A Detailed Chronology of LDS Thought on the Geography of the Jaredite Journey to the New World: 1921—1980

Note 1: The mark ^ after the year is purely a research tool indicating that a copy of the article or book is on file in the author’s personal library.

Note 2: The year (listed on the left) for the event or quote is not always the same as the date of the primary source (listed on the right) from which the information was taken. If the source information (the later publication of the information) was significant, in and of itself, to the later time period in which it came forth, there will also be a separate listing for that later year. When appropriate, additional sources will be listed.

1920 footnotes taken out of Book of Mormon (see geog1.jar) & check what was taken out.

1924^      B. H. Roberts, “Destruction of Ancient Nations in America,” in Improvement Era, 1924, Vol. 27, February, 1924, No. 4, p.

     Roberts writes:

     Under divine direction this colony departed from Babel northward, and thence were led through Asia, eastwardly, until they came to the shore of the great sea–the Pacific Ocean–” which divided the lands.” Here they remained four years; and then by divine commandment constructed weight barges in which to cross the mighty ocean . . . The colony is generally supposed to have landed on the western coast of North America, probably south of the Gulf of California.

1924^      L. E. Hills, New Light on American Archaeology, Independence, MO: Lambert Moon, Printers and Stationers, 1924

     This book was compiled from a series of lectures delivered by L. E. Hills. Mr. Hills spent years of study and research pertaining to the history, traditions, geography and archaeology of Mexico and Central America.

     [p. 23-24]

     From the Tower of Babel

     Native Races, Vol. 5, page 209

     At the end of the first age of the world, as we are told by Ixtlilxochitl, the earth was visited by a flood which covered the most lofty mountains, after the repeopling of the earth by the descendants of a few families who escaped destruction, at the building of a tower, and the confusion of tongues, and consequent scattering of the population-for all these things were found in the native traditions as we are informed-seven families speaking the same language kept together in their wanderings for many years; after crossing broad lands and seas, enduring great hardships, they reached Tamoanchan or Huehue Tlapallan.

     The footnote reads:

     The date of the arrival (of this primitive colony) in Huehue Tlapallan is given by Ixtlilxochitl as 520 years after the flood.

     . . . This is surely a remarkable agreement between the Book of Mormon, and the ancient Indian records, translated by Ixtlilxochitl. If we had no other evidence, that of itself ought to make people take notice.

     [p. 38] In following the migrations of the Jaredites . . . I want to read a statement made by one of the early writers, who came to America shortly after the conquest, and who gathered at first hand the traditions of the primitive people, the ancient Americans. He soon mastered the different dialects of the Nahuan language in Mexico and gathered together a vast amount of knowledge concerning the ancient traditions. This man was Sahagun. He came from Spain and landed in America in 1529. In Native Races, vol. 5, p. 189, please notice what this man says about the first inhabitants of America:

     Countless years ago the first settlers arrived in New Spain. Coming in ships by sea they approached a northern port, and because they disembarked there it was called Panutla, or Panoaia, “place where they arrived who came by sea,” now corruptly called Pantlan (Panuco).

Note* Panuco is generally thought to be located on the Gulf of Mexico coast of Mexico somewhat near Tampico. This would necessitate an Atlantic crossing. Indeed, according to an illustrated map accompanying the text, the journey of the Jaredites is charted by land through Europe to the coast of Spain, and then across the Atlantic (see inset map).

[1924      Map: Map Showing Courses Through the Oceans: Geographical Locations Made from Ancient Historical Records and Traditions of the Indians. Copyrighted 1923, L. E. Hills. L. E. Hills, New Light on American Archaeology, Independence, MO: Lambert Moon Printers and Stationers, 1924

     [p. 44-46] According to the Indians, the Jaredites crossed the ocean in a raft composed of eight barges fastened together. This is known and recorded in the Indian traditions, as follows:

     Veytia, besides his own, (ancient Indian records), had access to Botturini’s valuable collection of Mexican manuscripts, so that he was well acquainted with American antiquities . . .

     Veytia says, “After the destruction of the Babylonian Tower the Lord scattered the sons of men upon the face of all the earth.”

