On April 10 - 11, 2015, luminaries from the worldwide fellowship of Mayanists gathered on the campus of Cal State Los Angeles CSULA for a significant conference in honor of Linda Schele (1942 - 1998). Entitled "In the Realm of the Vision Serpent: Decipherments and Discoveries in Mesoamerica, A Symposium in Homage to Linda Schele", the gathering featured presentations from such noted scholars as:

• Manuel Aguilar-Moreno, Cal State LA
• Allen J. Christenson, BYU
• David A. Freidel, Washington University
• Claudia Garcia-Des Lauriers, Cal Poly Pomona
• Julia Guernsey, UT Austin
• Rex Koontz, University of Houston
• Peter Mathews, La Trobe University
• Mary Ellen Miller, Yale
• John M.D. Pohl, UCLA/Cal State LA
• F. Kent Reilly, III, Texas State
• David Stuart, UT Austin
• Carolyn Tate, Texas Tech
• Karl Taube, UC Riverside
• Gabrielle Vail, New College of Florida
• Marc Zender, Tulane

Scholars not on the program but referred to regularly included Nikolai Grube, Stephen D. Houston, David H. Kelley (1924 - 2011), Simon Martin and William Saturno. All were colleagues, students, or friends of Linda Schele. Peter Mathews is the only surviving member of the group of three [Floyd Lounsbury (1914 - 1998), Linda Schele (1942 - 1998), Peter Matthews] whose collaboration led to the magic moment at the first Palenque Roundtable in December, 1973, when modern Mayan decipherment really began. The three identified the names of 8 Palenque rulers in 3 hours and the world has never looked back. In 1984 Matthews was named a MacArthur Fellow and received one of the so-called "genius grants." David Stuart was also named a MacArthur Fellow in 1984 when he was only 18 years old, the youngest person ever to receive the award.

Freidel, Mathews, and Miller co-authored books with Schele:
The Blood of Kings, 1986, Linda Schele and Mary Ellen Miller
A Forest of Kings, 1990, Linda Schele and David Freidel
Maya Cosmos, 1993, David Freidel, Linda Schele, Joy Parker
Hidden Faces of the Maya, 1997, Linda Schele and Jorge Perez de Lara
The Code of Kings, 1998, Linda Schele and Peter Mathews

Everyone had their Linda Schele story to tell. Many presenters said it almost felt like they were back in Austin at Linda's famed Maya Meetings. Video clips of interviews with Schele directed by David Lebrun were interspersed between presentations. Schele signed off on Christenson's PhD dissertation on her deathbed. Stuart was at Palenque on April 18, 1998, the day she died of pancreatic cancer. He planted a ceiba tree in her honor on the plaza in front of the Temple of the Inscriptions. Her remains are interred on a hillside overlooking Lake Atitlan.

An overtone of spirituality pervaded the conference. Aguilar-Moreno was a Catholic priest in Mexico when he began to study with Schele. Her prophetic counsel to him has led to a remarkable legacy as an art historian in Los Angeles, including the 2015 conference. There was a time in her life when Schele recognized she was addicted to alcohol. Her journey to sobriety was a spiritual one. When she knew she had only weeks to live, she said, "I am going to become an ancestor" and she seemed to genuinely relish the prospect. David Stuart gave a powerful presentation about the Maya pantheon and suggested that contemporary humans could benefit greatly by learning to think like the Maya thought with the physical and spiritual worlds inextricably intertwined. The vision serpent, for whom the conference was named, was a source of spiritual enlightenment among the Maya.

Vision Serpent from Yaxchilan Lintel 15 Now in the British Museum

After the presentations on Friday, attendees viewed an excellent museum exhibit entitled "Eternal Realms of Revelry: The MAW Collection of Pre-Columbian Art" curated by John M.D. Pohl. Pohl had the same problem museologists all over the world face when dealing with antiquities. Some of the best pieces were looted, offered for sale on the global art market, and acquired by private collectors, so their provenience will be forever tentative.

Teotihuacan-style Ceramic Vessel

I will not summarize the conference proceedings. There was simply too much material presented. I will, however, highlight some data points potentially relevant to the Book of Mormon.

1. Palenque is the most important site in the Maya world.
Palenque is the lodestone. David Freidel.
The Tablet of the Foliated Cross from Palenque depicts death and resurrection, themes of utmost importance to the Maya. Allen Christenson.
Piers B & E from the Temple of the Inscriptions, Palenque, show the god K'awiil being cradled as an infant. The Dumbarton Oaks Tablet from Palenque shows Lord Pakal as a diminutive K'awiil. Jennifer Scheper Hughes, UC Riverside.
Pakal died as the maize god, K'awiil. He is then shown rising up the life tree. Mary Miller.
God L, the merchant, is represented at Palenque. Andrew Turner, UC Riverside.
Palenque was a society built around art. It was a society where art was central to the existence of the society. We use science to explain reality. Palenque was a society where art explained reality. Linda Schele.
"In 1973 at the mesa redonda (round table) Floyd Lounsbury, Peter Mathews and I deciphered the names of 8 Palenque kings in 3 hours. That was the moment when we began to read Mayan." Linda Schele.
"On my first visit to Palenque, I could sense this site was an especially powerful source of the sacred." Linda Schele. Palenque is noted for the high quality of its glyphic texts.
Some of the figurines found on Jaina Island actually came from Palenque. Mary Miller.
Complex poetical devices such as chiasmus are found in the Popol Vuh and in Mayan texts from Palenque. Jamie Lynn, Texas Tech.
The Palenque cross group (Temple of the Cross, Temple of the Foliated Cross, Temple of the Sun) are the most important structures in Mesoamerica. David Stuart.
Triadic gods (G1, G2, G3) are found at Palenque and Caracol. David Stuart.
--
Book of Mormon connection 1 a. According to the geographic model developed since 2011 in this blog, Palenque was in the local land of Zarahemla, the Nephite culture core. V. Garth Norman was the first to publish this correlation in 2006.
1 b. Death and resurrection were themes of utmost importance to the Nephites. They appear dozens of times in the Book of Mormon Alma 11:42, Mosiah 15:21.
1 c. Jesus Christ's infancy is attested in the Book of Mormon 1 Nephi 11:20.
1 d. Jesus Christ in the Book of Mormon asked men to become like him, to develop god-like attributes 3 Nephi 12:48.
1 e. The tree of life is amply attested in the Book of Mormon Alma 5:34.
1 f. Merchants were prominent in Nephite life 3 Nephi 6:11.
1 g. The records kept by Nephite scribes were an especially powerful source of the sacred 4 Nephi 1:48.
1 h. Complex poetical devices such as chiasmus are found in the Book of Mormon Alma 36.
1 i. For many years the temple at Zarahemla was the most important structure in the Nephite world Mosiah 1:18.
1 j. A triad of gods is mentioned prominently in the Book of Mormon 3 Nephi 11:27.

2. Maya writing is art.
What was said was controlled by tradition. Couplets, triplets and other forms of expression were the real Maya art forms. Linda Schele.
--
Book of Mormon connection 2 a. What was said in the Book of Mormon was controlled by tradition. The text is highly regular in its phraseology. See the blog article "English in the Book of Mormon," particularly the synopsis of Royal Skousen's presentation.
2 b. Couplets, triplets and other forms of expression are the Nephite art forms that have endured to our day. The Book of Mormon is so rich in parallelism that a new edition was published to highlight its literary structures. See Donald W. Parry, The Book of Mormon Text Reformatted according to Parallelistic Patterns (Provo: FARMS, 1992, 2002).

3. History is treasure.
History is a precious gift.It provides identity, resilience, examples of how to cope. Linda Schele.
--
Book of Mormon connection 3 a. The Book of Mormon is a precious gift of great worth to the Lamanites 2 Nephi 28:2.
3 b. The Book of Mormon informs Lamanites of their identity Mormon 7:2.
3 c. The Book of Mormon has examples of resilience, of how to cope in difficult situations 3 Nephi 6:14.

4. Science is the method.
Gather data, wait for it to pattern, and when it patterns follow it wherever it wants to go. Let the data drive the model. Linda Schele.
--
Book of Mormon connection 4. This blog is a reasonably good example of letting the data drive the model. Its approach to the text is highly empirical and data-driven.

5. Humanity is the goal.
To understand humans, we need to understand the New World. Linda Schele.
--
Book of Mormon connection 5. The Book of Mormon champions the Western Hemisphere among the nations of the world 2 Nephi 29:12-13.

6. Directional cardinality. The Maya and the Olmec before them conceived of a quadrilateral heaven and a quadrilateral earth, each with four sides and four corners, all oriented to the cardinal directions.
Throughout the Maya world we see a four part cosmology, four cardinal directions, and four year bearers. There is a four fold organization of space and time. Julia Guernsey.
West was associated with the color black. Kawak years brought warfare & drought. South was associated with the color yellow and Kan years.East was associated with the color red and Muluk years. Gabrielle Vail.
Among the Ch'orti' the infernal world has four corners oriented to the four cardinal directions with the fifth cardinal direction being the navel, heart, or center. In each of the four directions is a sea. The white sea is represented by milk, the red sea by blood. A fifth sea lies at the center. Hull's diagram of the five seas was a classic quincunx with four points laid out like a cross and a fifth at the center.

Ch'orti' Conception of the World of Spirits

A square milpa (cornfield) represents cosmic space. The Ch'orti' dig a hole in the center of a milpa. The world has four or five pillars and four portals. East and west are the primary points of entry. In their travels, spirits follow the sun. Kerry M. Hull, BYU. For another example of four seas at the four cardinal directions with a fifth sea at the center, see the blog article "Quichean Directionality."
Symbols 19 - 22 of the Cascajal Block have recently been interpreted as motifs representing the four cardinal directions and the sun's path as it crosses the sky.

Cascajal Block with Symbols 19-22 Highlighted

Similar symbols appear in directional contexts in classic Maya art. La Venta is oriented 8 degrees west of north to align with the principal 30 meter high mound shaped like an artificial volcano . Celsiana Gera, UCLA.

Dirt archaeology is expensive. Even a modest dig can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per field season with more required for lab work to analyze samples and artifacts. Institutions sponsor most projects. Occasionally a generous soul comes along who is willing to privately fund excavation out of an altruistic motivation to advance scientific knowledge. I have met three such noble individuals.

• Tim Tucker sponsors research at various sites in the state of Puebla, Mexico.
• Joe V. Andersen funds excavation in the department of Baja Verapaz, Guatemala.
• Alan Rudd supports field work at the Beit Lehi site about 35 kilometers SW of Jerusalem.

All three men have an admirable sense of mission arising from a deep personal and spiritual connection to the lands they study. All bristle at cavalier scholarly criticism which they view as cheap shots enabled by the relatively facile act of putting pen to paper. In contrast, these hardy explorers are fully invested, having expended considerable time and private treasure probing the significance of their chosen sites.

Vol. 3 Part 1 of the Joseph Smith Papers Project Edited by Royal Skousen and Robin Scott Jensen

The stone:

One of Joseph Smith's Seer Stones

Eye witnesses to the Book of Mormon translation process described the stone as chocolate-colored and oval-shaped.

Joseph's Egg-shaped Seer Stone Viewed From the Side

This high grade foliated metamorphic rock is gneiss. Gneiss is characterized by pronounced striations called gneissic banding. Several varieties of gneiss are found in upstate New York where the prophet Joseph lived and worked. The regular shape and lustre of this remarkable specimen probably resulted from natural polishing in a streambed or underneath an advancing glacier. Joseph found this stone while digging a well.

Royal Skousen's methodical research on the original manuscript has shown that Joseph Smith saw approximately 20 words appear in English on the stone. After his scribe (primarily Oliver Cowdery) wrote and read back each snippet of text, about 20 more words would appear. Joseph spelled out the first occurrence of unusual proper names letter by letter. Joseph put his seer stone in a hat to exclude ambient light, making the words easier to read. For Jack Welch's insightful comments about Joseph's stone in his hat, see the blog article "English in the Book of Mormon."

Alma₂ prophesied about this stone in his instructions to his son, Helaman₁, ca. 73 BC Alma 37:23.

