This is the one subject about Mormonism that I’ve put off the longest.  It was such a huge undertaking in my mind that quite frankly it scared me!  I’m not an archaeologist, nor am I a theologian; but, the one thing I’ve been gifted with is literacy.  Whenever I’ve undertaken a project I make it a point to look at all things thoroughly. 

     I looked at countless Christian, aka “anti-Mormon” websites, in addition to FAIR and FARMS to get a collective list of which things were questionable in the Book of Mormon and came up with eighteen items.  We’re taking a look at those eighteen items of interest in alphabetical order.  I’ve used the official websites of dictionaries, encyclopedias, universities and research analysts of various fields to retrieve the data needed and have listed my findings here.

     As I’ve already said, I’m a simple person.  I’m a stay-at-home mom of two teenage daughters.  Additionally, I’m a nosey person and I want to know why things like silk, iron or horses weren’t in the Americas during the time of the Book of Mormon and that is what drives me to get each question I have answered.  

     I want to know when these things arrived here or how long they’ve been known to be here in America and I want to be sure I personally know for an absolute certainty from historical records that each of my findings is correct.  For every website I’ve listed there were at least five others that I went to for corroboration. 

     I think it’s also important to see what the original source has to say about themselves so what does one of the greatest thinkers of Mormonism have to say about the Book of Mormon?  From B.H. Roberts himself, here is an analysis of Joseph Smith’s work. 

Studies of the Book of Mormon, by B.H. Roberts, p. 271; “There were other Anti-Christs among the Nephites, but they were more military leaders than religious innovators... they are all of one breed and brand; so nearly alike that one mind is the author of them, and that a young and underdeveloped, but piously inclined mind.  The evidence I sorrowfully submit, points to Joseph Smith as their creator.  It is difficult to believe that they are a product of history, that they came upon the scene separated by long periods of time, and among a race which was the ancestral race of the red man of America.”

     If this guy doubts the authenticity of the Book of Mormon shouldn’t we?

1 – Barley

Mosiah 7:22; “And all this he did, for the sole purpose of bringing this people into subjection or into bondage. And behold, we at this time do pay tribute to the king of the Lamanites, to the amount of one half of our corn, and our barley, and even all our grain of every kind, and one half of the increase of our flocks and our herds; and even one half of all we have or possess the king of the Lamanites doth exact of us, or our lives.”

    CFW (Cereal Foods of the World) has an incredibly detailed account of the history of food grains on their website.  (1)   Yeah I know it might sound boring from that explanation, but it is interesting to find out who ate what and when.  The massive amount of work performed by these people serves as proof barley was not in the Americas until the arrival of Columbus’ second visit here in 1494, more than one thousand years after the end of the Book of Mormon story.

     This particular site is provided by C.W. Newman and R.K. Newman from Newman Associates, Inc. Bozeman, MT.  Performing a basic search on the net in addition to his site you’ll learn that Mr. Newman is cited in several works regarding the history of barley and “received his Ph.D. degree in animal science at Louisiana State University in 1965”.  He did “extensive work and research exploring the food and feed value of barley”.  Here is part of what he had to say regarding barley;

“Columbus brought barley to the North American continent in 1494 on his second voyage (27).  The original introduction site was not conducive to barley culture, and there were no further reports of production in the area.  Later there were two additional pathways through which barley was introduced more successfully in North America.  Barley was brought to the East Coast colonies from England at the turn of the 17^th century and into the Southwest during the Spanish mission movement (29).  There is little or no indication that barley was used for food during these early years; most of the crop was grown for malting, and the remainder was used as animal fee.  The same pattern continues today in the United States, with the majority of barley used for animal feed (65%) and malt and alcohol production (30%) and the remainder consumed as food (1.5%) or used for other purposes (15).”

2 – Bows and Arrows

1 Nephi 16:14; “And it came to pass that we did take our bows and our arrows, and go forth into the wilderness to slay food for our families; and after we had slain food for our families we did return again to our families in the wilderness, to the place of Shazer. And we did go forth again in the wilderness, following the same direction, keeping in the most fertile parts of the wilderness, which were in the borders near the Red Sea.”