     According to him, they crossed Tartary (Turkey) and entered America by means of large flat canoes, and square rafts, the former are described and called acalli, “Water houses,” in their manuscripts. . . . (These quotations were taken from “Ancient Cities of the New World,” by Desire Charney, page 78, 79).

     Think for a moment: the Jaredites sailed together, and all landed at the same time; they brought with them animals that had to be cared for and fed. There is no question but what the Indian records are correct; that these eight barges were fastened together with great trees or timbers. I want to read a statement from the Book of Mormon that may give us just a little thought along this line. . . . in verse 12 [727:12] we read: And thus they were driven forth; and no monster of the sea could break them.

     I think this reference is tot he raft. That is the thought. They were in a great raft and were fastened together securely, and no monster of the deep could break up the raft.

Note* Interestingly, Hills interprets “Tartary” to be “Turkey,” which accords with a journey westward from Babel to the Atlantic. This proposed route also accords in general with the authoritative RLDS view proposed by the 1898 RLDS Committee on Book of Mormon Archaeology ( see notation), although the landing site is at Tampico, Mexico instead of on the eastern coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. But as Hills’ overall Book of Mormon geography is so radically different from the 1898 RLDS Committee, any proposed link to the 1898 proposal should not carry much weight. Hills also illustrates “the large flat canoes, and square rafts” (see below).

[1924      Illustration: A Raft of the Jaredite Barges. L. E. Hills, New Light on American Archaeology, Independence, MO: Lambert Moon Printers and Stationers, 1924, p. 45 ]

1927^      Alton C. Melville, L. A. Wilson, “Recent Scientific Investigations,” in Improvement Era 30, February 1927, p. 314.

     Under the heading “Bearing on the Book of Mormon,” Melville writes:

     Students of the Book of Mormon are always on the lookout for any item in history or science bearing upon that record, and so the following is submitted:

     An account of the tradition among the Chinese, of their first settlement in China, seems to hint at that remarkable migration of the Jaredites from the Tower of Babel to the “great sea which divides the lands,” where some of them (doubtless only a part of them) took to the barges which were lighted in so remarkable a manner. Dr. Fisher, of Yale, gives this account:–

     “The nucleus of the Chinese nation is thought to have been a band of immigrants, who are supposed by some to have started from the region southeast of the Caspian Sea, and to have crossed the headwaters of the Oxus. They followed the course of the Hoang Ho, or Yellow river, having entered the country of their adoption from the northwest, and they planted themselves in the present province of Shan-se.”

     Further to identify these people to the Book of Mormon reader, Dr. Fisher adds, “Although nomads, they had some knowledge of astronomy.” Of the occurrences while the migration halted at that point, history, of course, says nothing, but the annual pilgrimage of hundreds of thousands of Chinese to the top of their sacred mount just at the point of the peninsula of Shantung, testifies to the Book of Mormon student very eloquently of the wonderful manifestations received there by the brother of Jared.–L. A. Wilson, Manti, Utah.

1927^      J. M. Sjodahl, An Introduction to the Study of the Book of Mormon, SLC: Deseret News Press, 1927

     Chapter 4

     Jaredites

     According to the Book of Mormon, a colony, now known as Jaredites (Moro. 9:23), some time shortly after the attempt to build the famous Tower of Babel, came to America from the region occupied by the tower builders.

     Very little is known about these colonists and their descendants, but we may suppose that their migration was part of a general movement in all directions, which took place at that time, from the land of Shinar, afterwards called Chaldea.

     A General Migration from Babylon. That such a general migratory movement actually took place can hardly be doubted. Josephus, who drew information from both Hebrew and Greek sources, says:

     After this they were dispersed abroad, on account of their languages, and went out by colonies everywhere, and each colony took possession of that land which they lit upon and unto which God led them; so that the whole continent was filled with them, both the inland and the maritime countries. There were some, also, who passed over the sea in ships and inhabited the islands.

     In a much more recent work we read:

     “All history demonstrates that from the central focus (Babylon) nations were propelled over the globe with an extraordinary degree of energy and geographical enterprise.”

