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Some Notes on Mesoamerica and the Book of Mormon

Some Notes on Mesoamerica and the Book of Mormon

Last updated on: May 29, 2025 at 10:15 pm by Dan Peterson

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Some Notes on Mesoamerica and the Book of Mormon 2025-05-29T22:15:15-06:00 Dan Peterson

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A scene of ancient Mesoamerican warfare in a detail from a reproduction of one of the murals at Bonampak, Chiapas, Mexico. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Here are two further sets of notes from John W. Welch, ed., Reexploring the Book of Mormon: A Decade of New Research (Salt Lake City and Provo: Deseret Book, 1992):

“Nephi’s Bows and Arrows,” by William J. Hamblin (41-44)

“I, Nephi, did make out of wood a bow, and out of a straight stick, an arrow.” (1 Nephi 16:23)

“The symbolic message of the broken bow, first detected by Alan Goff, was highlighted in the March 1984 issue of the F.A.R.M.S. newsletter: “Bows were symbols of political power. One thinks of Odysseus bending the bow to prove himself. An overlord would break the bow of a disobedient vassal to symbolically put the rebel in his place” (see also Jeremiah 49:35; 51:56). That detail is significant in 1 Nephi 16. Nephi’s bow broke, and the bows of Laman and Lemuel lost their springs, but when Nephi fashioned a new bow, making him the only one in camp with a bow, his brothers soon accused Nephi of having political ambitions (see 1 Nephi 16:37-38).”

“Three times in his record, Nephi mentioned that he had broken his bow, but not once did he say that any of his arrows were damaged. Yet in 1 Nephi 16:23, Nephi says that he “did make out of wood a bow, and out of a straight stick, an arrow.” Why would he need to make a new arrow if his old ones were still intact?

“David S. Fox, in a letter to F.A.R.M.S., suggests an answer: “An examination of Nephi’s account shows that whoever wrote that account was familiar in some detail with the eld of archery.” Consider what happens to an arrow at the instant the string is released: the full force of the drawn string is applied to the end of the arrow, trying to accelerate it, but also tending to bend or buckle the arrow. If the bow’s draw weight and the arrow’s stiffness are not perfectly matched, the arrow will stray off the intended course or fall short of the mark. An arrow that is too flexible will leave the bow with a vibration that can cause the arrow to behave erratically. On the other hand, an arrow that is too stiff is probably too heavy for the bow.

“Nephi’s steel bow likely used heavier, stiffer arrows than his simply fashioned wooden bow could handle. Nephi was physically large (see 1 Nephi 2:16; 4:31), and he would have had little reason to use a bow made from metal if he did not have considerable strength. The arrows to match the steel bow used by such a man would undoubtedly have been quite heavy in order for them to be of adequate stiffness. One experienced archer reports, “The arrows from the steel bow when shot from the wooden bow would be like shooting telephone poles.” Hence, it is accurate that Nephi should mention, in one and the same breath, the fact that he made an arrow as well as a bow. Bow wood and arrow wood from the same tree or area could be matched as well.

“One doubts that such information was known to Joseph Smith or to many, if any, of his contemporaries. Archery, as a means of self-defense or as a serious method of hunting or warfare, went out of vogue among Europeans many years before the time of Joseph Smith. On the other hand, archery as a sport did not emerge until the latter half of the nineteenth century.

“David Fox concludes: “Nephi’s statement that he made an arrow out of a straight stick is an additional subtle but significant example of internal consistency within the Book of Mormon. Anyone unfamiliar with the eld of archery would have almost certainly omitted such a statement.””

The Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

“Old World Languages in the New World,” by John L. Sorenson, Gordon C. Thomasson, Robert F. Smith, augmented by the work of Brian Stubbs

“And behold, it is wisdom in God that we should obtain these records, that we may preserve unto our children the language of our fathers.” (1 Nephi 3:19; also Mosiah 1:2; Mormon 9:32-33).

For a very long time, most scholars have recognized no evidence for the existence of Old World languages or linguistic influences in the New. Recent developments in historical and comparative linguistics, though, suggest that the orthodox, conventional view is mistaken.

This brief and early Latter-day Saint approach to the subject emphasizes the work of Professor Otto Sadovszky, then of the Department of Anthropology at California State University, Fullerton, who contended that two groups of languages separated by over five thousand miles are closely related.