     From the many websites I visited throughout this research it was generally agreed that bows and arrows didn’t come into the Americas until the late Woodland (500 AD) or early Mississippian (800-1100 AD) time period.  The dates listed here are an average from data collected.  As you can see this is at least 400 years after the story in the Book of Mormon ends!

     Typically arrows were made from the rudimentary carving of various sharpened stone while bows were made from hickory, ash or black locust woods that could have “a pull weight of about fifty pounds”.

     The iron hatchet came with the arrival of the white man in the eighteenth and nineteenth century which greatly changed the scenery of warfare in the lives of the American Indians.  Up until the fifteenth century American Indians had pretty much stayed to themselves in their own villages, with the remnants of palisades being found from the southeastern part of the U.S. to north of the Ohio valley.

     Historical warfare periods weren’t known to the American Indians until the arrival of the white man.  There were the occasional “Indian raids”, but these never consisted of more than a few hundred men at a time, nothing in scale to what the Book of Mormon claims.  (2)

3 – CEMENT

Helaman 3:7; “And there being but little timber upon the face of the land, nevertheless the people who went forth became exceedingly expert in the working of cement; therefore they did build houses of cement, in the which they did dwell.”

     I keep learning the older I get, the less I know in life and this is a perfect example.  Ha!  Cement is an ingredient in concrete.  I’ve always thought they were the same thing and used the words interchangeably not knowing my ignorance…sigh!  From the website of www.dictionary.com it says this about cement;

“Any of various calcined mixtures of clay and limestone, usually mixed with water and sand, gravel, etc., to form concrete, that are used as a building material.”

     Cement became very popular during the Roman Empire during the time of Nero, circa 60 AD.  It was used to build palaces, malls and temples like the Pantheon.  Aside from these large structures people didn’t use it to build homes or other buildings with it, but used it only as the glue between bricks or stones.  (3)

     And just when I thought learning about cement would bore me to death I learned something very curious which caught my immediate attention;

“Construction of a system of canals in the first half of the 19th Century created the first large-scale demand for cement in this country. In 1818, a year after the Erie Canal was started, Canvass White, an engineer, discovered rock deposits in Madison County, NY, from which natural hydraulic cement could be made with little additional processing. He produced large amounts of this cement for use in the Erie Canal.”  (4)

     Hmmm…it makes me wonder if Smith used the idea of cement homes from the local construction sites surrounding his neck of the woods…certainly he would’ve heard about this and/or read about it in the local papers! 

4 – CHARIOTS

Alma 18:9; “And they said unto him: Behold, he is feeding thy horses. Now the king had commanded his servants, previous to the time of the watering of their flocks, that they should prepare his horses and chariots, and conduct him forth to the land of Nephi; for there had been a great feast appointed at the land of Nephi, by the father of Lamoni, who was king over all the land.”

     There were a number of uses for the chariot most of which included war battles, racing, parades and games.  The first recorded location of chariots is believed to have been in Mesopotamia, but even that is disputed.  It seems the last recorded use of a chariot was circa 540 AD timeframe and by that time in history they were only being used in parades.  (5)

     The website of www.encyclopedia.com gives a good concise explanation of the origin, uses, and geographical spread of the chariot.  Nothing I found said anything about the chariot being in the American continent at any time so that pretty much negates the story of the father of Lamoni gathering the chariots to go for a feast! 

5 – Chickens

2 Nephi 5:11; “And the Lord was with us; and we did prosper exceedingly; for we did sow seed, and we did reap again in abundance. And we began to raise flocks, and herds, and animals of every kind”

     While I am fully aware that the word “chickens” was not used in the Book of Mormon the verse above indicates that this is most probably what they were talking about.  However, according to the National Geographic Society and every reputable website out there we read otherwise.  As noted they have recently found fragments of a chicken bone in Chile which they believe is around 1550 – 2000 years old.  It was one chicken bone in Chile…were the Book of Mormon people ever known to have been in Chile?  (6) 

     In defense of using the chicken in this article the reader might also want to read an interesting book written by LDS author Paul Cheesman called “Book of Mormon: The Keystone Scripture”, pg. 191.  It is in this chapter that Cheesman defends early voyages from China and other eastern countries at or around the sixteenth century AD.  Keep in mind they are eastern countries some 1200 years after the end of the Book of Mormon stories…

6 – CIMETER (SCIMETER)

Jarom 1:20; “And I bear record that the people of Nephi did seek diligently to restore the Lamanites unto the true faith in God…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.”