It was 48 years ago today, on August 16, 1967, that John W. Welch discovered chiasmus in the Book of Mormon while serving in the South German Mission under Pres. Orville C. Gunther. Chiasmus Day 2016 will be commemorated in a significant way. The 50th anniversary of this ground-breaking discovery will be an even more important event. If someone were to rank research findings in order of importance to the Book of Mormon studies discipline, Welch's 1969 BYU Studies article entitled "Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon" would almost certainly be #1.  

The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 - 7 may be the single most influential religious text in all of recorded history. It defines the essence of Christianity for multitudes past and present. The fact that a very similar sermon appears in 3 Nephi 11 - 18 has provided fodder for critics of the Book of Mormon who contend that Joseph Smith simply lifted this iconic text from the King James Bible. Upon close examination it is now clear both the Matthew and 3 Nephi versions have significant dependencies on much earlier temple texts. Two key players in this unfolding exegetical drama are Margaret Barker who read theology at Cambridge and John W. (Jack) Welch who read Greek philosophy at Oxford.

Dr. Barker, an English Methodist preacher, is widely recognized as the founder of Temple Theology, a branch of inquiry within Biblical (primarily Old Testament) Studies.She was elected President of the Society for Old Testament Study (SOTS) in 1998 and edited the Society's second monograph series published by Ashgate. Barker is the author of 16 books. She was awarded the Doctor of Divinity degree in 2008 by the Archbishop of Canterbury "in recognition of her work on the Jerusalem Temple and the origins of Christian Liturgy, which has made a significantly new contribution to our understanding of the New Testament and opened up important new fields for resrearch." In 2008 she and others founded the Temple Studies Group which believes the Temple in Jerusalem had a formative influence on the development of Christianity. (One is reminded of Hugh W. Nibley's 1959 Jewish Quarterly Review article "Christian Envy of the Temple" published in Mormonism and Early Christianity, vol. 4 in The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1987). The North American Academy for Temple Studies headquartered at Utah State University spun off from the UK-based Temple Studies Group. Jack Welch, Philip Barlow and Gary N. Anderson form the Academy for Temple Studies executive committee. For some intriguing Book of Mormon connections with ancient Temple lore, see the blog article "Temple Conference 2013."

Welch, Robert K. Thomas Professor of Law at the J. Reuben Clark Law School, BYU and Editor-in-Chief, BYU Studies, formed the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS, now the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, BYU) in 1979. Jack studied history, philosophy, Latin and Greek at BYU, Greek philosophy at Oxford (St. Edmund Hall), then law at Duke where he edited the Law Journal. While at Duke, Welch studied with James H. Charlesworth, now George L. Collord Professor of New Testament Language and Literature at Princeton Theological Seminary. Welch is a member of the steering committee of the BYU New Testament Commentary.

Welch's book Illuminating the Sermon at the Temple & Sermon on the Mount: An Approach  to 3 Nephi 11-18 and Matthew 5-7 (Provo: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 1998) broke new ground as it compared the two texts and found many concepts, phrases and symbols clearly derived from earlier temple literature.

Reading the Sermon on the Mount as a Temple Text in Light of 3 Nephi 11 The Cover Painting is by Minerva Teichert

Margaret Barker has long been popular among LDS scholars because her Temple Theology bridges the Old and New Testament worlds just as the Book of Mormon and contemporary Mormonism do. Many Christian thinkers like to see the New Testament as a completely new and revolutionary worldview. Barker and most Jewish scholars view the New Testament as a late expression of pre-existing ideas, traditions, customs and symbolism from an earlier era. The Book of Mormon fits comfortably in the Barker - Jewish camp. Barker liked Welch's book and appreciated how beautifully the Book of Mormon elucidates and expands upon the Bible while dovetailing seamlessly with it. (For an Evangelical turned Catholic articulation of the same idea, see the blog article "Mormon Christianity" which discusses the work of Stephen H. Webb). This idea of Book of Mormon as extension of and reinforcement to the Bible is expressed powerfully in 1 Nephi 13 and 2 Nephi 29.

Barker asked Welch to do another treatment of his Sermon on the Mount material minus the Book of Mormon content for mainstream Old Testament scholars. At first Welch was hesitant. Leaving out the Nephite text would handicap him. After all, it was 3 Nephi that clarified many of the Old Testament - New Testament relationships in the first place. As he got into the project, though, Jack discovered rich new veins of material to work with in the Psalms and other post-exilic Old Testament sources. In his 1998 analysis, he had limited his use of the Old Testament to texts that would have been on the brass plates of Laban spirited out of Jerusalem ca. 600 B.C. In 2009 Welch's The Sermon on the Mount in the Light of the Temple appeared in the Society for Old Testament Study Monograph Series edited by Margaret Barker and published by Ashgate.

Reading the Sermon on the Mount as a Temple Text

The Book of Mormon only appears once in this work, at the end of the final chapter as another example of the Sermon on the Mount in a Temple setting.

Welch's use of the terms 'illuminating' in 1998 and 'light' in 2009 are not coincidental. Temple liturgy as revealed by the Prophet Joseph in this the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times Ephesians 1:10, Doctrine & Covenants 128:18, etc. is a restoration of Temple worship in Old Testament times and the Temple clarifies and brightens our understanding of Matthew 5 - 7. Matthew, of course, was the Gospel writer who specifically targeted a Jewish audience. When Jack discovered chiasmus in the Book of Mormon on August 16, 1967 in Regensburg, Germany, the voice that startled him said "if it is evidence of Hebrew style in the Bible (referring specifically to the Book of Matthew), it must be evidence of Hebrew style in the Book of Mormon." John W. Welch, "The Discovery of Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon: Forty Years Later" in Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 16/2 (2007). A PDF of the article is available here.

As Neal Rappleye deftly observed in Welch's office on Friday, December 19, 2014 these two John W. Welch books are a formidable vindication of 1 Nephi 13:40. A work of Book of Mormon scholarship led directly to significant Biblical scholarship. We now understand the Bible better because of insights gleaned from the Book of Mormon.

In 1952 Arthur Newell Strahler (1918 - 2002), a professor of geoscience at Columbia, published an influential article entitled "Hypsometric (Area-Altitude) Analysis of Erosional Topography" in Geological Society of America Bulletin 63. Strahler introduced a numbering system he called "stream order" to quantify the hierarchical branching networks that typify watercourses in drainage basins. A 1st order stream is very small and has no tributaries. The confluence of 2 or more 1st order streams creates a 2nd order stream. If a 1st order stream flows into a 2nd order stream, the result remains a 2nd order stream. But, when 2 or more 2nd order streams converge they form a 3rd order stream. Obviously, as a stream increases in upstream network complexity its stream order number increases.

The Allegheny and Monongahela are both 7th order streams as they converge at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Ohio is an 8th order stream at its confluence with the Mississippi at Cairo, Illinois. The Columbia is a 9th order stream as it discharges into the Pacific downstream from Portland, Oregon. The Mississippi is a 10th order stream at its mouth below New Orleans. The Nile is an 11th order stream as it flows through Egypt into the Mediterranean. The Amazon, largest river on earth, is a 12th order stream by the time it reaches the Atlantic.

Strahler Stream Order Classification System

Stream order has proven so useful it has become a global standard among limnologists. In contemporary usage, 1st - 3rd order watercourses are called headwaters streams or small streams. 4th - 6th order streams are called medium streams. 7th - 12th order streams are considered significant rivers or large streams. The Usumacinta, our candidate for river Sidon, is a 7th order stream. Other 7th order streams of note include the Colorado, Hudson, James, Potomac, Rio Grande, Susquehanna, and Trinity, The Tennessee is an 8th order stream, as is the Rhone south of Lyon, France. The Missouri is a 9th order stream by the time it reaches St. Louis as is the Illinois which joins the Mississippi 37 kilometers upstream.

J.A. Downing, et al. Anaylsis of all Streams Worldwide

Going from left to right, the first column is the Strahler stream order number. The second column is the total number of streams of surface water on the planet. The third column is the mean stream length from the source in kilometers. The fourth column is the combined length of all streams in kilometers and the fifth column is the mean stream channel width in meters. There is only one 12th order stream on earth, the  Amazon, while there are an estimated 28.55 million 1st order streams. These tiny brooks average 1.6 km in length and .8 meters in width. It is important to note that only one of the five 11th order streams - the Nile - is an independent river flowing to the sea. The other four 11th order streams are all tributaries of the Amazon. And, only three of the 10th order streams are independent rivers flowing to the sea, the Mississippi being one of them and the Niger in western Africa another. The other twenty 10th order streams are all tributaries of either the Nile or the Amazon.

These columns demonstrate what the authors call "well-defined scaling laws" that apply to branching patterns "applicable across diverse geological and geographical regions." For example, column two in the chart shows generally a 1 to 5 relationship between main streams and lesser streams of a lower order. In other words, any given stream will have an average of five tributaries of the next lower order. Column three shows generally a 1 to 2 relationship between tributaries and the length of their main stream. In other words, as two streams of a lesser order join, the resulting higher order stream will be on average twice as long as the tributaries. The actual branching algorithms involve more elegant math, but you get the idea. Drainage basins, like many other kinds of networks with branches and nodes, follow the tenets of branching theory whose laws and coefficients are so consistent as to be "tautologous" and "statistically inevitable" (J.A. Downing, et al.). Trees and blood vessels also follow branching theory laws.

Any given river may vary considerably from the norm. This chart shows the relationship between stream order and width for 400+ well-documented main streams. The dotted line plots median stream channel width in meters with data points scattered in normal distribution patterns.

J.A. Downing, et al. Analysis of 400+ Well-Known Streams

The relatively narrow Nile, the only 11th order main stream on earth, is an obvious outlier. Wetter regions have wider streams. For example, one study of the River Tyne basin in NE England found 1st order streams with a mean channel width of 3.5 meters and 2nd order streams with a mean channel width of 6 meters.

So what does all this imply for the river Sidon in the Book of Mormon? We know that Alma₁ and his converts traveled a distance of 21 Nephite "days" to get from the city of Nephi to the local land of Zarahemla Mosiah 23:3, Mosiah 24:20, Mosiah 24:25. Our best estimate of the distance they traveled in one day is 15 air (straight-line) kilometers (see the blog article Land Southward Travel Times). This makes the city of Nephi/local land of Zarahemla distance about 320 air kilometers. We know the head of Sidon was south of Manti in the narrow strip of wilderness that separated the greater lands of Nephi and Zarahemla Alma 22:27, Alma 22:29, Alma 43:22, Alma 50:11. So, the distance head of Sidon/local land of Zarahemla probably did not exceed about 250 air kilometers. How far was it from the local land of Zarahemla to the sea? The land Bountiful lay north of the local land of Zarahemla Alma 22:29 (see the blog article Downstream from Zarahemla). The distance local land of Zarahemla/seacoast probably did not exceed about 200 air kilometers. So, the entire length of the river from head of Sidon to the sea likely did not exceed about 450 air kilometers. According to the chart above, we would expect the river Sidon to be a 7th or 8th order stream. A 9th order stream (mean global length 1,256 kilometers) seems long, even taking sinuosity (the tendency of a river to meander) into account. A 10th order stream (mean global length 2,891 kilometers) is entirely out of the question. Keep in mind there are only 5 rivers on earth that are 10th, 11th or 12th order streams flowing to the sea. Conversely, a 6th order stream (mean global length 103 kilometers seems short. A 5th order stream (mean global length 45 kilometers) is  entirely out of the question.

The fact that our candidate for Sidon - the Usumacinta - is a 7th order stream puts it in the ballpark of reasonableness. From our head of Sidon (the Salama/Chixoy Negro confluence) to salt water at the mouth of the Palizada (distributary of the Usumacinta) on the Laguna de Terminos is 382 air kilometers and to the principal mouth of the Usumacinta at Frontera is 435 air kilometers or 936 river kilometers. Principal tributary, the Chixoy Negro, adds another 175 river kilometers for a total length source to mouth of 1,111 kilometers. The Usumacinta, among the 50 largest independent rivers on earth by annual average volume of water discharged (2,271 cubic meters per second), is a large 7th order river.