     A Chinese tradition is mentioned by Dr. Fisher, of Yale, thus:

     The nucleus of the Chinese nation is thought to have been a band of immigrants, who are supposed by some to have started from the region southeast of the Caspian Sea, and to have crossed the headwaters of the Oxus. They followed the course of the Hoang Ho, or Yellow river, having entered the country of their adoption from the northwest, and they planted themselves in the present province of Shanse. (Improvement Era, Feb., 1927, p. 314.)

     It is not impossible that others of the Jaredite race followed the pioneers of the Book of Ether, and remained at the sea shore, laying the foundation of the Chinese empire. The annual pilgrimage of Chinese to the top of their sacred mount just at the point of the peninsula of Shantung confirms this supposition.

     Date of the Jaredite Migration. According to the chronology of Bishop Usher, which appears in English versions of the Bible, the building of the Tower was undertaken about 2,200 B.C. Dr. Joseph Angus, in his Bible Handbook, suggests 2,247. According to Babylonian tradition the City of Babel was founded about the year 2,230 B.C. But as early as 2,000 B.C., there were in the Babylonian library clay tablets, now preserved in the British Museum, containing the story of the Tower-building. It must have been ancient history already at that time. Everything considered, the great dispersion can hardly have taken place much later than 2,500 B.C.

     Location of the Tower. Near a place called Hillah on the east bank of the Euphrates, there is a splendid ruin, known as Birs Nimrud, standing like a watch-tower on a vast plain. It is in the shape of a pyramid and is 150 feet high. On its top there is a solid mass of vitrified bricks. From inscriptions Sir Henry Rawlinson found its name to be, The Temple of the Seven Planets. This ruin has been supposed to be what is left of the Tower of Babel.

     The Jaredites at Moriancumer. According to the Book of Ether the Jaredites began their journey by going northward into the Valley of Nimrod. In the course of their journey from this valley, they crossed many waters,–lakes and rivers–and eventually they came to “that great sea which divideth the lands,” and there they pitched their tents and called the place Moriancumer. (Ether 2:13)–probably after the brother of Jared, who was the head of the little colony. Here they remained for four years. . . .

     Building Barges. At Moriancumer the Jaredites constructed eight barges, or vessels, in which they crossed the ocean. (Ether 2:16-21) [Apparently the Pacific Ocean from the above discussion]. . .

     Settlements in the Land of Promise. . . . Orson Pratt was of the opinion that “the [Jaredite] colony, . . . landed on the western coast of Mexico, and extended their settlements over all the North American portion of the continent, where they dwelt until about six centuries before Christ, when, because of wickedness, they were all destroyed.” (Mill. Star, Vol. 38, p. 693)

1928^      Jesse Alvin Washburn, Chronology Chart: Bible and Book of Mormon Events, Provo, UT: n.p., 1928.

     Washburn writes: “This work is an attempt to suggest the relationship, in point of time, at least, between the events of the Bible and Book of Mormon history and other important world happenings.” He then presents a long fold-out chronological chart plus some maps. One map shows the possible journey of the Jaredites from Babel to the Mediterranean Sea. (see below) Another shows the possible routes of the Jaredites and Nephites to the Americas. The Jaredites are traced through the Mediterranean across the Atlantic Ocean. The Nephites are traced across the Indian Ocean to the Pacific and then there are two possible routes illustrated with question marks: one to Central America and one to South America. (see below)

     Note* In 1937 this booklet would be republished under the title From Eden to Diahman: Chronology Chart and with dual authorship: Jesse A Washburn and J. Niles Washburn on the cover, but with only J. A. Washburn attributed to the Chronology Chart. It would not contain the separate maps as in the 1928 version. Rather a map of much reduced size would be inserted within the chronology chart. It is interesting, however that in this reduced-size map the Jaredites are now given two possible routes: one through the Mediterranean and across the Atlantic Ocean, and the other across Asia and the Pacific Ocean to Central America. The Nephites are illustrated as coming the Central America with no alternative option of going to South America. This is significant because it represents the Washburn’s evolution in their analysis of the internal Book of Mormon geography.

[1928      Map: Important Events from Babel to Babylonian Cap. Jesse A. Washburn, Chronology Chart: Bible and Book of Mormon Events, Provo, UT: n.p., 1928.]

[1928      Map: From the Jaredites to Modern Times Map III.. Jesse A. Washburn, Chronology Chart: Bible and Book of Mormon Events, Provo, UT: n.p., 1928.]