     I wanted to address two items of interest in this section.  One is the topic of the National Geographic Society and their official statement of “finds” in Mesoamerica and the other topic is the scimeter.  Now the scimeter is an old-world weapon that would be categorized as a curved spear or sword that is typically held by two hands.  For a list of Aztec weapons click on the link below.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scimitar#Scimitars_in_history)

     The LDS apologists will tell you that Smith was referring to the Mesoamerican cimeter but these are made of hardwood clubs, not spears made of steel that Smith claims.  The spears that people in the Mesoamerica areas used were made of stone that had been sharpened.  These proved to be a formidable weapon; however they weren’t made of any type of metal.

     We’ve already established through the National Geographic Society and the Smithsonian Institute that the Book of Mormon has never proved to be reliable in any archaeological sense (7).  This is part of what Ms. Walker from the National Geographic Society said to me through an e-mail:

“The National Geographic Society has not examined the historical claims of the Book of Mormon.  We know of no archaeological evidence that corroborates the ancient history of the Western Hemisphere as presented in the Book of Mormon, nor are we aware of empirical verification of the places named in the Book of Mormon.”

     So why does the LDS Church have people like John Sorensen saying things like this?

“When Cortez crossed southern Mexico during his epic journey to Honduras, he discovered fortifications around the Laguna de Terminos area very similar to those Moroni erected in the first century B.C. (Alma 53:1-5) in the east coastal lowlands only a few score miles from Cortez's route.”

     Sorensen is a gifted writer as we can see and he has the gift of being able to twist words to make it look as if these two places match up in identity, therefore authenticating the Book of Mormon.  Sorensen goes on to say:

“The Book of Mormon describes a ditch being dug around the protected area; the excavated earth was piled inward to form a bank. Atop it a fence of timbers was planted and bound together with vines. That very arrangement is now well documented archaeologically. The National Geographic Society-Tulane University project at Becan in the center of the Yucatan peninsula has shown the pattern to be very old.”  John L. Sorenson, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, 261.

     Pay close attention to this previous section because Sorensen made it sound like the National Geographic Society from Tulane authenticated the Book of Mormon claims, but they did not!  What they documented is what Cortez discovered when he went to Honduras.  And Cortez never said anything about Laguna de Terminos being similar to what Moroni supposedly built!  When the average Mormon reads something like that, they’ll assume the National Geographic said it was true!  On the very next page of Sorensen’s book it says this about the cimeter;

“The Mesoamerican parallel would be the weapon the Aztecs called the maccuahuitl, a hardwood club edged on both sides with razor-sharp obsidian blades. The Spaniards called this feared weapon a "sword," said it was sharper than their own weapons, and learned with dismay that one blow with it could cut off the head of a horse. Bernal Diaz, among the conquering Spaniards, also reported "broad swords" distinct from the maccuahuitl, but these are not elsewhere described, as far as I know.”  John L. Sorenson, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, 262.

     The truth is that these two weapons are vastly different.  They were made by two different cultures, from two different types of material.  (8)  And the National Geographic Society never authenticated what the Book of Mormon says no matter what BYU says.  From what all the well respected archaeologists and scientists have said it is even more unlikely the Middle East and Mesoamerica even knew of each other during the years that Smith claims this was going on!

     To the Mormon:  it is easy enough to be startled when reading or hearing anything from F.A.R.M.S.  They make it sound so good, but the true evidence has always proved otherwise…there will never be any evidence with proof the lands of the Book of Mormon existed.  As B.H. Roberts said, the only place they did exist is in Joseph Smith’s own mind and Satan’s of course!