Usumacinta - Candidate for River Sidon

Geographers place the head of the Usumacinta at the Pasion Confluence which is 328 air kilometers or 590 river kilometers from the principal mouth at Frontera, Tabasco. The Mezcalapa-Grijalva since 1675 has been a tributary of the Usumacinta (See the blog article "Wandering River"). Their combined annual average streamflow is 3,664 cubic meters

Stream orders point out another important characteristic of water flow nomenclature. Headwaters streams (1st, 2nd & 3rd order) are generally not called rivers. They may be brooks, creeks, rivulets, forks, runs, burns or becks, but not rivers. The term "river" implies a certain size and a minimum level of upstream network complexity. Large streams (7th order or higher) are universally called rivers. Medium streams (4th - 6th order) are sometimes called rivers based on local custom. If a stream flows to the sea it is more likely to be called a river. If a stream is wide or carries a relatively high volume of water it is more likely to be called a river. These are the rivers of England. The noted Thames flowing past London is a 5th order stream, as are most English rivers. The Severn, longest river in the UK at 354 kilometers, is a 6th order stream.

The Rivers of England

The language of the Book of Mormon text that fell from the lips of the Prophet Joseph is now thought to be Early Modern English. See the article "Early Modern English." On the streets of London when Shakespeare was a child (ca. A.D. 1570) it is unlikely the term "river" would have referred to a stream smaller than 5th order.

The map above shows that many of England's rivers are longer than the 44.8 kilometers we would expect given the mean length of 5th order streams worldwide. The Thames, for example, is 346 kilometers long (7.7 X mean), the Trent measures 297 km (6.6 X mean) and the Great Ouse runs for 230 km (5.1 X mean). Compare that with our Sidon, which at 1,111 kilometers, is 4.7 X the global mean length of 7th order streams (237.4 km).

The following two images are from a spreadsheet listing well-known 7th order streams from 5 different countries.

Length of Selected 7th Order Streams a

56 rivers comprise our sample set.

Length of Selected 7th Order Streams b

One of the ways earth scientists classify rivers and streams is by their degree of deviation from a straight line. This metric is called sinuosity index or sinuosity coefficient. It is a simple calculation in this day of powerful geographic information systems such as Google Earth. You divide river kilometers by air (straight line) kilometers. A stream section (specialists typically call it a 'reach') with a sinuosity index less than 1.05 is nearly a straight line. Man-made canals achieve this level of rectitude, but it rarely occurs in nature. A stream reach with a sinuosity index between 1.05 and 1.25 is winding. A stream reach with a sinuosity index between 1.25 and 1.5 is twisting but still has low sinuosity. A stream reach with an index of 1.5 or more has high sinuosity and is meandering. A sinuosity index higher than 2 indicates extreme meandering. An S curve with identical 270 degree oxbows offset from each other (270 degrees is 3/4 the circumference of a circle) has a sinuosity index of 3.33. If the oxbows close to 300 degrees, the sinuosity index increases to 5.24 and if they reach the very tight 330 degrees, the sinuosity index increases further to 11.13. In reality, stream reaches longer than 10 kilometers with a sinuosity index higher than 3 are rare.

Idealized River Oxbows with a Sinuosity Index of 3.33

There is generally an inverse relationship between slope gradient and sinuosity. Steeper slopes tend to produce straighter stream flows. Gentler slopes mean the stream is more susceptible to resistance in the channel (heavy vegetation is a prime source of resistance). Higher resistance creates more sinuosity.

We saw in the article "Water Fight on the River - Round Five" that higher sinuosity index numbers correlate with more traveler disorientation. In other words, the more a river meanders, the more likely a traveler is to get lost trying to follow it.

There are two places in the Book of Mormon text that are associated with travelers getting lost. One is the land of Manti which first appears chronologically ca. 90 B.C. Alma 22:27 as the southernmost outpost of Nephite settlement along the central Sidon corridor. All the narratives about travelers getting lost pre-date Manti. Once Manti was settled and the route Zarahemla/Manti was established via Gideon, travel along the central Sidon corridor became routine Alma 17:1.

The land of Helam is also associated with traveler disorientation. Both the priests of Noah and their Lamanite army overlords had to ask Alma₁ for directions from Helam back to the land of Nephi Mosiah 23:35-36.

This means it is likely that both the lands of Manti and Helam are located in regions where the Sidon has high sinuosity index numbers.

In our correlation, the lands of Manti and Helam are both bounded by the Chixoy which has a very high sinuosity index of 2.58.

Sinuosity Indices along Reaches of the Proposed River Sidon

The Chixoy meanders and changes direction through sparsely-populated, hilly country covered with thick vegetation and tall trees. The entire main stem of the Usumacinta from source to mouth is an unusually sinuous river with an overall sinuosity index of 1,111/386 = 2.88.

Sinuosity Index = 2.88 along Entire Length of Proposed River Sidon

That portion of the river we think the Nephites called the Sidon (Chixoy/Salinas/Usumacinta) also has very high sinuosity (936/435 = 2.15).

Sinuosity Index = 2.15 along Proposed Nephite Rivr Sidon

Long distances, high sinuosity, low population density, hilly terrain, high forest canopies - the Chixoy/Salinas/Usumacinta region has many characteristics that made it easy for even seasoned travelers to get lost.

The main stem of a river is the principal channel from source to mouth, the channel where movement downstream causes the Strahler stream order number to increase by increments of one. If a river has many tributaries, and if the tributaries themselves are large streams, determining which channel is the main stem or  main head-stream can be challenging as a traveler descends or ascends riverside trails. For example, suppose you were a traveler trying to go upstream on the Sidon from the local land of Zarahemla to the land of Nephi. As you came to this point, which we correlate with territory between Melek and Manti, would you correctly identify the main stem of the river?

Lacantun/Usumacinta Confluence Eye Altitude 1.44 Kilometers

Cartographers identify the main stem of a river with a thicker line on their map. We have followed this convention in the 384 streams we have plotted to date in our Google Earth repository of Mesoamerican watersheds. Imagine the difficulty, though, a traveler on the ground would have identifying the main stem of their target river in this region which we correlate with territory between Melek and Manti.

Chixoy/Salinas Confluence with the Pasion to Form the Usumacinta with the Lacantun Confluence 42 River (17 Air) Kilometers Downstream

Is it any wonder Ammon and his 15 strong companions wandered in the wilderness Mosiah 7:4 as they attempted to navigate this cacophony of rivers? When we add in the additional streams plotted via NASA satellite remotely sensed elevation data, this landscape of approximately 12,000 square kilometers appears even more challenging.

Chixoy/Salinas Usumacinta/Lacantun Confluence Area with Remotely Sensed Streams Plotted

Difficulty identifying the main stem of the Sidon almost certainly contributed to the traveler disorientation described in the Nephite annals.

Streamflow, aka discharge, aka channel runoff, is the volume of water in a stream flowing past a point in a specified period of time. The international standard unit of measure for streamflow is cubic meters per second. River discharge varies greatly from the rainy season to the dry season, so the most common comparative metric is annual average cubic meters per second. Obviously, streamflow in a channel increases as tributaries join the stream so the location where the flow was measured is an important factor. Streamflow for some rivers of interest expressed in annual average cubic meters/second measured at the mouth.

• Amazon (world's largest river by far) 209,000
• Congo (largest river in Africa by streamflow) 41,200
• Orinoco (2nd largest river in South America) 36,000
• Saint Lawrence (drainage includes the Great Lakes) 16,800
• Mississippi (drains 31 states & 2 Canadian provinces) 16,792
• Columbia (drains 7 states & 1 Canadian province) 7,500
• Nile (generally regarded as the longest river on earth at 6,650 kilometers) 2,800
• Usumacinta (our proposed Sidon, largest stream in Mexico & Guatemala) 2,271
• Papaloapan (our proposed Ripliancum Ether 15:8, 2nd largest stream in Mexico, largest stream in our land northward) 1,416
• Mezcalapa - Grijalva (John L. Sorenson's candidate for Sidon) 1,392 (tributary of the Usumacinta in modern times, 3rd largest stream in Mexico)
• Coatzacoalcos (part of our proposed Land Northward/Land Southward boundary, 4th largest stream in Mexico) 891

Following a huge battle south of Manti, the Nephite victors disposed of Nephite and Lamanite dead by throwing their bodies into river Sidon whose waters carried the corpses to the sea Alma 44:22. Manti was the southernmost Nephite settlement along the central Sidon corridor. It was not far from the head of Sidon in the narrow strip of wildrness. Streamflow in the Sidon at the point of battle was adequate to carry large numbers of dead bodies hundreds of kilometers northward to the ocean. This means the Sidon south of Manti, not far from the river's head, was already a large and powerful stream. We correlate the city of Manti with the site of Chama about 30 air kilometers NW of Coban in Alta Verapaz. We think the Captain Moroni/Zerahemnah battle took place about 11 air kilometers south of Chama on the Chixoy. See the blog article "Manti."

Proposed Moroni/Zarahemnah Battlefield

The Chixoy River at this point has an annual average streamflow of 756 cubic meters/second. This makes it larger than the Colorado River at Lake Havasu, Arizona which (since 1971) is spanned by the original London Bridge. We use Lake Havasu as our point of comparison rather than the mouth of the Colorado. So much water is removed from the Colorado downstream from Lake Havasu that by the time it reaches its mouth in Baja California the streamflow has been reduced to a trickle.

A dead body thrown into a river will normally sink to the bottom and remain there for several days until gasses from the bacterial action of decomposition bloat the corpse causing it to float to the surface. The same thing happens in salt water. The warmer the water, the faster the bacterial action and the quicker the body will rise in what is colloquially called "dead man's float." In warm oceans such as the Arabian Sea, even corpses weighted with ballast will typically float within 3 - 4 days. Ocean scavengers large and small will consume soft tissues. Cleaned bones will then sink to the bottom of the ocean where decomposition of skeletal remains typically takes years, decades or even centuries depending on factors such as water temperature and ph levels.

So, this is probably what happened to the Nephite and Lamanite bodies thrown into the Sidon south of Manti:

1. They sank to the bottom of the stream channel after being carried downstream for a short distance by the current. The kinetic energy of the water near the bottom of a channel is much lower than the energy in the streamflow near the surface. So, it is rare for a recently dead human body to be carried more than 1 or 2 kilometers downstream from the point where it entered the water, even in a large river. 
2. After a few days, bloated bodies began floating to the surface where they were carried downstream by the river, reaching salt water in about ten days.
3. Nephites in populated downstream areas such as the local land of Zarahemla took note of the gruesome corpse parade as it floated by, allowing an eyewitness record that the bodies reached the sea Alma 44:22. Freshwater scavengers including Morelet's Crocodiles (crocodylus moreletii) consumed some of the rotting flesh before it reached the ocean.
4. In the Gulf of Campeche, thousands of floating bodies were skeletonized in a matter of months by sharks, smaller fish, sea birds, sea lice, wave action, etc. 
5. The bones eventually sank to the seabed where they began a slow process of decomposition. After a few decades, nothing organic from the dead warriors remained on the ocean floor.

Alma 3:3 describes a similar scenario on the river along the southern border of the local land of Zarahemla. In this case, though, the Nephites had sufficient manpower to provide an earth burial for their own dead Alma 3:1 so only Lamanite and Amlicite bodies were thrown in the river Alma 2:34. Nephite historians understood the biological processes described above as evidenced by their comment in Alma 3:3 that only bones lay on the seafloor.

This is where we think the Alma₂ /Amlici battles took place. See the blog article "Gideon."

Proposed Hill Amnihu, Valley of Gideon, etc.

In this area near Tenosique, Tabasco the Usumacinta River has an annual average streamflow in excess of 2,000 cubic meters/second. That is about the same size as the Missouri at St. Louis or the Rhine at Rotterdam.

Compiling everything we have learned about river Sidon from the text and from the geomorphology of earth's rivers, we believe the quintessential Nephite river will demonstrate the following 44 characteristics identified as 1 to 44 below with aqua shading.