Note* Jesse Alvin Washburn was apparently the first one to postulate that the Jaredites traveled through the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean.

1932      Juel Andreasen, “Descendant of Viking Now 91 Demonstrates Feasibility of Story Told in Book of Mormon.” Deseret News Church Section, February 6, 1932, p. 3.

     A seaman creates a model of a Jaredite barge and explains its different parts. [D.W.P.]

1933      James H. Anderson, “America in Scripture over 4000 Years,” in Anderson’s The Present Time and Prophecy. Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1933, pp. 160-69.

     American history began as the Jaredites fled the situation at the Tower of Babel and arrived in the New World. [J.W.M.]

1934^      LDS Church,  Book of Mormon Sunday School Lessons for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Published quarterly by the Deseret Sunday School Union Board, printed at Salt Lake City, Utah, 1934

     Vol. 7, No. 1 First Quarter January to March, 1934

     Second Sunday, February 11, 1934

     Lesson 6. In America Three thousand Six Hundred years Before Columbus

     The Jaredites

     . . . Now the Jaredites were a colony who left the Old World at the time of the confusion of tongues at the tower of Babel. . . . Across the broad Pacific the barges were wafted. Little is said of the voyages which must have consumed months. Finally the promised land was reached, the colony probably landing somewhere on the west coast of America. From there they spread over the land in time becoming a numerous and prosperous people.

1937      M. H. Morgan,  “Of Interest to Book of Mormon Students,” in Saints Herald 84, June 19, 1937, pp. 781-82.

     Some of the Jaredite nation possibly broke away from the main colony to journey southward to South America to become the Inca and pre-Inca civilization. Lehi’s colony on the other hand did not spread out, but stayed close to their point of origin since the land was fertile. [J.W.M.]

1937^      J. A. Washburn, From Eden to Diahman: Chronology Chart, Provo, Utah, n.p., 1937

     Note* In 1937 this booklet would be republished under the title From Eden to Diahman: Chronology Chart and with dual authorship: Jesse A Washburn and J. Niles Washburn on the cover, but with only J. A. Washburn attributed to the Chronology Chart. It would not contain the separate maps as in the 1928 version. Rather a map of much reduced size would be inserted within the chronology chart. It is interesting, however that in this reduced-size map the Jaredites are now given two possible routes: one through the Mediterranean and across the Atlantic Ocean, and the other across Asia and the Pacific Ocean to Central America. The Nephites are illustrated as coming the Central America with no alternative option of going to South America. This is significant because it represents the Washburn’s evolution in their analysis of the internal Book of Mormon geography.

[1937      Map: Possible and probable routes of Jaredites–Probable route of the Nephites. J. A. Washburn and J. N. Washburn, From Eden to Diahman: Chronology Chart, Provo, Utah, n.p., 1937]

1937^      J. A. Washburn, From Babel to Cumorah: A Story of the Book of Mormon, Provo, Utah: New Era Publishing Co., 1937. Second edition, 1938

     Among the Ruins of Babel [p. 1]

     The Jaredites lived in Babel on the banks of the Euphrates River in Babylonia. They were the first people of whom there is any record who came to America after the flood. . . .

     Four Thousand Years Ago [pp. 6-9]

     . . . The story of the Book of Mormon actually begins with the Jaredites who lived at Babel and without doubt worked on the tower. Among those people were two great and mighty men, Jared and his brother. . . . They were commanded to start northward . . . While the pilgrims were in the valley of Nimrod, the Lord came down in a cloud and talked with the brother of Jared. The colony was commanded to move on. . . .

[1938      Map: Leaving Babel. J. A. Washburn, J. N. Washburn, From Babel to Cumorah: A Story of the Book of Mormon, Second edition, Provo, Utah: New Era Publishing Co., 1938, p. 7]

     We cannot tell how long it required for them to make this journey to the great sea, but they had probably traveled more than 2,500 miles, and they had stopped to build boats on the way.

     We should like to know the location of Moriancumer by the sea, but the historian does not give it. If it was on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean, it may have been in what is now Spain or Portugal, somewhere near the very place from which Columbus started for America in 1492.