     For further reading on this subject from the Maxwell Institute please read what they have to say here:  http://www.farmsresearch.com/publications/jbms/?vol=5&num=1&id=118&cat_id=274

7 – COMPASS

1 Nephi 18:12; “And it came to pass that after they had bound me insomuch that I could not move, the compass, which had been prepared of the Lord, did cease to work.”

     Here are two examples of this word in the Bible and how they are used. 

Exodus 27:5; “And thou shalt put it under the compass of the altar beneath, that the net may be even to the midst of the altar.”

Exodus 38:4; “And he made for the altar a brazen grate of network under the compass thereof beneath unto the midst of it.”

     The Hebrew word for compass is: karkob.  It means rim or top margin.  In the New Testament we see it used in Acts 28:13;

“And from thence we fetched a compass, and came to Rhegium: and after one day the south wind blew, and we came the next day to Puteoli.”

     The Greek word is perierchomai.  It means: to come all around, that is, stroll, vacillate, veer—fetch a compass, vagabond, wandering about. 

     Now let’s look at what 1 Nephi 18:21says about the word compass which supposedly took place circa 589 BC;

“And it came to pass after they had loosed me, behold, I took the compass, and it did work whither I desired it. And it came to pass that I prayed unto the Lord; and after I had prayed the winds did cease, and the storm did cease, and there was a great calm.” 

     We can see from this passage of First Nephi that they are referring to a navigational device.  After spending about 10 minutes searching on the internet for information on who invented the compass I came upon the website of Smith College History of Science.  Here is what they said about the compass:

“Earliest records show a spoon shaped compass made of lodestone or magnetite ore, referred to as a "South-pointer" dating back to sometime during the Han Dynasty (2nd century BCE to 2nd century CE).”  The report goes on to say; “…By the time of the T'ang dynasty (7-8th century CE), Chinese scholars had devised a way to magnetize iron needles, by rubbing them with magnetite, and then suspending them in water (early 11th century)…during the Sung dynasty (1000 CE) many trading ships were then able to sail as far as Saudi Arabia without getting lost.”

     The Europeans didn’t use compasses for navigation until the twelfth to thirteenth century (9), so why did the Nephites have them some 1,800 years before the Europeans and at least 400 years before it was invented by the Chinese?  In addition, why when it broke was no one able to fix it except one person?

     You can find the Smith College History of Science website at:

http://www.smith.edu/hsc/museum/ancient_inventions/compass2.html

     So from what the Bible says about the word compass and its transliterations, and from what we can learn by just reading a history lesson of sorts, we can see there is no way at all the “Nephite” Jews were using a compass to guide themselves around.     

     Granted, Joseph Smith didn’t have access to the internet back in 1830 but certainly if this was theopneustos (God breathed), Joseph Smith would have had access to God!  Wouldn’t God know when the compass was invented?

8 – Cows

1 Nephi 18:25; “And it came to pass that we did find upon the land of promise, as we journeyed in the wilderness, that there were beasts in the forests of every kind, both the cow and the ox, and the ass and the horse, and the goat and the wild goat, and all manner of wild animals, which were for the use of men. And we did find all manner of ore, both of gold, and of silver, and of copper.”

     As we can see from the two sites below there is at least an eleven hundred year discrepancy between what the Book of Mormon claims and historical facts are. (10)

     The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy reports the Pineywoods descends from Spanish cattle and were one of the first breeds brought to America in the early 1500’s. (10) 

     And in case there was any doubt as to what type of cattle or dairy cows we’re talking about there is also this site that tells us about the first dairy cows that were brought to America;

“Dairy cows first arrived in America in 1611 which helped end severe starvation in Jamestown Colony.”  They also report “In 1623, two Devon heifers and a Devon bull were imported to the Plymouth Colony from Britain. These three cattle were probably the first purebred cattle to reach North America. Devon cattle were highly valued as oxen in the American Colonies.” (10)

     Interestingly enough we also see in Studies of the Book of Mormon, pg. 99, B.H. Roberts quoted well respected Mr. W. H. Holmes from the Bureau of American Ethnology who thought it was interesting that the characters in the Book of Mormon never mentioned drinking milk; 

“…Strange, this absence of the use of milk as a diet since the Book of Mormon peoples were immigrants into the New World from regions where the use of milk was a common diet, and came to a land of “cattle and cows,” yet no mention is made of the use of milk as a diet in the Book of Mormon.”