River Sidon is the only New World river mentioned by name in the text. Nephites in the land southward ranged hemispherically, from sea to sea Alma 22:27. From this we infer that river Sidon is the dominant stream in the land southward 1.

Book of Mormon lands in the New World are described as well-watered Mosiah 8:8, Mosiah 23:4, Alma 50:29, Helaman 3:4, 3 Nephi 9:7, 4 Nephi 1:9, Mormon 6:4, Ether 15:8 with verdant forests 1 Nephi 18:25, Enos 1:3, Ether 10:19 supporting a significant lumber industry Alma 50:2, Helaman 3:10, abundant wildlife 1 Nephi 18:25, 2 Nephi 5:24, Alma 2:37, Ether 10:21 and large human populations 1 Nephi 12:1, Alma 2:27, Mosiah 8:8, Mormon 1:7, Ether 10:21. Drought was unusual and catastrophic Helaman 11:6, Ether 9:30. Both cases of drought mentioned in the text were caused not by normal weather patterns, but by divine intervention Helaman 11:4-6, Ether 9:28-30. Tracks left by a large group of travelers disappeared (probably from heavy rain) after only two days Mosiah 22:16. From this we conclude the river did not flow through a desert or semi-arid region. Average annual precipitation in the river Sidon drainage basin is equal to or greater than the planet-wide mean 2.

The text of the Book of Mormon that fell from the lips of the Prophet Joseph was Early Modern English (see the blog article "Early Modern English"). In England in the 1500's the term "river" referred to a watercourse large enough to have a Strahler Stream Order number of 5 or higher (see the blog articles "Strahler Stream Order" and "OED on Rivers"). Based on this lexical evidence, river Sidon has a Strahler Stream Order number of 5 or higher 3.

River Sidon flows generally from south to north 4 (See the blog aritcle "River Sidon South to North").

We have estimated the straight-line (air) distance between the city of Nephi and the local land of Zarahemla at 320 kilometers (see the blog article "Land Southward Travel Times"). Land Bountiful was north of the local land of Zarahemla Alma 22:29. Land Bountiful was a coastal entity Alma 22:32-33, Alma 27:22, Alma 63:5. The east-west narrow strip of wilderness separated the greater land of Nephi on the south from the greater land of Zarahemla on the north Alma 22:27. The head of Sidon was in this narrow strip of wilderness Alma 22:27-29. This means the head of Sidon was between the city of Nephi and the local land of Zarahemla. See the blog article "The Narrow Strip of Wilderness." This means the air distance from the head of Sidon to its mouth at the seacoast is probably not less than 160 kilometers (320/2) or greater than 640 kilometers (320x2) 5.

There is a documented relationship between Strahler Stream Order number and river length (See the blog article "Strahler Stream Order"). Based on reasonable distances for the total extension of Nephite lands, we would expect the Sidon to be either a 7th or an 8th order stream 6. As a 7th or 8th order stream, global averages imply the length from source to mouth will probably exceed 150 kilometers but be less than 1,200 kilometers 7.

There is a documented relationship between Strahler Stream Order number and river width (See the  blog article "Strahler Stream Order"). Based on many examples known to science, as a 7th or 8th order stream, we would expect the Sidon near its mouth to have a width in excess of 50 meters but less than 1,000 meters 8.

River Sidon in the text is a unitary stream. Neither tributaries nor distributaries are mentioned. There are no branches or forks. This implies Sidon from head to mouth flows generally in one principal direction (See the section "Directionality" in the blog article "OED on Rivers") 9.

The head of a river in Early Modern English referred to the confluence of two or more smaller streams coming together to form the larger river. See the article "Head of a River" in the blog article "OED on Rivers"). The text supports this correlation. Alma 56:25 says you cross one of the tributaries comprising the head of Sidon just as you cross river Sidon itself Alma 2:34-35, Alma 16:6-7, Alma 43:35. So, the head of Sidon is the confluence of two or more tributary streams 10.

The Book of Mormon describes several groups getting lost attempting to travel either northbound or southbound in the central Sidon corridor during the 80 year period from ca. 200 B.C. to ca. 121 B.C.:

• Ammon₁ and 15 other strong men Mosiah 7:4 dispatched from the local land of Zarahemla by King Mosiah₂ to find the Zeniff colony who had been incommunicado in the greater land of Nephi for two generations.
• The 43 members of King Limhi's exploring party Mosiah 8:8, Mosiah 21:25.
• Zeniff and those who went with him from the local land of Zarahemla up to the greater land of Nephi Mosiah 9:4.
• The Lamanite army sent to pursue King Limhi and his people Mosiah 22:16, Mosiah 23:20.
• The Priests of King Noah led by Amulon Mosiah 23:35.

Traveler disorientation implies river Sidon and its drainage basin ca. 200 B.C. had:

• a high sinuosity index [1.5 or greater] (see the blog article "Sinuosity Index") 11.
• relatively gentle slope gradients (see the blog article "Sinuosity Index") 12.
• dense vegetation lining its banks (see the blog article "Sinuosity Index") 13.
• large tributaries which made the main stem aka main head-stream difficult to identify (see the blog article "Main Stem") 14.
• reaches with relatively low population densities 15.
• reaches without high mountains nearby to serve as orientation landmarks 16.
• reaches with high forest canopies overhead which obstructed long-range sight lines 17.

The Mulekites, ca. 600 B.C., may have had Phoenician help to sail through the Mediterranean, past the Straits of Gibraltar, and make landfall in the New World. See John L. Sorenson, Mormon's Codex (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book & Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2013) p.33. We know that ca. 600 B.C. the Phoenicians and the Greeks were actively establishing dozens of trading colonies along the coasts of both the Mediterranean and Black Seas. See the blog article "French Connection." There was a pattern to their settlements. All had easy access to the sea and were located near good harbors or in the coastal plains/deltas of major rivers. We expect the city of Zarahemla, founded by seafarers on the west bank of the Sidon Alma 2:34, to follow this same pattern 18.

Settlement in the ancient world followed the rivers. This was as true in the New World as it was in the Old. See the blog article "French Connection." The Mulekites who inhabited Zarahemla in relative isolation for approximately 400 years did not venture far from their original homeland Omni 1:16. After Mosiah₁ joined them ca. 200 B.C., the combined Nephite/Mulekite polity began a process of rapid geographic expansion. By ca. 72 B.C. the Nephite nation reached the east sea Alma 50:13 and six years later significant settlement on the west sea is attested in the text Alma 52:11. This means that in about 135 years the Nephite nation went from a relatively compact geo-political entity in the central Sidon corridor to a far-flung commonwealth projecting power and exercising influence in pockets of settlement from coast to coast. Like ancient civilizations generally, Nephite expansion followed the rivers. Nephite settlement patterns between ca. 200 B.C. and 66 B.C. will show chronological consistency with the lay of the land and river channels in the greater land of Zarahemla 19. In other words, the geographic expansion of the Nephite nation will be orderly and logical radiating out along the rivers from its culture core in the local land of Zarahema. See the blog articles "Expansion of the Nephite Nation" and "Sidon East then West" for more context.

The major stream I know best is the Green River flowing from the Wind River Mountains in Wyoming to join the Colorado in Canyonlands National Park. 1,170 kilometers long, it is the major tributary of and only slightly smaller than the Colorado at their confluence. Average annual streamflow in the Green is 173 cubic meters/second. I have floated and paddled the Green River on multiple occasions. Would the streamflow in the Green River be adequate to carry thousands of dead Nephite and Lamanite bodies hundreds of kilometers to the sea? Yes and No. At high water in May and June when the raging river is discharging 500+ cubic meters per second the answer would be definitely yes. At low water in August and September when the placid river is barely discharging 75 cubic meters per second the answer would be probably not. Many of the corpses would end up stuck in shallows and on sand bars. Based on this experience, we would expect the Sidon south of Manti to have an average annual streamflow in excess of 250 cubic meters/second 20. See the blog article "Streamflow" for background.

Ca. 87 B.C. the local land of Zarahemla was located on the west bank of river Sidon Alma 2:34. Ca. A.D. 34 the city of Zarahemla burned 3 Nephi 9:3. Ca. A.D. 36 the city of Zarahemla was rebuilt at its original location 4 Nephi 1:7-8. Ca. A.D. 322 the local land of Zarahemla was still located riverside along the Sidon Mormon 1:6-10. After the destruction at the time of Christ, many Nephite cities were rebuilt in their original locations 4 Nephi 1:7. This means river Sidon did not change course during Book of Mormon times 21.

The Jaredite/Olmec correlation, first proposed in the 1930's by M. Wells Jakeman and Thomas Stuart Ferguson while they were students at UC Berkeley, remains viable. Knowledge about the Olmec, epi-Olmec and Zoque has increased exponentially in the ensuing decades, but the idea that the Jaredites and Olmec were generally coterminous maintains currency among LDS Mesoamericanists. Textual evidence suggests Mulekite Zarahemla was marginal to and isolated from formal Jaredite influence. See question #1 in the blog article "Asking the Right Questions." We would expect to find the local land of Zarahemla in the central Sidon corridor remote from the Olmec culture core in a region with relatively few Olmec-influenced sites 22.

The Nephite east coast was anchored by the city of Moroni on the south Alma 50:13 and the city of Bountiful on the north Alma 51:32. In between were Lehi, Morianton, Omner, Gid and Mulek Alma 51:26. (Note that 'Nephihah' in the 1981 & 2013 LDS editions of Alma 51:26 is an error. The 2009 Yale University Press edition correctly emends this term to read 'Moroni'.)  The narrative in Alma 52:17-40 shows that the cities of Mulek and Bountiful were within a long day's march of each other. Jershon was also in the east by the seacoast, south of land Bountiful Alma 27:22. South of Jershon, slightly inland, was Antionum settled by Zoramites Alma 31:3. And what were all these seaboard polities east of? Alma 31:3 states clearly they were east of the local land of Zarahemla in the central Sidon corridor. So, when we read in Helaman 1:24-27 that the local land of Zarahemla was in the center of Nephite lands (Helaman 1:18 says 'heart') we can be confident river Sidon was roughly equi-distant from the Nephite east and west seacoasts 23.

The text explicitly says the Mulekites founded their capital city in a wilderness Mosiah 25:2, Alma 22:31. The local land of Zarahemla west of Sidon and adjacent territories in the central Sidon corridor had wilderness characteristics ca. 600 B.C. 24.

The local lands of Nephi on the south and Zarahemla on the north had no communication for approximately 400 years Omni 1:14-18 despite significant Nephite territorial expansion Jarom 1:6-8. Large tracts of wilderness separated the two populated areas Omni 1:12-13. The first group to successfully travel from Nephi down to Zarahemla enjoyed divine help Omni 1:13. Going from the local land of Nephi through the narrow strip of wilderness at the head of Sidon and then down the Sidon to the local land of Zarahemla presented such formidable barriers to travel 25 in the ca. 600 - 200 B.C. time frame that two large groups of people Jarom 1:8, Omni 1:17, only about 320 air kilometers distant, were ignorant of each other's existence for nearly four centuries. 320 air kilometers is about the distance from Bodrum, Turkey (birthplace of Herodotus) to Athens, Greece. Writing his famous Histories ca. 450 B.C., Herodotus had considerable knowledge of the entire Mediterranean and Black Sea basins from the Caspian Sea on the east to the Straits of Gibraltar on the west, a distance of about 5,000 air kilometers. The fact that the Nephites and Mulekites remained oblivious to each other for so long implies extraordinarily difficult terrain between them.

Omni 1:13 implies the entire area from highland Nephi on the south to lowland Zarahemla on the north ca. 200 B.C. was a long stretch of wilderness. As the Nephite nation grew over the ensuing decades, settlements were founded along the central Sidon corridor, but significant pockets of wilderness remained. The wilderness of Hermounts (see the blog article "Hermounts") was immediately northwest of the local land of Zarahemla Alma 2:37. Melek, west of Sidon upstream from Zarahemla (see the blog article "Melek") had wilderness to its west Alma 8:3, 5. Manti, southernmost Nephite settlement in the central Sidon corridor (see the blog article "Manti") had a wilderness side Alma 58:13 as well as a south wilderness Alma 16:6-7. Travel through the central Sidon corridor ca. 90 B.C. involved a great deal of wilderness Alma 17:7-9. All Nephite settlements along the Sidon had adjacent wilderness 26. Some of that wilderness will be discernible today using satellite imagery and remote sensing techniques.