“The first group is called Penutian, a group of Indian languages of central California that include Miwok and Wintun. The second group is called Ob-Ugrian and includes related languages like Samoyed. These are used around the Ob River of northwest Siberia. [The Ob-Ugrian language group also includes Hungarian, of which Professor Sadovszky was a native speaker — which is why he spotted the similarities.]

“The ten thousand cognate terms and the linguistic quality of the comparisons appear so impressive to Finno-Ugric specialists that they are now more widely accepting historical linkage. A few examples of cognates are Ostyak āj-ko “child” = Miwokan ‘aj-ko “children”; Ostyak lant- “to get blisters from rubbing” = Miwokan lanti “to blister from rubbing.”

The article also draws upon a study by Dr. Mary Ritchie Key of the University of California at Irvine, who contended that “The languages of Polynesia contain elements found in North and South American Indian languages that suggest distant historical connections.”

See Otto Sadovszky, “Data Sheet for Sadovszky’s ‘Cal-Ugrian Theory’,” University of California at Los Angeles, 1985; “The Discovery of California: Breaking the Silence of the Siberian-to-America Migrator,” The Californians 2, no. 6 (November-December 1984): 9-20; “Siberia’s Frozen Mummy and the Genesis of the California Indian Culture,” The Californians 3, no. 6 (November-December 1985): 9-20; “The New Genetic Relationship and the Paleo-Linguistics of the Central California Indian Ceremonial Houses,” Tenth LACUS Forum, 1983, Quebec City, Quebec (Columbia, South Carolina, 1984). For annotations on his work, see John L. Sorenson and Martin H. Raish, Pre-Columbian Contact with the Americas across the Oceans: An Annotated Bibliography (Provo, Utah: Research Press, 1990), 2:S008-17. Publications by Finnish, Estonian, and Russian scholars on a theory called “Nostratics,” which links Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic, and Uralic proto-languages, seem to include initial evidence of the Penutian connection. Tiit-Rain Viitso, for example, published such an article in 1971.
Mary Ritchie Key, Polynesian and American Linguistic Connections (Lake Bluff, Illinois: Jupiter Press, 1984); see also John Sorenson and Martin Raish, Pre-Columbian Contact, 1:K062-73.
See also John L. Sorenson, “Evidences of Culture Contacts between Polynesia and the Americas in Precolumbian Times,” M.A. thesis, BYU, 1952; and David H. Kelley, “Linguistics and Problems in Trans- Pacic Contacts,” Actas y Memorias, 35th Congreso Internacional de Americanistas (Mexico City, 1964), 1:17- 18. Kelley showed the presence of what appear to be specic groups of Uto-Aztecan and early Polynesian cognates clustered around ritual and sacred beliefs.

A physical map of Mesoamerica
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

I’ve been a tad busy in recent weeks, and especially over the past two or three days, and consequently I’ve fallen a bit behind in calling your attention to recent changes on the moribund and unchanging website of the Interpreter Foundation. Here are a couple of recent items:

“The Heartland Versus Mesoamerica: Part 7: Geology and the Destructions in Third Nephi”

The Temple: Plates, Patterns, & Patriarchs: “Temples beyond Jerusalem,” written by Stephen D. Ricks.

Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in The Temple: Plates, Patterns, & Patriarchs, edited by Stephen D. Ricks and Jeffrey M. Bradshaw. For more information, go to https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/the-temple-plates-patterns-patriarchs/. For video and audio recording of this conference talk, go to https://interpreterfoundation.org/conferences/2022-temple-on-mount-zion-conference/videos/ricks/.

“Following the final breach between the Lamanites and Nephites, Nephi supervised the construction of a temple in the New World. He wrote, “And I, Nephi, did build a temple; and I did construct it after the manner of the temple of Solomon save it were not built of so many precious things; for they were not to be found upon the land, wherefore, it could not be built like unto Solomon’s Temple. But the manner of the construction was like unto the temple of Solomon; and the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine” (2 Nephi 5:16).”

[I was very pleased, by the way, that Stephen Ricks, a former missionary companion of mine and a longtime department colleague at BYU, and his wife, Shirley Ricks, a member of the Interpreter Foundation’s board of directors, were with us on our just-completed tour of England.]

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