     On the accompanying maps are indicated the possible routes over which the Jaredites may have traveled up to the time they arrived at Moriancumer by the great sea. A perfectly natural course would have been northward along the Euphrates. Near the head of the great river they could have crossed down into the valley of the Orontes River where Antioch in Syria was later built. This could well have been the valley of Nimrod. The barges would then have been built on the shores of the Mediterranean (many waters) through which they would have sailed to the Atlantic (great sea which divideth the lands).

     There are some who believe that the Jaredites went east to the Pacific and crossed to the western coast of America. This is quite possible, but over this route they would have had little or no use for boats, for they would have traveled by land nearly all the way. . . .

[1938      Map: Jaredite Travels. J. A. Washburn, J. N. Washburn, From Babel to Cumorah: A Story of the Book of Mormon, Second edition: Provo, Utah: New Era Publishing Co., 1938, p. 9]

     There is still another possible route. This would have led through the Mediterranean and across the northern part of Africa. In such a case the Jaredites would have needed boats.

     At any rate, it is certain that they arrived at the shores of the great sea which is probably the Atlantic Ocean which separates the two great continents, Europe and America.

     Leaving the Old World [pp. 17-18]

     But we must remember that the Jaredite barges were not steamships. They were not even genuine sailing vessels. They were dependent upon the ocean currents and the winds to drift them across. . . . [see map below]

[1938      Map: Ocean Currents and Jaredite Journey. J. A. Washburn, J. N. Washburn, From Babel to Cumorah: A Story of the Book of Mormon, Second edition: Provo, Utah: New Era Publishing Co., 1938, p. 17]

     Let us suppose that the Jaredites launched forth into the North Atlantic Current from Portugal. They might have been driven by wind and ocean current past the Canary Islands to the eastern coast of the Americas, probably between the two continents. The distance traveled would have been in the neighborhood of 6,000 miles. If we divide this distance by the average rate of speed of the current we find that it would have taken the Jaredites about 333 days for the crossing.

     They could also have gone east across the Pacific and been aided by the Japanese Current in arriving at the same general destination.

     America A Choice Land [p. 22]

     The Book of Mormon does not tell us where the Jaredites landed in the New World. We are left to form our own conclusions, and many different opinions have been given. Some people think they landed on the northeast coast of North America, or in Mexico. There are some who insist that they crossed the Behring Strait from Asia to America. Still others think they must have reached shore on the eastern coast of Central America. Suppose for the present we accept this last view and land the Jaredites somewhere near the point indicated on the map on page 9.

Note* The Washburn’s are apparently the first ones to postulate a Jaredite journey through the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.

Note* “Some people think they landed on the northeast coast of North America” is a statement that I can’t trace the provenance for. Who said this? When he says that “There are some who insist that they crossed the Behring Strait from Asia to America” he must mean scholars in general who talk about American Indian origins. A land route would not correlate well with the scriptural account of the Jaredites. When he says that “Still others think they must have reached shore on the eastern coast of Central America” he must be referring to the authoritative RLDS theory for the Jaredite journey.

1937^      Josiah E. Hickman, The Romance of the Book of Mormon, Salt Lake City, Utah: The Deseret News Press, 1937

     On page 42 we find the following:

     Jaredite Colony Landed on West Coast of America— The Babylonian or Jaredite fleet landed probably somewhere on the west coast of what is now Central America, Mexico, or the southern part of California. . . . Sustaining this record now comes scientific evidence, a significant portion of which is cited in this and following chapters. According to Dr. Herbert J. Spinden, the beginning of cultural civilization on this continent came into being on the high lands of Mexico and Central America about two thousand years before Christ. (Science News Letter, No. 740, p. 381, (June 15, 1935) . . .

     One page 47 we find the following about the Jaredite journey to the New World:

     When they [the Jaredites] built their barges–eight in number, as God had directed–they, with their cargo of animals and plants and provisions, entered the vessels, and a furious wind blew constantly until the colony had reached, so we believe, the west coast of America, probably somewhere near what is now Mexico or Central America. From there their civilization in the course of the centuries extended north and east to the Great lakes and the Atlantic seaboard as well as south to “the narrow neck of land” which was probably Panama.

