of artifacts is not an exact science, but is a rewarding and meaningful one.”
Archaeology “is not an exact science.” It “is a patchwork of facts, hypotheses, guesses, and speculations.” Archaeologists’ opinions are not gospel.
Here is another example of faulty archeological age estimates:
There are several large shell rings, some 300 feet in diameter and about 12 feet high, along the Atlantic coastline, from South Carolina to Florida, obviously built for protective walls for these communities. As the ground is flat and the water table is high in these areas, digging pits around them to obtain dirt to build the rings was not an option. The material used in the construction of these shell mounds was dug from shell-reefs in the bays around them at low tide. Shell-reefs are an accumulation of shells on the seabed resulting from layers of thousands of years of successive generations of oysters and other mollusks. These shells mixed with the sediment brought down by the rivers, made good construction material. This shell-reef material is used in our day for the foundation of roads and for aggregate in concrete and asphalt.
However, as there are no pits, Archaeologists surmised that these huge shell rings were the discarded shells of the diet of the inhabitants and were classified as middens or trash piles. A circular midden 1,000 feet in circumference and 12 feet high? Consequently, they assumed that the carbon age estimate of the shells in the rings would also be the age of the habitation. The age of the shells, however, could well be thousands of years older than the habitation because they scooped up the dead shells from the layers of previous ages. These shell samples in these rings mounds along the Atlantic Coast have therefore been radiocarbon age estimated to be 1,000 to 2,000 years earlier than the Nephite period. (Russo & Heide, Investigation of the Coosaw Island Shell Ring Complex, 2003, p. 31.)
The opinions of archaeologists are not the gospel, and their mound age estimates can be very subjective.
Until and unless other qualified experts come forth with actual evidence promoting the Heartland model, we are left to choose archaeologist hypotheses based on experience and testing, or pure speculation.
Time and again, the Heartland model apologists have argued with experts in order to force their square into a round hole.
We may as well say that God caused all the evidence for the Heartland model to be supernatural, not visible to the scientific mind…
First of all, there is five times as much area east of the Mississippi than there is in all of Mesoamerica, so the population could be 1/5 as dense to be equal. However, there is evidence that there was considerable population east of the Mississippi.
“And it came to pass also, that he caused the title of liberty to be hoisted upon EVERY TOWER which was in all the land, which was possessed by the Nephites; and thus Moroni planted the standard of liberty among the Nephites.” (Alma 46:36, emphasis added)
“And now it came to pass that Moroni did not stop making preparations for war, or to defend his people against the Lamanites; for he caused that his armies should commence…in digging up heaps of earth round about all the cities, throughout all the land which was possessed by the Nephites…And he caused TOWERS to be erected that overlooked those works…Thus Moroni did prepare strongholds against the coming of their enemies, round about EVERY CITY IN ALL THE LAND.” (Alma 50:1-6, emphasis added)
Earthen towers were constructed inn every Nephite city as their primary strategic defense against the Lamanites. It is the basic strategic military advantage of the high ground, giving the defenders about a 5:1 advantage. Earthen towers do not disappear by themselves. They remain as archaeological evidence of Nephite habitations. Today we refer to them as mounds, and they are scattered all across the United States east of the Mississippi river. There are over 700 mounds in the state of Louisiana alone. There are very few in Mesoamerica. These towers/mounds are the most obvious and the greatest archeological connection to the Book of Mormon and are being largely ignored as such.
These towers/mounds are evidence of a large population. It took hundreds of thousands of man hours to build each one of them. They were not built by hunter-gatherers nor by subsistence farmers. There had to be leadership and organization. There were construction plans, labor to organize and be supervised, food to be provided for them. The labor force had to be willing to do it. Defense for survival is a primary motivator. This required organization goes far beyond kinship. Most cities had at least one tower, some cities had several.
The ancient cities in the eastern half of the United States had a population of 2,000 to 20,000 people. But in ancient agrarian civilizations only 10% of the population lived in cities, so that would be 20, 000 to 200, 000 associated with one city. (https://www.workingnowandthen.com/scholarstudent/snapshots/farm-workers/ )
Meeting the population requirements of the text in the eastern half of the United States is not an issue.
This is probably one of the biggest problems with the Heartland model. North America above Mexico just doesn’t have the numbers. Over 200,000 Nephite warriors died in the final battle, not including Lamanite deaths.
Then the 2 Million plus deaths among the Jaredites. There are NO areas in the Heartland model that can even achieve 1/10 the Nephite numbers, much less the Jaredites.
Besides Mesoamerica, only the Incan Empire could approach the numbers required, and they aren’t in the running.
I’ve lived near mounds in the South, and now just a couple hours from Cahokia. While the mound builders were impressive, they would not require hundreds of thousands of workers. Most schlars agree they were built by only 10-20,000 workers.
Moroni built towers and fortresses to protect cities from invasion. That doesn’t seem to be the purpose of most of the mounds. Most were ceremonial sites that natives gathered to only a few times per year. Totally different than Moroni’s purpose.
Compare the mounds to the temples built in Mesoamerica. The stone structures would require thousands of skilled laborers.
Also, many of the mounds post date the Nephites, not to mention the Jaredites.
Cahokia mounds were built 900-1200 AD. Outside of Nephite timeframe. So, again, there is no evidence for large numbers in Heartland area.
Gerald,
I said, “hundreds of thousands of man hours,” not workers. Those towers/mounds were built one basketful of dirt at a time.
Still, while it did take time to build the mounds, most were not built around big cities for defense. Most are now considered either ceremonial or funeral mounds.
A paradigm has developed over the past forty years amongst archaeologists that most of the Ancient Americans were peaceful, and therefore thy tend to steer away from interpreting their findings to indicate violence. The abundance of arrow heads and spear heads found at all mound sites disproves that belief. The concentrations of them show that they were not lost while hunting.
I was on a Heartland tour where we heard that the archaeologists had so much wrong. Mark Wright noted that the Heartland response to archaeology was: “Archaeologists say. . . but we know better because of the Book of Mormon.” Wright continued. Mesoamericanists say: ” The archaeologists say. . . therefore we learn this about the Book of Mormon.” Archaeologists aren’t always right. Information and interpretations improve. Still, it takes too much hubris to suggest that they are always wrong about the things they say we with they wouldn’t.
For example, we have folk stories of large collections of arrowheads that make it appear that there were wars. The archaeologists don’t find them. We have stories. We also have no other evidence of wars. Raids yes. Wars in anything close to the Book of Mormon descriptions no. They didn’t ave the food to supply that large an army.