Nephites are always described in the text as less numerous than their ubiquitous Lamanite brethren Jarom 1:6, Mosiah 25:3. Alma 43:13-14 says even the former Nephite dissenters (Amlicites, Zoramites, Amulonites) had nearly as many people as the Nephites themselves, before adding in the vast populations of Lamanites, Lemuelites and Ishmaelites. Note that Alma 43:13-14 in the Yale edition of the text changes 'Amalekites' to 'Amlicites' and 'descendants' to 'dissenters'. The theme of Nephite demographic inferiority continues in Helaman 4:19 and 25. Based on this disparity, we would expect the Lamanite culture core in the local land of Nephi and environs to be more densely populated anciently than the Nephite culture core in the local land of Zarahemla 27 along the Sidon.

Textual evidence suggests the Nephites and Lamanites, geographically proximate for nearly 400 years, spoke the same language. See point #7 in the the blog article "Asking the Right Questions." We would expect the Nephite culture core in the central Sidon corridor and the Lamanite culture core in highland Nephi to share a common ancestral language 28.

River Sidon during Nephite times was neither a cultural nor linguistic boundary. See point #8 in the blog article "Asking the Right Questions" and the article "Linguistic Littorals." We would expect a common language and similar material culture on both sides of the river 29.

Somewhere between Nephi on the South and Zarahemla on the north an east-west narrow strip of wilderness ran from sea to sea Alma 22:27. This means the strip is roughly perpendicular to the north-flowing Sidon 30.

The head of river Sidon is in or adjacent to this east-west narrow strip of wilderness Alma 22:27 31.

From the local land of Nephi one went down in elevation to wilderness separating Nephi from Zarahemla Words of Mormon 1:13, Mosiah 7:4, Alma 47:1, Alma 56:3. One then went over an intermediate barrier, likely a mountainous area in the vicinity of the narrow strip of wilderness Alma 25:2, Alma 27:14, Alma 47:29. Then one continued to go down in elevation to the local land of Zarahemla Omni 1:13, Omni 1:27-28, Mosiah 7:1-3. On the route Nephi/Zarahemla there was only one point higher in elevation than the local land of Nephi itself - the hill north of Shilom Mosiah 7:5-6. So, the topographical pattern we would expect from Nephi northward to Zarahemla on the river is:

• From Nephi down in elevation to wilderness 32
• Passing a hill more elevated than Nephi itself 33
• Over an intermediate mountainous region 34
• Then down in elevation from wilderness to Zarahemla 35
• With no point on the journey higher in elevation than Nephi 36Alma 27:5-9, Alma 63:15, Helaman 1:15-17, Helaman 6:4.

Most mass migrations are explained by only a handful of factors: escape from violence, economic opportunity, forced re-settlement, lineage ties, climate, etc. Mosiah₁ led the Nephites from Nephi to Zarahemla ca. 200 B.C. to escape Lamanite predations Omni 1:10-13. But what explains the irrational and ill-fated reverse migration of Zeniff and his colony from Zarahemela back to Nephi? By process of elimination based on close reading of the text, climate is the likely reason many Nephites put themselves in harm's way by returning to Nephi soon after they had escaped to safety in Zarahemla. See point #12 in the blog article "Asking the Right Questions," the blog article "Water Fight on the River - Round Twelve" and point #12 in the blog article "The Usumacinta/Sidon Correlation." We would expect the local land of Zarahemla on the Sidon to have a very different climate than the local land of Nephi in the highlands 37, and we would further expect most people to deem Zarahemla's climate inferior. There is one more indication in the text that climate was the major attraction for the people who followed headstrong Zeniff. When Limhi and his people returned to Zarahemla ca. 121 B.C, Mosiah 22:13 where did middle-aged Alma 1:9 Gideon go to found his settlement? He went to Gideon Alma 2:20, Alma 6:7 which was in a valley higher in elevation than Zarahemla Alma 62:6-7. And what was proximate to the valley of Gideon? The highlands of hill Amnihu Alma 2:15-20.

The text explicitly describes nine entities riverside to Sidon.

• Hill Amnihu was east Alma 2:15-17
• The Local Land of Zarahemla was west Alma 2:15
• The battlefield where Alma₂ slew Amlici was west Alma 2:34
• The valley of Gideon was east Alma 6:7
• The land of Melek was west Alma 8:3
• The south wilderness where Zoram₂ intercepted a Lamanite army was east Alma 16:6-7 
• The land of Manti was east Alma 16:7
• The valley south of Manti where Moroni₁ defeated Zerahemnah was west Alma 43:27
• The valley south of Manti where Lehi₂ fought Zerahemnah was east Alma 49:16

Deductive reasoning shows the land of Minon west of Sidon, south of the local land of Zarahemla Alma 2:24. In addition, since Sidon flowed northward and the wilderness of Hermounts was north and west of the local land of Zarahemla Alma 2:37, Hermounts was west of Sidon downstream from Zarahemla. Land Bountiful with exposure to both the east Alma 27:22 and west seas Alma 22:33 was north of the local land of Zarahemla Alma 22:29. This means Sidon flowed through Bountiful to reach the sea. We would expect these twelve entities to all adjoin Sidon 38.

From ca. 200 B.C. to ca. 72 B.C. the Nephite nation had a decidedly eastward orientation. As they grew, Nephites finally reached the northern part of their eastern seaboard ca. 77 B.C. Alma 27:22 and the southern portion ca.  72 B.C. Alma 50:13. See the blog articles "Expansion of the Nephite Nation,""Sidon East then West" and "Ammonihah Noah & Sidom all East of Sidon." Since ancient settlement patterns generally followed rivers, we would expect the Sidon to have large eastern tributaries 39 extending the drainage basin significantly toward the east sea.

People cross the Sidon frequently in the Book of Mormon, individually Alma 6:7 and in large groups Alma 16:7. The text deals with the river matter-of-factly, never describing treacherous waters or required detours. This implies a fordable stream with multiple ferry points, manageable currents and runnable rapids 40. See point #16 in the blog article "Asking the Right Questions," the article "Observations from a River Runner," point #16 in the article "The Usumacinta/Sidon Correlation" and the article "Water Fight on the River - Round Sixteen."

Limhi's exploring party traveled from the city of Nephi to hill Ramah-Cumorah and back to Nephi, erroneously thinking they had found the local land of Zarahemla Mosiah 8:8-9, Mosiah 21:25, Ether 1:2. A line plotted from Nephi to Ramah-Cumorah will not intersect the Sidon 41 or Limhi's explorers traveling that route would have found Zarahemla.

Sidon flowed northward (see point #4 above) in the approximate center of Nephite lands (see point #23 above). The land of Gideon was east of Zarahemla on the river Alma 6:7. Hill Amnihu was also east of the river Alma 2:15 near the valley of Gideon Alma 2:20. The locus of Amlici's power base was Ammonihah (see the blog article "Ammonihah, Noah & Sidom all East of Sidon"). The Amlicites attacked the Nephites from the east Alma 2:17 which is one of the ways we know Ammonihah was east of Sidon, at about the same latitude as the local land of Zarahemla and Gideon. Land Bountiful on the coast lay to the north of the local land of Zarahemla Alma 22:29, Helaman 1:23. Jershon was on the east coast just south of Bountiful Alma 27:22 so Jershon also must have been at roughly the same latitude as the local land of Zarahemla, Gideon and Ammonihah. Based on founding dates for the churches in Jershon Alma 28:1 and Sidom Alma 15:13 there is reason to believe Sidom lay between Ammonihah to its west and Jershon to its east. The Nephite nation was explicitly expanding eastward at this point in its history Alma 22:29. We know from historical precedent that a city state large enough to be called a "land" in Nephite affairs was probably not smaller than 100 square kilometers (about 10 kilometers on a side) and more likely to be 1,000 square kilometers (about 30 kilometers on a side). See the blog article "Test #7 Land Areas." On the other hand, a land larger than 20,000 square kilometers (about 140 kilometers on a side) is out of the question. Many Nephite lands were settled amid wilderness Alma 28:1. So, taking all of the forgoing into account, a reasonable distance from the Sidon at the latitude of Zarahemla and Gideon to the sea east would be on the order of 100 to 400 air kilometers 42. This means Sidon did not empty into the sea east 43.

We know from the route Limhi's explorers took (see the blog article "Test #8 Limhi Expedition") that the local land of Zarahemla was in the coastal plain much closer to the mouth than to the head of Sidon 44. Several other lines of reasoning (such as Moronihah's point of departure when he recaptured the northern half of Nephite lands Helaman 4:6-10) support this location.

Only one stream on the planet meets all 44 criteria - the Chixoy/Salinas/Usumacinta that begins at the confluence of the Salama, Carchela and Santa Gertrudis with the Chixoy Negro main head stream. This is the point where the Guatemalan departments Alta Verapaz, Baja Vereapaz and Quiche meet. It is the point geographers and limnologists identify as the head of the Chixoy which becomes the Salinas at the Mexican border and then the Usumacinta at the Pasion confluence. It is the location of the modern Chixoy Dam, the largest hydroelectric facility in Guatemala which provides 15% of the nation's electricity. It lies on the Polochic fault, aka Cuilco-Chixoy-Polochic fault, the intersection of the North American and Caribbean tectonic plates whose line of cliffs we correlate with the narrow strip of wilderness (see the blog article "The Narrow Strip of Wilderness"). At the head of Sidon, the Chixoy Negro is a 5th order stream in the Strahler classification system (See the blog article "Strahler Stream Order"). At its mouth at Frontera, Tabasco the Usumacinta is a 7th order stream.

The Usumacinta, Only River on Earth that Meets all 44 Criteria for Sidon

1. We define the Nephite & Lamanite land southward as that area between the northerly Coatzacoalcos and the southerly Ulua. Whether measured by basin area, branch complexity or flow volume, the Usumacinta is the uncontested dominant stream in this part of the world.

Proposed Land Southward Between the Coatzacoalcos & the Ulua

Criterion 1 satisfied.

Salama, Carchela and Santa Gertrudis all Flowing into the Main Stem Chixoy-Negro to Form the Chixoy

Criterion 10 satisfied.

Usumacinta with Sinuosity Indices

Critereion 11 satisfied.

12. The Chixoy-Negro has a steep stream gradient of 8.07 meters/kilometer. The Chixoy from its head to the Sachichaj confluence (the area we correlate with Manti) has a relatively steep stream gradient of 5.77 meters/kilometer. The Chixoy downstream from the Sachichaj confluence has a gentle stream gradient of .94 meters/kilometer. The Salinas has a very gentle stream gradient of .14 meters/kilometer. The upper Usumacinta from its head at the Pasion confluence to Boca del Cerro has a gentle stream gradient of .41 meters/kilometer. The middle Usumacinta from Boca del Cerro to Teclopan has an extremely gentle stream gradient of .07 meters/kilometer. The lower Usumacinta from Teclopan to its mouth at Frontera has an almost imperceptible stream gradient of .02 meters/kilometer.

Usumacinta with Stream Gradients in Meters/Kilometer

Criterion 12 satisfied.

Satellite Imagery Showing Dense Vegetation in Green

Criterion 13 satisfied.

Proposed Sidon Flowing through Relatively Unpopulated Lands

Overlaying data from the Electronic Atlas of Ancient Maya Sites (EAAMS) shows that many reaches of the Chixoy/Salinas/Usumacinta have few known archaeological sites in close proximity.

Ancient Archaeological Sites Known to Science

Criterion 15 satisfied.

500 Meter Terrain Plain Overlay in White

Criterion 16 satisfied.

17. This image shows the Usumacinta overlaid with forest canopy heights derived from NASA satellite data. The white areas are unforested. The green areas have a tree canopy overhead. In this image, the darker the green the higher the trees.

