Arguments Against Book of Mormon Archaeology Discussed - From Daniel C. Peterson's review of Peter Bartley

On Hebrew, Cities, Flora and Fauna, & Warfare in Mesoamerica and the Book of Mormon

Summarized by Kerry A. Shirts

Daniel C. Peterson reviewed Peter Bartley's book "Mormonism: The Prophet, the Book and the Cult," and demonstrated many ways in which archaeology has not disproved the BofM so much as the assumptions of Peter Bartley. I summarize, all too briefly the more salient points Peterson discussed, which ought to perk your ears......

First: [I am skimming heavily here] Bartley used mainly outdated and incorrect information on the Book of Mormon Witnesses - ignoring Richard Lloyd Anderson's classic text, "Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses" as well as Eldin Ricks "The Case of the Book of Mormon Witnesses", as well as Milton V. Backman's "Eyewitnesses of the Restoration" and Richard Bushman's "Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism". Bartley can only come up with E.D. Howe's "Mormonism Unvailed" and Fawn Brodie's book "No Man Knows My History" and Walter Martin's "The Maze of Mormonism." None of which give a rounded out picture of the issues.

But when we get to the subject of Archaeology interesting things come about. Bartley contends that all the American Indians are descended from the BofM Lamanites. This clearly the BofM does NOT teach, and no informed Mormon claims this strawman argument.

Peterson makes a salient point again: Why does he [Bartley] pretend that the BofM must be false if the theory is true that the Americas were peopled by migrants from Asia to Alaska across the Bering Strait? Why does the claim that a Jaredite migration to the New World circa 2200 B.C. is incompatible with a series of Bering Strait migrations ending about 8000 B.C.? Where, please, is the contradiction? If Julie reports that she saw Tom at the party, and Laura claims to have seen Jack, must we conclude that one of the girls is either a liar or mad?" ("Review of Books on the Book of Mormon," F.A.R.M.S., Vol. 2, 1990, p. 42).

Bartley also contends that Hebrew was never spoken in the Americas. There is no evidence of ancient Hebrew in the Americas. But Bartley had contended that the linguistic variety in the Americas was great and even admitted that the evidence shows that "Precisely how many languages were spoken in the Americas will never be known, for many of them have become extinct." Well, if unnumbered languages have disappeared from Mesoamerica without leaving even sufficient traces to testify that they once existed, does not this open the door to Hebrew having once been among them even if no traces of it remain? Critics cannot have it both ways.

Bartley's understanding of the BofM is as describing a people who built numerous cities, which he pictures - without very good justification - as massive urban centers. Yet he says Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica was virtually devoid of true cities. Indeed, citing G.H.S. Bushnell, Bartley speaks of the impossibility of building cities in the forests where the great Maya centers were located.

But what does the evidence show? Part of the problem involves a dispute among social scientists about just what constitutes a "true city." Even Bartley admits that large ceremonial centers did exist in Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, and in the immediately pre-colonial period, some of these centers possesses "urban populations." Why shouldn't these be considered cities?

At this point Peterson notes that John Sorenson in his text "An Ancient American Setting," pp. 158f, discusses what the BofM itself says about its "cities", and concludes among other things that they were not necessarily very large and that they were, precisely "ceremonial centers." His discussion suggests that the BofM data fits Mesoamerica rather well. (If it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck...) The National Geographic Society's archaeological site in N. Guatemala, El Mirador, is estimated to cover sixteen square kilometers (six square miles) - in Bushnell's impossible forests - at to have contained at its height a population in the tens of thousands.

Why should this not be termed a city? (see the National Geographic Magazine, 172 (Sept. 1987): 316-39. Peterson then goes on to discuss several other large cities in the impossible jungles.

Bartley then claims that "New World archaeology reveals a complete abscence of metals." Now how in the name of Sam Hill can we not let out a horse laugh on such an idiotic claim? Peterson rightly notes that virtually any work on Pre-Columbian art work will show numerous objects (such as breastplates, necklaces, and the like) made of gold. Almost everybody knows the effect of gold on the conquistadores don't they? But then we see that Bartley argues that metallurgy was absent, at least until 900 A.D. but this argument also has been undermined by many published works of John Sorenson, William Hamblin, and David Palmer among other historians. Again, this is demonstrating my thesis that critics refuse to update themselves and really keep up with the cutting edge research and knowledge available to us. We insist on understanding things from the 1995 vantage point, not the 1955 one. If that bothers people, so be it.

And, of course, Bartley takes a cheap shot at the BofM by claiming it is completely false in ascribing wheat and barley to the BofM peoples. He takes no notice of the many works of scholarship by LDS authors, nor the non-LDS authors, as the article in the magazine "Science" in Dec. of 1983, of cultivated Pre-Columbian barley at a site in Arizona.

Then Bartley attempts to drive a wedge between the BofM and Mesoamerican archaeology by speaking of the many terrible wars in the BofM while the Mayans were a calm and peaceful society. Of course, now thanks to that very archaeology Bartley has been shown to be out to lunch, as usual. Why can't he come up with something legitimate once? Why all the outdated and naive arguments which are certainly incorrect and do more damage to Bartley than to the BofM?

Linda Schele and Mary Ellen Millar (The Blood of Kings) have shown and shown it in crystal clear evidence that "The modern myth that the Maya were a peace-loving, gentle people who only tended to Milpas and followed the stars has fallen with a thunderous crash." And the great Yale Mayanist Michael D. Coe put it simply: "The Maya were obssessed with war." (The Maya, p. 148)

When claims are made against the BofM, it behooves whoever accepts those claims to check them out very, VERY, V-E-R-Y carefully, insisting on seeing the sources used, and the reasons for the claim. Otherwise you'll only be "Bartley" right (partly right).