BMAF 2014

The 12th Annual Book of Mormon Lands Conference sponsored by the Book of Mormon Archaeological Forum (BMAF) was held on Saturday, October 18, 2014 at the Salt Lake Sheraton. Robert Starling chaired this year's conference.

Geologist and paleontologist Wade E, Miller gave the first presentation on dealing with alleged faunal anachronisms in the text. Miller has advanced degrees from the University of Arizona and UC Berkeley. He has been on the faculty at Fullerton College, Santa Ana College and BYU. Author of more than 80 scientific papers, he has been a paleontology advisor to many institutions and governmental agencies throughout the western U.S. and Mexico. Retired from BYU, he is now a research associate with the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County where he is one of the experts classifying and cataloging the millions of bones recovered from the tar pits at Rancho La Brea. He travels into Mexico frequently to collect fossils and ancient skeletal remains. One of the defining moments in his career was a presentation to LDS young single adults in Italy where many of our young people were going away to college and losing their testimonies. That led to his publication of Creation of the Earth for Man: Views of an LDS Geologist and Science and the Book of Mormon: Cureloms, Cumoms, Horses & More, both in 2010. Miller and Matt Roper are co-authors of the excellent article "Animals in the Book of Mormon: Challenges and Perspectives" published in Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture. Miller gave several examples of animals, long thought to be extinct, that have been found still living in unexpected habitats. He used this as a backdrop to explain the process of extinction which can proceed slowly over centuries or millenia. He discussed over 100 species indigenous to North America that are candidates for the animals mentioned in the text. Some items that stood out:

• The geology and paleontology implied in the text fit Mesoamerica. They do not fit the much more stable situation in northeastern North America. Volcanism is often accompanied by fierce lightning. Plate tectonics and volcanism explain the destructions recorded in 3 Nephi. Both the Cocos Plate and the Caribbean Plate cross Mesoamerica, making it one of the most active seismic and volcanic zones in the world.
• Cement is found at Teotihuacan and Tula, Hidalgo. The notion that people in the land northward built with cement because they had no trees is untenable. A great deal of fuel is consumed in the process of burning limestone to create cement.
• 4 Nephi 1:24 says the people had all manner of fine pearls. Miller showed a photograph of a lovely string of pearls from Mexico. Gem-grade pearls are found in tropical and some sub-tropical waters. Pearls do form in cold waters, but they are small and unattractive. This is another indication the text is set in Mesoamerica.
• Very little gold exists naturally in the northeastern U.S. Industrial scale gold mining is well-attested in ancient Mesoamerica.
• Rancho La Brea had horses whose remains date to A.D. 1300. Many dry bones cannot be dated. Collagen in a bone is necessary for radiocarbon dating.
• Pre-columbian bos taurus cattle remains have been found in Yucatan caves.
• Pre-columbian euceratherium (shrub ox) remains have been found in Mexico. 
• The woodland musk ox is now known from ancient Mesoamerica.
• Peccaries could be the swine mentioned in the text.
• The true goat oreamnos harringtoni was in Mesoamerica.
• Red brocket deer, rocky mountain sheep and columbian mammoths were all in Mexico.
• Mammoths were elephants of the order proboscidea. Mammoth remains have now been found dating from 2,000 B.C.
• The American mastodon was in Mesoamerica.
• Antilocapra, the goat deer, is known from Mesoamerica.
• Llamas have been found at Rancho La Brea. They may have been the very useful cureloms and cumoms mentioned in the text.
• Equs, the horse, originated in North America. Pre-columbian horse and ass remains have recently been discovered in Carlsbad, CA.

--
Scott Hoyt gave the next presentation on the Andean Viracocha and other white, bearded god figures known from Peruvian and Mesoamerican ethnohistory. Hoyt is a retired attorney who practiced with Gibson Dunn in Los Angeles and Dallas. He now divides his time between homes in Dallas, Texas and Midway, Utah. He served a mission to Peru and his book entitled Two Years of Eternity is one of the best first-person mission memoirs currently available. (Full-disclosure: Scott and I [Kirk Magleby] were zone leaders together in Arequipa, Peru,) He began his presentation with a headline published in the Lima newspaper La Prensa "Estuvo Cristo en el Peru?""Was Christ in Peru?" leading to an article by Franklin Pease, one of Peru's foremost authorities on pre-columbian ethnohistory. Drawing on sources such as Pedro Cieza de Leon, Juan de Betanzos, Cristobal de Molina and Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, Hoyt drew relationships between legends of an ancient white, bearded god who visited the Andes, the Guatemalan Popol Vuh recently corroborated by murals unearthed at the Peten sites El Mirador and San Bartolo, the various books of Chilam Balam from Yucatan and the Book of Mormon account in 3 Nephi. Some interesting points:

• The ancient American creator god organized pre-existing matter, contra the Catholic conception of creation ex-nihilo.
• The Popol Vuh, for example, characterizes the creator as dominator of chaos.
• Viracocha had two helpers as he created the earth. The Popol Vuh describes three creator gods.
• Viracocha's visit to Peru was preceded by massive destruction as in 3 Nephi 8.
• Some indigenous iconography depicts a weeping god. Ditto 3 Nephi 17:21-22.