Forest Canopy Height from NASA GLAS Geoscience Laser Altimeter System

The Chixoy, Salinas and Upper Usumacinta have high tree canopies over most of their length. Criterion 17 satisfied.

Central Sidon Corridor and Points East

Pyramid icons mark the location of archaeological sites known to have pre-classic (Book of Mormon time period) occupation layers. Our correlation demonstrates logical consistency in Nephite settlement patterns. Settlement followed the rivers. Criterion 19 satisfied.

The Middle Usumacinta in Peten, Guatemala; Chiapas & Tabasco, Mexico

Criterion 21 satisfied.

Sidon as Center or Heart of Nephite Lands

The point indicated on the middle Usumacinta is 328 air kilometers from the Caribbean at a point near Altun Ha, our correlate for city of Omner. See the blog article "Captain Moroni in Space and Time." It is 325 air kilometers from Barra San Marcos, our correlate for the narrow (small) neck of land. See the blog article "The Narrow (Small) Neck of Land." This is what we think the Nephite authors had in mind when they referred to their culture core in the central Sidon corridor as the center or heart of their lands. Criterion 23 satisfied.

Black Icons are Known Archaeological Sites

Our local land of Zarahemla had significant activity in ancient times, but it lacked the heavy concentration of sites obvious in other areas. We saw in point #22 above that Olmec influence was scarce in the region. Wilderness ca. 586 B.C. is plausible. Criterion 24 satisfied.

Modern Roads in Mexico and Guatemala

The roads inside the white bounding box have almost all been constructed since 1990. Travel between highland Guatemala and the Tabascan coastal plain is tough today. It was much more arduous in Book of Mormon times Mosiah 9:3. Criterion 25 satisfied.

Proposed City of Manti South of Low Mountains with Tall Trees

Ammonihah (El Hormiguero II in our correlation) also had a wilderness side Alma 16:2. We believe it was a ridgeline of moderately high mountains just south of the city.

Wilderness Side South of Proposed City of Ammonihah

Four entities in our central Sidon corridor adjoin wilderness that is obvious in satellite imagery. Criterion 26 satisfied.

Ancient Sites Prevalent within 30 km of Kaminaljuyiu

Within a 30 kilometer radius of our city of Zarahemla (Nueva Esperanza - Calabraba) we count 27 sites.

Far Fewer Ancient Sites within 30 km of Zarahemla

Our proposed city of Nephi lies within greater Guatemala City (estimated 2014 population 2.3 million). Our proposed city of Zarahemla is near Emiliano Zapata, Tabasco (population per the 2010 census 20,030). The population disparity in Nephite times was much less dramatic, but highland Guatemala had many more inhabitants than the middle Usumacinta. Criterion 27 satisfied.

Narrow Strip of Wilderness Perpendicular to River Sidon

Criterion 30 satisfied.

Head of Sidon Immediately South of Narrow Strip of Wilderness

Criterion 31 satisfied.

Topography Nephi to Narrow Strip of Wilderness

Nephi is right on the continental divide (shown in green) so following one of the tributaries of the Motagua descends in elevation. Criterion 32 satisfied. Our path then skirts around the prominent hill north of Shilom which is at an elevation nearly 900 meters higher than Nephi. Criterion 33 satisfied.

Topography Narrow Strip of Wildrness to Sidon Drainage Basin

Following the Cahabon past modern Coban, our path enters the vast Usumacinta River drainage basin. The wilderness placemark on the map above sits at an elevation of 270 meters. Criterion 35 satisfied.

Likely Route Nephi to Zarahemla in Black

From Nephi down to wilderness past a high hill north of Shilom. Over intermediate mountains past the head of Sidon. Down to more wilderness and eventually Zarahemla. Both mountain passes along the trail are lower in elevation than the city of Nephi itself. Criterion 36 satisfied. This route conforms precisely with the topography described in the text.

Battlefields along Sidon South of Manti

All 12 entities fit comfortably riverside the Sidon. Criterion 38 satisfied.

San Pedro & Pasion, Eastern Tributaries of the Usumacinta

Criterion 39 satisfied.

Seven passages in the text use a variant of the word "cross" to describe movement over Sidon. The word "ford" is not attested. All passages are in the book of Alma and all describe large groups in a military context. See the blog article "Crossing Things." These are the movements in textual order.

• Nephite forces under Alma₂ crossed Sidon from east to west from Gideon into the local land of Zarahemla just north of its border with Minon Alma 2:27, Alma 2:34-35
• Lamanite forces crossed Sidon from west to east in wilderness south of Manti Alma 16:6
• Zoram₂ and his Nephite forces crossed Sidon from west to east from the local land of Zarahemla into Gideon, then marched south to the wilderness south of Manti Alma 16:7
• Lamanite forces under Zerahemnah came around the north side of hill Riplah, down a valley and crossed Sidon from east to west. Lehi₂ and his men engaged the Lamanites from their rear, while across Sidon Moroni₁ and his forces engaged them at their front. Alma 43:35, Alma 43:40
• Lamanite forces dug in along the southwestern border of Nephite lands were afraid to cross over the head of Sidon to mount an attack on Nephihah Alma 56:25

Large rivers typically have a limited number of places where crossing is practical. Steep canyon walls, swift currents or lateral wetlands make crossing difficult and hazardous. Because of this, the battlefield where Zoram₂ engaged the Lamanite invasion force returning from Ammonihah + Noah and the valley where  Lehi₂ drove Zerahemnah's men into the river are almost certainly the same place. Both are described as the wilderness south of the land of Manti Alma 16:6, Alma 43:27, 32. By the same token, the place where Nephite forces under Alma₂ crossed from Gideon into the local land of Zarahemla and the place where Nephite forces under Zoram₂ crossed from the local land of Zarahemla into Gideon are almost certainly the same crossing.

Three River Crossing Points Described in the Text

In our age, when people want to cross a river regularly, they build a bridge. There are 11 bridges over the Chixoy/Salinas/Usumacinta river from the head of the Chixoy to the mouth of the river at Frontera, Tabasco. The map below shows the bridges, marked with a square icon. Some archaeologists are convinced the Maya built a suspension bridge over the Usumacinta at Yaxchilan. 10 meter foundation platforms that may have supported bridge towers are still visible in the river at low water. We call this tantalizing possibility the "Ancient Yaxchilan Bridge." See point #15 in the blog article "The Usumacinta/Sidon Correlation" for an artist's rendering of the hypothesized 7th century A.D. bridge.

1 Possible Ancient & 11 Modern Bridges over the Proposed Sidon

Zooming in, we see that a modern bridge has been constructed at each of the 3 precise locations where our model predicts a Book of Mormon river crossing.

Boca del Cerro Bridge

Boca del Cerro is on the fall line where the mountains end and the coastal plain begins.

La Union Bridge

La Union is north of Cerro Pampajche which we correlate with Hill Riplah and south of the site of Chama which we correlate with Manti.

Bridge over Chixoy Dam

Seven River Crossing Locations Described in the Text

We saw above that three of the proposed Book of Mormon river crossings are right where a modern bridge stands today. That pattern continues.

Chama Bridge

Our proposed Manti crossing is at Chama Bridge.

Ancient Yaxchilan Bridge

Our proposed Melek crossing is right where some archaeologists place the Ancient Yaxchilan Bridge.

Puente Usumacinta

And, finally, our proposed Northeast Zarahemla crossing is precisely where the largest bridge over the Usumacinta River stands today, the Puenta Usumacinta that carries Mexican Federal Highway 186 coming from Villahermosa and going to Chtumal on the Caribbean. The ruin we correlate with the Nephite city of Bountiful, by the way, is in a suburb of Chetumal.

San Jose Usumacinta Bollards & Ferry

The survey also found many bollards and very good crossing conditions at Yaxchilan. So, all 7 of our proposed Book of Mormon river crossing points have one or more of the following validations:

Seven Canyons on the Chixoy/Salinas/Usumacinta

The 2004 Rio Usumacinta Navigation Survey found no evidence of ancient boat harboring along these difficult sections of the river. They did find one mooring stone that would have served to warp boats (pull them upstream with a rope tied to a stationary object) up Chicozapote Falls. None of our proposed Book of Mormon crossing locations fall within these problematic reaches of the river.

I appreciate Ryan Williams' insights that sparked the research behind this article. Ryan served his mission in Guatemala and is exceptionally well-traveled in and well-informed about the region.

Proposed Hill North of Shilom

Vertical rise from the Motagua = 1,800 meters

Proposed Hill Manti

Vertical rise from the Chacamax = 420 meters.

Proposed Hill Amnihu

Vertical rise from the Usumacinta = 380 meters.

Proposed Hill Ramah-Cumorah

Vertical rise from the Tilapan = 700 meters.

We previously published ten tests based on disprovable criteria that we believe any viable Book of Mormon New World correlation will pass. The ten articles are:

• Test #1 Ups and Downs
• Test #2 One Half of Nephite Lands
• Test #3 Cultural Boundaries
• Test #4 Ecological Boundaries
• Test #5 North South East and West
• Test #6 Relative Distances
• Test #7 Land Areas
• Test #8 Limhi Expedition
• Test #9 River Sidon
• Test #10 Crossing Sidon

For our eleventh test we zoom out to an eye altitude higher than 1,000 kilometers (1 Megametre) above the surface of the earth to identify Book of Mormon lands in their hemispheric context based on large-scale continental criteria. We number these criteria 1 - 10 and they appear in aqua below.

Two land masses 1 are oriented not north and south but northward and southward 2 from each other Alma 22:31-32, Helaman 3:8, 3 Nephi 3:24, 3 Nephi 6:2, Mormon 2:29, Ether 10:21.

Since a key distance within the land southward (city of Nephi to local land of Zarahemela) is on the order of 320 air kilometers (see the blog articles "Land Southward Travel Times" and "Plotting Alma") the distance the diligent Mosiah 8:8 Limhi explorers traveled probably did not exceed 2X that amount (see the blog article "Test #8 Limhi Expedition"). This means the distance from the city of Nephi to hill Ramah-Cumorah in the land northward probably did not exceed 640 air kilometers. Even allowing for generous interpretations of ambiguous passages such as Helaman 3:4 the extent of the world known to Nephite scribes prior to Moroni₂'s post-holocaust peregrinations probably did not exceed 2X the length of the Nephi/Ramah-Cumorah axis. This means the world of the Book of Mormon in the Western Hemisphere probably did not exceed 1,300 air kilometers in length at its maximum extent 3 and territory beyond those bounds was terra incognita as far as Mormon was concerned.

If the land southward constituted approximately one-half of the Nephite known world we would expect a maximum extent on the order of 700 air kilometers. Any distance in the land southward exceeding 1,000 air kilometers is probably out of the question 4. Furthermore, the land southward has some island characteristics 2 Nephi 10:20 being nearly surrounded by water Alma 22:32 5. We interpret that phrase to mean at least 75% of the land southward is waterfront littoral as opposed to land bridge.

The lands northward and southward are surrounded by four seas associated with the cardinal directions Helaman 3:8 6.

Four entities explicitly run from the east sea to the west sea. In order from south to north they are:

• The greater land of Nephi Alma 22:27, Alma 50:8-11 7
• The narrow strip of wilderness Alma 22:278 (see the blog article "The Narrow Strip of Wilderness"
• The greater land of Zarahemla Alma 50:11-13 9 
• Land Bountiful Alma 27:22, [Alma 52:17, Alma 52:27, Alma 51:26, Alma 51:32], Alma 22:32-33, Alma 63:5 10

One entity, commonly thought to be continental in scope, explicitly does NOT run from the east sea to the west sea. The narrow (small) neck of land is a localized feature associated with only the west sea Alma 22:32, Alma 63:5. This does not mean there is not a substantial land bridge between the lands northward and southward. It just means the land bridge is not the feature the Book of Mormon calls the narrow (small) neck.

1. In our correlation, two land masses conjoin at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Topographically the isthmus contains the pass between the Sierra Madre mountain ranges on either side of it.