     From page 48:

     Jaredites Brought Asiatic Flora and Fauna to Western Hemisphere— The Jaredites came, of course, to this hemisphere by either the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean. The weight of evidence seems to point to the Pacific as the route the peoples took. Some scientists seem to think that the people of America came across the Bering Strait but that the Central American people must have come across the Pacific and Dr. Paul Rivet, anthropologist and director of the Trocadero Museum in Paris, now in the National University at Mexico City, bears out the idea of the Pacific route. (See Science News Letter, Vol. XVI, p. 1909, September 28, 1929)

1938^      LDS Church, Book of Mormon Sunday School Lessons for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Published yearly by the Deseret Sunday School Union Board, printed at Salt Lake City, Utah, 1938

27. The Jaredites in the Promised Land

     Text: Ether 6-8

     Supplemental Material.

4. The Jaredite Route. Reynolds in his Dictionary of the Book of Mormon, on page 162, says, as to the place where, the Jaredites landed in America, “It is generally understood that the place where they landed was south of the Gulf of California and north of the Land Desolation, which was north of the Isthmus of Panama.” There is no authentic evidence for such a statement. It should be remembered that we have no information as to the place the Jaredites landed. The Lord has not seen fit to reveal it to us. Any theories as to their route to America or as to the place they landed on arriving amount to nothing more than the creations of the minds of some persons, and have no authentic support except that it seems apparent that the Jaredites inhabited the land north of the territory later inhabited by the Nephites. (See Ether 9:31-32) [p. 79]

Note* Interestingly, no mention is made here of Orson Pratt’s footnotes in the editions of the Book of Mormon from 1879 to 1920.

1939^      J. M. Sjodahl, “The Jaredite Lands,” in The Improvement Era, June, 1939, p. 336

     From the Church Historian’s Office, J. M. Sjodahl writes:

     The Jaredites, led by divine power, landed on the shore of the Promised Land after a perilous voyage across the deep that had lasted for 344 days. Such is the information contained in the Book of Ether. But where they disembarked the historian does not say (Ether 6:11, 12). . . .

     the two sons of Joktan, Jared and his brother, must have reached a very advanced age before they realized that their work was nearly finished. . . . It is reasonable conclusion that the two sons of Joktan, Jared and his brother, reached at least the average age of the mentioned descendants of Peleg, the brother of Joktan, or about 214 years. During that time, important geographic changes must have occurred in the Jaredite settlements, . . .

     We must not expect to find the administration of the two great leaders of the people, a century, or a century and a half, after the landing, to be located at the coast. . . . If, as some have held, the landing place was somewhere “south of the Gulf of California and north of the Isthmus of Panama,” such moves, either north or south, would have been feasible.

      . . .

1939^      J. N. Washburn, An Approach to the Study of Book of Mormon Geography, Provo: New Era Publishing Co., 1939,

     From Babel to Moriancumer [pp. 1-9]

     . . . The purpose of this first chapter is to determine whether anything definite can be ascertained regarding possible routes of travel and probable landing places for the Jaredites. . . . Their history begins with the confusion of tongues at the tower of Babel. (Ether 1:3,5,33) . . . The city Babel was built under the direction of Nimrod, the mighty hunter, who was the son of Cush and grandson of Ham. Babel later became Babylon the Great. (Genesis 10:6-19; Ether 2:1) . . .

     Leaving Babel, the Jaredites, under instructions from the Lord, went northward down into the valley of Nimrod (Ether 1:42; 2:1) . . . It will be noted that all the routes suggested . . . include some water. This insistence upon a water voyage is necessary according to the text. But the record gives no indication of the water over which the Jaredites traveled. Somewhere in their journeying the Jaredites built barges or boats in which “they did cross many waters.” (Ether 2:6)

     This term “many waters” probably does not mean many rivers or bodies of water. As used elsewhere in the Book of Mormon, it means a large body of water. (1 Nephi 13:10; 17:5)

     The likelihood of the Jaredites’ having taken the four suggested routes [below] will now claim our attention for a time. It is certain they did not follow all of them, and any one may be right only in a general way, or all may be quite wrong.