9 – Donkey/Ass

Mosiah 5:14; “And again, doth a man take an ass which belongeth to his neighbor, and keep him? I say unto you, Nay; he will not even suffer that he shall feed among his flocks, but will drive him away, and cast him out. I say unto you, that even so shall it be among you if ye know not the name by which ye are called.”

     The simple explanation below gives proof the ass/donkey wasn’t in the Americas when Joseph’s story in the Book of Mormon claims they were.  I wonder how many times things like this have to appear before a member of the Church gets sick of having so many “coincidences” of things not being right?

“Equines had become extinct in the Western Hemisphere at the end of the last Ice Age. However, horses and donkeys were brought back to the Americas by the Conquistadors. In 1495, the ass first appeared in the New World when Christopher Columbus brought four jacks and two jennys. It is from this bloodline that many of the mules which the Conquistadors used while they explored the Americas were produced.” (11)

10 – Elephants

Ether 9:19; “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.”

     The evolution explanation of the elephant in America is listed below.  I found it rather interesting that their surmising of what happened with the elephant sounds a lot like the surmising of what took place in the Book of Mormon…they “multiplied astonishingly and then became extinct…”  Remember what God told us in Ecc.1:9?

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”

     From the website of “Revolution Against Evolution” it states;

“The mastodon elephant arrived in America during the Miocene epoch, according to the texts, multiplied astonishingly, and then became extinct. Assorted explanations have been offered, including the theory that early hunters wiped them all out. Various dates, for example, 4500 B.C., are given when the last elephant in America died. A far more recent date is suggested by the following. Near Concordia, Columbia, a complete skeleton of a mastodon was found in an artificial salt pond, which had been constructed by Indians. The pond, with its bottom of paved stones together with the animal, had been entombed by a sudden landslide (Victoria Institute, 1886, 22:151).” (12)

11 – Glass

Ether 3:1; “And it came to pass that the brother of Jared, (now the number of the vessels which had been prepared was eight) went forth unto the mount, which they called the mount Shelem, because of its exceeding height, and did molten out of a rock sixteen small stones; and they were white and clear, even as transparent glass…”

     A couple of things should be noted for this section just to make sure we are fair when looking at this subject.

     First, according to the website of www.inventors.about.com it says that glass is thought to have been first created around 3,000 BC during the Bronze Age (3300 – 1200 BC). 

     Secondly, because we’re dealing with a type of window glass for this particular study, the information I found for this invention took place during the Imperial Period (44 BC).  The website of Met Museum says this about window glass;

“Glass windowpanes were first made in the early imperial period, and used most prominently in the public baths to prevent drafts. Because window glass in Rome was intended to provide insulation and security, rather than illumination or as a way of viewing the world outside, little, if any, attention was paid to making it perfectly transparent or of even thickness. Window glass could be either cast or blown.”  (13)

     So we see from what the Met Museum reports there is little to no chance that windows were readily available for ships or boats at the time of the Jaredites which supposedly dates to 2,700 BC to 600 BC.  The main story of the Jaredites can be found in the book of Ether.

     American glass has an interesting story if you’re so inclined to read a synopsis of that!  The contributor to this site is Steve W. Martin, Ph.D., Professor of Materials, Science and Engineering, Iowa State University.  (14)

     In part this is what Dr. Martin reports on this site;

“Early American glass. The first factory in what is now the United States was a glass plant built at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1608. The venture failed within a year because of a famine that took the lives of many colonists. The Jamestown colonists tried glassmaking again in 1621, but an Indian attack in 1622 and the scarcity of workers ended this attempt in 1624. The industry was reestablished in America in 1739, when Caspar Wistar built a glassmaking plant in what is now Salem County, New Jersey. This plant operated until 1780.”

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