Proposed Nephite Known World

Culturally the isthmus has been a dividing line for millenia. This map shows the Olmec heartland and the Maya area.

Olmec Heartland and Maya Area

Another rendering of Mesoamerica showing the limits of the Maya area.

National Geographic December 1997

Major cultural areas in Mesoamerica according to the Foundation for Ancient Mesoamerican Studies, Inc.

FAMSI Map of Cultural Areas

The cultural boundary at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec persisted into Aztec times.

Aztec Empire at Conquest by Ian Mladjav

The isthmian region continues to be a political boundary today. The modern line between Veracruz and Oaxaca northward and Tabasco and Chiapas southward is essentially the Maya/non-Maya line from antiquity.

Modern Mexican State Boundaries

Politically, Central America today consists of the countries between Guatemala and Belize northward to Panama southward. Physiographically, many geographers include the Mexican states of Tabasco, Chiapas, Campeche, Yucatan and Quintana Roo in Central America. Merriam Webster, for example, defines Central America as the territory between the Isthmus of Tehuantepec northward and the Isthmus of Panama southward.

Northward Southward Azimuths

The 315 degree vector passes through our narrow neck of land, the east-west Bountiful/Desolation line, and the Bountiful/Desolation line along the upper Coatzacoalcos. The 323 degree vector passes through our hill Ramah-Cumorah. Lands along these azimuths on either side of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec are clearly in a northward-southward relationship. Criterion 2 satisfied.

Straight Line Distance Mexico City to Ulua River

Criterion 3 satisfied.

Four Entities from Sea East to Sea West

Criteria 7, 8, 9 and 10 satisfied.

The correlation illustrated clearly fits all ten big picture textual criteria. We submit that any viable Book of Mormon model should display a similarly high degree of fit to the text.

Tyler Livingston, recently named President of Book of Mormon Archaeological Forum, introduced me to a new book a few days ago. I immediately purchased a copy, read it, and wrote a favorable review on Amazon. The book is entitled Geology of the Book of Mormon by Jerry D. Grover, Jr., PE, PG.

Important New Book

Grover is both a geologist and an engineer. 222 pages of lavishly illustrated text are followed by 122 bibliographic refererences, one of which is this blog, and a 3 page index. The real glory of the book are the 91 striking visuals, many from online sources. The cover features images of Popocatepetl, the most active volcano in Mexico, from the Mixtec Codex Vindobonensis C, aka Mexicanus I, and from the Toltec-Chicimec Codex Rios, aka Vaticanus A. The impressive cover photo is of a Chilean volcano that erupted in 2011. John L. Sorenson's son, Curtis, prepared the splendid maps in Mormon's Codex: An Ancient American Book (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2013). Grover worked with Curtis to enhance some of John's maps and figures 1 - 5, 82, 85, and 87 in Geology are either direct copies or adaptations of maps from Mormon's Codex.

Fault Lines in Southern Mesoamerica

Another view of major fault lines in Guatemala as extensions of the deep water Cayman Trough.

Fault Lines along the North American & Caribbean Plate Boundary

Maya and Chortis are blocks within the North American and Caribbean plates respectively.

This illustration of major fault zones north and south of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec is from a 2008 article by Louis Andreani and 6 other authors entitled "The Neogene Veracruz fault: evidences for left-lateral slip along the southern Mexico block."

Major Mesoamerican Faults

Grover includes this map as Figure 9 in Geology of the Book of Mormon. Note that The Yucatan Peninsula is much more geologically stable than the rest of Mesoamerica.

Volcanic arcs or fields and fault systems are generally found together, This map of volcanoes is from the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Project. For its modest size (108,890 square kilometers) Guatemala has one of the densest concentrations of volcanoes (24) on the planet.

Mesoamerican Volcanoes as Red Triangles

These volcanoes are all known to have erupted during the Holocene (last 10,000 years). The Smithsonian currently lists 1,565 Holocene volcanoes in its database.

Earthquakes obviously follow fault systems. This is a map of earthquakes detected by Mexico's SSN Servicio Sismologico Nacional during the year 2011.

2011 Earthquakes Documented by Mexico's SSN

SSN measured 4,168 seismic events in 2011, most of them very small tremors. In that year, 96% of the earthquakes occurred in only 5 regions of the country: Baja California and its gulf aka the Sea of Cortez, the Pacific coast, Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas.

This is a similar map for 2012. Again in that year, 96% of the earthquakes were in Baja, the Pacific, Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas.

2012 Earthquakes Documented by Mexico's SSN

In the maps above triangles represent seismograph locations. Clearly, earthquakes are common in certain parts of the country, rare in others.

This is a USGS Hazard Map of Mesoamerica. Areas in white experience virtually no seismicity. In dark brown areas earthquakes are routine.

Probability of Seismic Events

 As this map makes explicit, earthquake frequency decreases with distance from a tectonic plate boundary.

This chart puts seismic and volcanic events in some perspective.

Earthquake Moment Magnitudes & Energy Release

The upper range of energy released from known terrestrial geologic events in historic times is on the order of 10 - 50 trillion kilograms (10 - 50 thousand megatons) of TNT equivalent. The largest terrestrial geologic event known was the Oligocene eruption of La Garita Caldera in SW Colorado. Its estimated energy release was on the order of 250 thousand megatons of TNT equivalent. These earthbound events pale in comparison with the estimated energy released by celestial impacts, widely believed to have caused mass planetary extinctions. The Cretaceous-Paleogene impact that formed Chicxulub Crater in northern Yucatan, for example, probably released energy on the order of 100 million megatons (100 teratons) of TNT equivalent. In other words, La Garita was 5X larger than anything mankind has experienced in historic times. Chicxulub was 400X larger than La Garita. It would be interesting to estimate the size of the energy release implied by the events described in the 3 Nephi destruction text.

Royal Skousen and Robin Scott Jensen gave a presentation on the printer's manuscript this evening in the Assembly Hall on Temple Square. They were the volume editors of the 11th volume published in the Joseph Smith Papers Project which will eventually run to at least 24 volumes. Skousen, Professor of Linguistics and English at BYU, has been the principal researcher on the Book of Mormon Critical Text since 1988. Jensen is a historian employed by the Church.

28% of the original text is extant. 25% is owned by the Church. 2% is owned by the Wilford Wood family in Bountiful. 1% is owned by various individuals, the University of Utah, and the Community of Christ. John Gilbert was the 1830 typesetter. Most of the printer's manuscript was penned by Oliver Cowdery. Cowdery made approximately 3 errors per page as he copied the original to the printer's manuscript. Gilbert made approximately 3 errors per page as he set type from the printer's manuscript. The original manuscript was finished in June, 1829. The printer's manuscript was begun in August, 1829 and completed in January, 1830. Helaman chapter 13 through Mormon chapter 9 (one sixth of the text) was typeset from the original, not the printer's manuscript, because in February, 1830, Oliver Cowdery, Hiram Page and others had the printer's manuscript in Canada trying unsuccessfully to secure the Canadian copyright which would have provided intellectual property protection throughout the British realm.

John Gilbert added punctuation in pencil directly on the printer's manuscript and on the portion of the original manuscript he used to set type. Gilbert also added the letter "p" where he wanted a new paragraph to begin. Joseph Smith made hundreds of changes as he edited the printer's manuscript for the 1837 Kirtland edition. Changing "which" to "who" was his most common change. We now know the revealed text was rendered in Early Modern English where "which" is a perfectly good personal pronoun. The Prophet was trying to make the verbiage in the 1837 edition more like Modern English to make it more respectable in Jacksonian America. After Smith marked up the printer's manuscript, Oliver Cowdery incorporated those changes into a marked up 1830 copy from which the 1837 edition was typeset.

John Gilbert followed the KJV as he punctuated the Isaiah chapters. Gilbert also changed one instance of "that" to "at" in one of the Isaiah chapters to conform to the KJV. Our current book of Mosiah begins in the middle of chapter 2. The 116 lost pages contained the Book of Lehi, the first chapter, and part of the second chapter of Mosiah. Larger books not authored by Mormon or Moroni have book summaries. Mosiah would have a book summary if we had the complete text. Hyrum Smith as a scribe was a lousy speller. Oliver Cowdery had to heavily edit his work. Joseph Smith saw some kind of textual marking indicating a chapter break. When he came to these marks he instructed Oliver to write the word "chapter" without a number. Cowdery wrote "chapter 3" near the beginning of our current book of Mosiah which is one of the ways we know the original chapter 1 and part of chapter 2 are missing.

John Gilbert cut the printer's manuscript up into strips with a pen knife, set type from those strips, and then re-assembled the manuscript with pins which eventually rusted and left stains on the paper. 6 sheets comprised a gathering. Abner Cole published parts of the Book of Mormon as installments in his local newspaper. His is therefore the earliest publication. Joseph Smith had to exercise his privilege as the copyright owner to shut down Cole's piracy. The printer's manuscript was not available for the 1840 Nauvoo (Cincinnati) edition because Oliver Cowdery by then had been excommunicated from the Church and taken the manuscript with him. Cowdery gave it to David Whitmer, another of the three witnesses, before he (Cowdery) died in 1850. Upon Whitmer's death in 1888, the manuscript passed to his grandson, George Schweich, who sold it to the RLDS Church (now Community of Christ) in 1903. It was used in the 1908 RLDS edition.

Royal showed a photograph of Ron Romig (RLDS), Skousen's wife, himself, Rick Turley and Stephen Nadauld (both LDS) and a Catholic man then working as a document conservator at the BYU library. They were in Independence. The Utah contingent had brought with them most of the extant original manuscript. They were comparing the various types of paper used in both the original and the printer's manuscript. Skousen considered this ecumenical group a metaphor for the universal appeal of the Book of Mormon, "scripture for the whole world." The printer's manuscript at this time was deteriorating. It was written in vegetable rather than iron-based ink. The LDS Church conserved the manuscript, washing and de-acidifying it and then encasing it in mylar before returning it to Independence.

The modern Book of Mormon timeline divides into four phases:

1. Pre-translation 1823 - 1827
2. Translation 1827 - 1829
3. Publication 1829 - 1830
4. Post-publication 1830 - present

In the pre-translation time period the ancient Prophet Moroni was an important influence in Joseph's life. Alvin Smith, on his deathbed in November, 1823, counseled his younger brother to "obtain the record."

Emma Smith acted as Joseph's scribe for a time in Harmony. Martin Harris took the 116 manuscript pages from Harmony to Palmyra just before Emma gave birth to their first child, a stillborn son.

In 1841 as he deposited the original manuscript in the cornerstone of the Nauvoo House, Joseph Smith remarked "I've had trouble enough with this."

In June, 1878, a tornado devastated Richmond, Missouri where David Whitmer was living. 10 people died. Whitmer's two story house had the roof torn off and most of the structure was destroyed except for the room containing the printer's manuscript. Whitmer himself was injured by flying debris. In recounting this experience to George Q. Cannon, Whitmer called the preservation of the manuscript a miracle and attributed it to the power of God.

The yarn that originally bound the printer's manuscript together came from David Whitmer's mother, Mary. In June, 1829, Mary Musselman Whitmer was taking care of her own large family while at the same time entertaining Joseph and Emma, Oliver, and others. A heavenly visitor  showed her the plates, an experience which gave her the resolve she needed to carry on with her heavy responsibilities. She was the only woman privileged to formally see the plates.

The Book of Mormon was a direct word-for-word revelation from God. Joseph was not at liberty to articulate ideas in his own language.

The Community of Christ, in addition to the printer's manuscript, has letters between Joseph and Emma and the JST manuscript. They have contributed significantly to the Joseph Smith Papers Project.

In Alma 45 Oliver got tired and began to write rubbish. Joseph took over and the original manuscript has 28 words in Joseph's hand. This is one of the reasons why Royal believes Joseph saw about 30 words at a time in the seer stone. There is one place in the original manuscript where Joseph dictated about 20 words, but the average was closer to 10 words that Joseph dictated and then Oliver read back to him for verification. Ben Hunter staged a replication of this dictation/verification process. He estimates Joseph and Oliver spent about 6 hours per day on average engaged in the translation process during their time of sustained productivity.