1. The Eastern Route to the Pacific

     If the Jaredites took the eastern journey to the Pacific and built the first barges on the shore of the Caspian, the only water seemingly they could have crossed, they would have had a land trip from Babel to that point of about seven hundred miles, again assuming no great changes in topography.

     As to the water, if they went directly across the Caspian, they would have needed boats for about two hundred miles, a very short distance certainly for all the labor required in the building of the boats. From the eastern shore of the Caspian there would have been another land journey, this time of nearly four thousand miles, to the Pacific coast of eastern Asia. [see map below] This would have made a total distance from Babel to the ocean of about five thousand miles, only two hundred of which would require the use of boats. Would not the relative insignificance of water to land render it highly improbable that they went that way?

1. The Black Sea Route.

     If the Jaredites went by way of the Black Sea and then into the Mediterranean, they simply increased the length of their travels to no apparent purpose. . . . There is something to be said in favor of this Black Sea journey. The language of the record could easily be interpreted to justify such a course. “And it came to pass that the Lord did bring Jared and his brethren forth even to that great sea which divideth the lands” (Ether 2:13) At first glance this would seem to refer to the Mediterranean. And in truth it might well mean just that. Such being the case, the first boats would in all probability have been used to cross the Black Sea. Moriancumer would, therefore, have been somewhere along the country of the Dardanelles or in present-day Greece or Italy. The main question here is whether the expression, “that great sea which divideth the lands,” has reference to the Mediterranean Sea or the [Atlantic] ocean.

Note* Who originally proposed this route?

1. The Land Journey North of the Mediterranean

     The authors think the possibility of a land journey north of the Mediterranean rather untenable in view of the fact that apparently no boats would have been needed. Surely the Jaredites would hardly have built barges to cross the Hellespont.

Note* This route would generally fall into what was authoritatively proposed by the RLDS Committee on Book of Mormon Archaeology.

1. The Mediterranean or Western Route.

     From Babel the pilgrims could have moved northward up the Euphrates. It is quite possible that they would have experienced little difficulty in reaching from there the valley of the Orontes, a river that flows northward in the Lebanon Mountains and turns westward into the Mediterranean. At the point where the stream turns to the west, Antioch was later built, about sixteen miles from the sea.

     From before the days of Abraham caravans have traveled this way. For ages it has been a favorite route for traffic and armies from west to east and from east to west.

     The distance from Babel to the Mediterranean over this road is about five hundred miles, much less than from Babel to the Caspian, and much less than would have been required through the Black Sea.

     If we assume that the first Jaredite barges were built at this convenient point, the mouth of the Orontes, it is easy to see that they could have been used on the entire voyage through the Mediterranean to the [Atlantic] ocean. Easy access would have been had to land for the replenishing of the food supply at many points along the voyage to the temporary resting place at which the first boats were discarded. The entire distance from Babel to what is now north Africa, Spain, or Portugal would have been about 2,700 miles, two thousand of which would have been by water across the Mediterranean.

      At some point the Jaredites discarded their first boats. Obviously they had no further use for them. They must have taken to the land. Indeed, the record strongly indicates this.–“. . . the Lord did bring Jared and his brethren forth even to that great sea which divideth the lands. And as they came to the sea they pitched their tents; and they dwelt in tents, and dwelt in tents upon the seashore for the space of four years.” (Ether 2:13) Apparently the Jaredites abandoned their first boats and journeyed by land [see map below] After traveling by land for a certain time they came to the sea, the great sea (ocean) which divides the lands, and there they pitched their tents. This land might well have been what is now Spain or Portugal, or northern Africa, or any part of either of them.

[1939      Map: Jaredite Travels. J. A. Washburn, An Approach to the Study of Book of Mormon Geography, Provo: New Era Publishing Co., 1939, p. 5]

     For the reasons already given, and others yet to be presented, the authors believe the western route [D] to be the one that is most reasonable, the one that agrees with the facts, particularly the use of a temporary set of boats . . .

     Washburn now makes an interesting and possibly corroborating conjecture:

     Is it possible that some of the Jaredites could have remained in Spain? This is a strange question, to be sure. Yet it must be answered in the affirmative; it is possible. Is it at all likely that such a thing happened? Again the answer is affirmative.

