On the Trail of the Plates of Mormon

I just read this great article, Reconsidering Book of Mormon Geography, from David Stewart, Jr’s website 72languages.

From my understanding of the article, the author believes in the hemispheric model. He shows a very strong argument for this model. The only point I don’t agree with is the others in the land section. I have shown on this blog that there were others in the land even though it doesn’t specifically say that in the Book of Mormon.

The main reason for this post is to show you why I believe Joseph Smith is the foundation of my theory.

From the article:

“Smarter than the Prophet?
Lucy Mack Smith, mother of the prophet Joseph Smith, recorded that Joseph “would describe the ancient inhabitants of this continent, their dress, their manner of traveling, the animals which they rode, the cities that they built, and the structure of their buildings with every particular; their mode of warfare, and their religious worship as specifically as though he had spent his life with them.”
As the translator of the Book of Mormon who received numerous divine visitations from the Angel Moroni, keeper of the sacred records, and inspired prophet of the Restoration, Joseph Smith was in a unique position to provide insight into Book of Mormon peoples. The early brethren, who had been taught directly by Joseph Smith, recorded a nearly unanimous belief in hemispheric spread of Book of Mormon peoples. Joseph Smith’s pronouncements about Book of Mormon peoples ought to be carefully studied in any interpretation of Book of Mormon geography.”

This statement says what I believe perfectly. I have said in an earlier post that Joseph Smith was the only true expert on the Book of Mormon history and researchers seem to have pushed him aside and dismissed his statements. They always say we don’t know whether it was by revelation or his own opinion. How can we argue against and challenge the first Prophet and the early brethren based on this statement? Joseph Smith brought into this world a history of the North American people that is being challenged by both LDS and non-LDS members. He provided some of the answers that historians and the people in general have been asking since the Europeans arrived here. Where did the Native Americans come from and what is their history? They have told a few people that they came over from the lands of the west and yet researchers refuse to believe them. Who else would know more about their history? Only Joseph Smith. He gave us specific answers in the Book of Mormon of at least one line of descendants from Israel. The Book of Mormon only talks about the Nephite history. It was never meant to be a history of other New World people. There are other records, like the Mentinah records, that talk about these other people. And numerous archaeological discoveries have shown that many different people came here from all over the world. In my last post, I briefly talked about the Phoenicians setting up colonies in Central America. How do we know that they didn’t migrate north and settled parts of North America and lived with the Jaredites? Maybe they mixed at one point but through wars and famine the population was nearly wiped out before Lehi came.

To recap my theory, I believe that the Nephites were pushed northward by the Lamanites over a thousand year period. Whenever the Church or the people were about to be destroyed the Lord moved the Nephites to another location and restarted the Church there. I am slowly incorporating the Nemenhah history from the Mentinah Archives into this theory and other sources of information that I have found to support my ideas. It will take me a while to get all this down on this blog but I have plenty of time. I have a lot of source material that I have gathered to present on this blog and I continue searching the internet for more and new information.

This is the title of a public domain book published in 1892 that I found at the Internet Archive. I know there is a lot of speculation and theories that they came to the New World from the Atlantic side but this author has shown through architecture, ancient texts, artifacts found in Central America, etc. that they originally  came across the Pacific Ocean. He linked together all the archaeological discoveries and cultural similarities found from India through the South Sea Islands to South America and Central America. His map of the Phoenician route is very similar to the current maps of Lehi’s travel to the New World. This is the best theory I have read on early migrations of Old World people.

This is one of my favorite passages of this book found on page 29:

“The ruins of Mexico and Central America present so many different architectural styles, that it seems very
probable that they were built at different times, and by different peoples. Those which appear to be oldest,
and which are most uniform in style are, the substructures in Maya-pam.”

The author also gives a great discussion on the Aztec calender or water stone. He sees it as a mariner’s compass that the Phoenicians used in their sea travels. There is a lot of possible research that could be done based on this book and could answer some questions on Mayan and Aztec history.

You can download the book online here:

Phoenicians in America