Greg Welch, son of John W. (Jack) and Jeannie Welch, has just posted an excellent YouTube video entitled "The Amazing True Story of How Chiasmus was Discovered in The Book of Mormon." I highly recommend this production which runs for 10 minutes and 9 seconds. Greg has included a number of engaging visuals that I have never seen before in any previous presentation.

The story of this modern-day miracle deserves to be widely known. Some details that resonate with me:

• Jack served in the South German Mission under Pres. Orville C. Gunther (1912 - 2007). Gunther was my Bishop in the American Fork 12th Ward when he received his call to be a Mission President. Six years after returning from Germany, Orville and Betha Gunther began serving as President and Matron of the Provo Temple. Gunther for many years was Chairman of the Bank of American Fork. His autobiography entitled Ideals and Sacred Things, self-published in 2000, occupies an honored place in my library. Jack was in the missionary choir that sang at Gunther's funeral. Pres. Thomas S. Monson, for whom Germany is a very special place, was the concluding speaker at the funeral.
• Jack's reviewer for his landmark 1969 BYU Studies article entitled "Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon" was Truman G. Madsen. Jack did not find this out until he had been General Editor of BYU Studies for many years. 
• Jack's second LDS-oriented publication on chiasmus was in the February, 1972 New Era edited by Brian Kelly. Kelly was the one who first introduced me to the discovery. He was the instructor in the American Fork 12th Ward Elder's Quorum I attended before I moved to Provo to begin my freshman year at BYU. Kelly came into quorum meeting one Sunday waving a copy of BYU Studies and announcing, "You won't believe what's in the Book of Mormon."
• The copy of the German Das Buch Mormon that Jack was reading on the morning of August 16, 1967 had an image of Izapa Stela 5 on the dust jacket. Orville Gunther explained to me that the German saints love scientific and scholarly approaches to the Book of Mormon. The most avid followers of FARMS publications outside the US during the 1980's and '90's were in Germany. One day Jack was in the Minneapolis airport. A German brother approached him, "Are you brother Welch?" When Jack responded affirmatively, the man proceeded to tell him about the LDS group in Chemnitz (formerly Karl-Marx-Stadt) who had shared their copies of the precious FARMS Newsletter in a kind of lending library. Jack asked how FARMS materials got past the East German censors. "We believe they saw 'FARMS' on the masthead and assumed it was an agricultural publication." Story told by John W. Welch at the inaugural Book of Mormon Central staff meeting on Tuesday, September 1, 2015 in Springville, Utah.     

The day after I returned home from my mission to Peru in December, 1974, I visited Orville Gunther at his home near what is now the Mount Timpanogos Temple. The American Fork 12th Ward had been divided during my absence and we were both now members of the American Fork 14th Ward. He recounted the story of Jack's discovery of chiasmus in the Book of Mormon from his perspective as Mission President. He then suggested I visit with a very erudite man - John L. Sorenson - who had just built a new home in the 14th Ward. John welcomed me cordially and we discussed the Book of Mormon for a couple of hours. The modern era of Book of Mormon studies began in 1980 when John L. Sorenson and John W. Welch began to collaborate under the FARMS aegis. I was the FARMS business manager in those early days.

This is off-topic, but I can't resist telling another story. I shared this with Jack and the Book of Mormon Central employees at our aforementioned staff meeting. One of Pres. Monson's cherished stories is about the General Handbook of Instructions. At Spencer W. Kimball's suggestion, then Elder Monson memorized large portions of the newly-updated Handbook, traveled into East Germany, and proceeded to type up a copy from memory for the Saints behind the Iron Curtain to use. It was forbidden at the time for the Church to send literature directly into the German Democratic Republic. After he was about 30 pages into his arduous task, Elder Monson stood up to stretch. He noticed a copy of the recently-printed Handbook in German on the shelf in the room. Heidi S. Swinton in her biography of Thomas S. Monson entitled To the Rescue concludes her retelling of the story "How a Handbook came to be in East Germany, no one would say." I know exactly how the Handbook got into the then-Communist country. Orville Gunther told me all about it with an impish grin on his face. After he was released as Mission President, Orville (with Betha frequently accompanying him) made a number of trips into East Germany. A wealthy man with a passion for fine machinery, he went to the Mercedes Benz factory in Stuttgart and had them build him a custom vehicle with a false floor. He loaded the car with copies of the German Book of Mormon, lesson manuals, and other important works including the Handbook. When he came to the border, Gunther chatted up the guards and suggested they take his car for a spin. They drove crummy little Trabants if they had a car at all, so Gunther's invitation was irresistible. After each guard had his turn behind the wheel of the Benz, they waved Orville on through without inspecting his vehicle. Gunther pulled this stunt several times with the same results, supplying several East German branches with precious Church literature.

In the Utah South Area Stake Conference broadcast originating from the Marriott Center this morning, Elder M. Russell Ballard shared this wise counsel:

• Ask questions. Allow others to ask questions. Don't assume a person is faithless because they are wrestling with tough and persistent questions. It was a difficult question that led the Prophet Joseph to the grove.
• Priesthood leaders, help members in your stewardship find satisfying answers to their questions. Seek faithful scholars who can provide context for our scriptures and our history.
• The Church is committed to transparency. The Joseph Smith Papers project is one example. The Gospel Topics Essays on lds.org are another.
• "... be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you..."1 Peter 3:15. 
• Since you have been blessed with learning and some measure of prosperity, do not mock or ridicule weak or poorly-educated members of the Church. Many of those living in less fortunate circumstances around the world are valiant, faithful latter-day Saints.

Elder Ballard has wide experience in the developing nations of the world. The Ballard Center, part of BYU's Marriott School, is named after him.

The Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, a publication of the Neal A. Mawell Institute at BYU, just published vol. 24. This annual publication will appear again in the spring of 2016. The editorial board consists of Brian Hauglid, Mark Wright and Joseph Spencer. Kerry Hull's article entitled "War Banners: A Mesoamerican Context for the Title of Liberty" I found particularly interesting.

It is great to see this important organ focused again on the Book of Mormon and re-vitalized.

I am reading a terrific book by Mary Ellen Miller, Sterling Professor of the History of Art at Yale and former Dean of Yale College. Miller is a highly respected Mesoamericanist. Her book with Linda Schele, The Blood of Kings (1986) is a classic. My current read, The Art of Mesoamerica: From Olmec to Aztec published by Thames & Hudson, has gone through five editions since it first appeared in 1986. I am reading the fifth edition published in 2012. I met Miller at a Maya Conference in Los Angeles in April. See the article "Light from L.A." She is a vivacious, engaging speaker as well as a first rate scholar. In 288 pages Miller takes her readers through the panorama of high civilization in Mesoamerica by focusing on art and architecture. 250 illustrations show the splendor of Olmec, Late Formative (Lehite time period), Teotihuacan, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Pacific Coast of Guatemala, Maya, Toltec and Aztec accomplishments. Miller illustrates the greatest achievements of these cultures, their most noted works of art, the high water marks of their civilizations.

She includes a map of all the sites referenced in her text:

Sites Mentioned by Mary Ellen Miller in 2012

It should be obvious that the large blank spots on this map are relative cultural backwaters, places where the art and architecture did not reach the level of sophistication Miller finds impressive. It is interesting that Miller only shows four rivers: The Coatzacoalcos in the Olmec heartland, the Motagua draining the Maya highlands, the Pasion which is tributary to the Usumacinta, and the Usumacinta which is the quintessential Maya river. The Grijalva does not appear on her map because she found so little of note along its banks. Except for one mention of an early long count date on epi-Olmec stela 2 at Chiapa de Corzo, Miller does not treat anything from the Grijalva drainage basin and no art or architecture from the area appears in any of her illustrations. The Grijalva River and its tributaries are a large blank spot on her map because the ruins found there tend to be minor and pedestrian. Even the Chiapa stela 2 mention may not survive in future editions of Miller's book. For some time, the 36 BC date from Chiapa de Corzo has been widely acknowledged as the earliest long count date yet discovered in Mesoamerica. Some scholars are now interpreting a weathered date on Takalik Abaj stela 2 as 236 BC. A stone block text recently discovered at San Bartolo could have a long count date as early as 295 BC. Garth Norman interprets a date on Izapa stela 12 as correlating with 176 BC.

In 1974, while serving my mission in Peru, I began corresponding with Elder Milton R. Hunter of the Seventy. Elder Hunter was the point man among the brethren for all things Book of Mormon, a role he had been assigned by Pres. David O. McKay. I shared with him some of the interesting things my companions and I were finding as we visited college professors, archaeological sites, and libraries on our preparation days. Elder Hunter got rather excited and arranged for me to remain in Peru for two extra months at the end of my mission so I could do full-time research. He explained that he was very disappointed with the research results coming out of Mesoamerica. The BYU New World Archaeological Foundation had been digging in Chiapas for 20 years at that point, and they had not found much of anything Elder Hunter deemed compelling. His attitude of disenchantment was shared by Thomas Stuart Ferguson, Dee F. Green, and others whose enthusiasm for Book of Mormon archaeology waned as NWAF kept uncovering unspectacular sites. NWAF at that time was excavating primarily in the Grijalva drainage basin, the large blank spot in the middle of Mary Miller's map.

This raises an important question. What are we likely to find when we finally locate Nephite and Lamanite remains? Should we be looking for a Quirigua if not a Copan or a Palenque? Or is Sorenson's small and relatively plain Santa Rosa as much as we should expect? In other words, did the Nephites and Lamanites participate in Mesoamerican high civilization or were they cultural underachievers?

If the Nephite city of Nephi was Kaminaljuyu as many LDS Mesoamericanists believe, then they were right in the thick of high culture in the region for several hundred years. Kaminaljuyu is on Miller's map. It is on everyone's map because it had fine art, advanced architecture, a substantial encircling wall, long distance trade relations, strong ties with Teotihuacan, etc. 2 of Miller's 250 illustrations are from Kaminaljuyu.

Ca. 200 BC when Mosiah₁ led the Nephites through the wilderness to join the Mulekites in Zarahemla, did the Nephites lose their sophistication and go into cultural decline? No. The text describes a progressive, expansive, literate society Helaman 3:14-15 with widespread access to luxury goods Alma 4:6 and a thriving professional class Alma 11:20. The text further describes Nephite society as generally more advanced than Lamanite culture Alma 43:19-21, Alma 49:5.

Does it follow then that the Nephites were located along the Grijalva where the ruins are so small and simple they failed to impress Elder Milton R. Hunter in 1974 or Mary Ellen Miller in 2012? No. The Mulekite-Nephite capital was probably not located in a large blank spot on Miller's map.

I just watched an excellent new DVD by Warren Aston and his son, Chad, entitled "Lehi in Arabia: The Search for Nephi's Bountiful."

Warren Aston's New Video

This 75 minute documentary describes and illustrates Aston's 30 year independent research odyssey throughout the Arabian Peninsula, particularly in Yemen and Oman. It is full of rich details such as photographs of inscribed metal plates found in the region. I highly recommend this video which ships from Provo, Utah. You can order it on Aston's website lehiinarabia.com. Narrator Scot Proctor of Meridian Magazine says in the introduction "This is the story of the most widely accepted physical evidence that supports the Book of Mormon." After watching the video, one is left with the impression that these Book of Mormon locations are known:

• Jerusalem
• Red Sea
• Valley of Lemuel - Tayyib Al Ism in the Mazhafah Mountains of NW Saudi Arabia
• Nahom - Nehem Tribal Area in the Nehem Hills of Yemen
• Old World Bountiful - Khor Kharfot at the mouth of Wadi Sayq in SW Oman

Warren Aston, a native of New Zealand now living in Brisbane, Australia, is a father of 6 who has systematically explored southern Arabia on several research expeditions and numerous trips as a tour guide. This is a timeline of Aston's adventurous story:

Warren Aston, Temple of Marib, Yemen, September, 2000

And this is a landscape of Khor Kharfot.

Warren Aston's Old World Bountiful in Dhofar Region, Oman