     It has long been a matter of general knowledge that the Spanish Basques and their language and history challenge the learning of the world. To the present date no satisfactory explanation has been given of them. Their true place in history has not yet been found. The best scholarship in the world has failed to account for them. . . .

1. Collignon, after most searching investigations, concludes that the physical traits of the Basques, out of all relation to those of any other type, assign them indisputably to the Hamitic branch of the whites. (Hamsworth Encyclopedia, Vol. 1, p. 606).

     This is interesting! When we remember that Nimrod, the great hunter, who directed the building of the Tower of Babel, was the son of Cush, who was the son of Ham, we do not find it altogether improbable that some of his race could have joined the Semitic Jaredites and traveled with them until differences of race and ideas caused a division among them. . . .

     [Washburn then quotes a number of other sources in support of this idea]

     From Moriancumer to the Promised Land [pp. 10-21]

     . . . A discussion of the probable nature of those Jaredite boats is justified here because of the bearing their structure has upon the question of a landing place in the new world. . . The length of each boat was “the length of a tree.” . . . Suppose we imagine a boat forty feet long by twelve feet wide. The relative dimensions might be wrong, but that will not matter. If the boat had square corners like a box, there would have been 480 square feet of floor space. But the craft was peaked at the ends, and this would have cut the area to about 250 square feet. If a bit of each end were used for storage, and a partition were built in the middle, the space might be reduced to 180 square feet, or 1,440 square feet for the eight boats.

     The authors show that such boats as they describe could probably carry ninety tons each which would surely have been sufficient. [see illustration below]

[1939      Illustration: Jaredite Boats. J. A. Washburn, An Approach to the Study of Book of Mormon Geography, Provo: New Era Publishing Co., 1939, p. 11]

     It is enough to say that the barges were probably not large enough to be unwieldy. They were like submarines in that they could be submerged. The notion that they turned over from time to time is hardly tenable. Though they might have had rudimentary sails for use in steering, they were in no sense sail boats, yet they were almost wholly dependent upon the wind and waves for locomotion. . .

     “And the Lord caused that there should be a furious wind blow upon the face of the waters, towards the promised land; and thus they were tossed upon the waves of the sea before the wind” (Ether 6:5) . . . This furious wind that blew continually toward the promised land was not sent specially to deliver the Jaredites. It was, however, no less the result of the power of the Lord. It blew in the same direction or directions long before the Jaredites trusted themselves to the mercy of the Lord upon the great waters. . . . “for ye cannot cross this great deep save I prepare you against the waves of the sea, and the winds which have gone forth, and the floods which shall come.” (Ether 2:24-25) This mention of floods in the ocean is very interesting. The winds and the floods are eternal. . . .

     One other thought may be added to the foregoing. One might naturally wonder that ships and ocean currents go west whereas the winds that control them go southwest and northwest. Studies by Ekman and others have shown conclusively that he water moves at an angle of about forty-five degrees to the direction of the wind. This is probably due to a lag between the swifter wind and the slower water. At any rate, the winds that blow northwest and southwest force the surface water westward. . .

     To state briefly the facts relative to winds and surface currents: Throughout the oceans of the world, wherever there are prevailing winds, there are mighty ocean streams or drifts–the first having clearly defined boundaries, the latter wide and sluggish–that move in general with the air currents until acted upon by some force. [see illustration below] The greatest obstacles to currents are land bodies–continents and islands. When a current comes to a coast, the natural thing is for it to divide. Part goes one way, and the rest goes the other.

[1939      Illustration: Ocean Currents and Jaredite Journey. J. A. Washburn, An Approach to the Study of Book of Mormon Geography, Provo: New Era Publishing Co., 1939, p. 18]

     As we should expect, there are different rates of speed under different conditions and in various places. In mid-Atlantic the North Equatorial Current moves about eighteen miles each twenty-four hours. The maximum is approximately thirty miles for the twenty-four hours, and the minimum is ten. (Review of Reviews, February, 1911) . . .

     Let us now suppose that the Jaredites launched their boats into the North Atlantic Current from what is now Spain, Portugal, or northern Africa. They might well have been driven by the wind and ocean floods past the Canary islands toward the new world. As a result they could have reached land at some point between the two great continents of the west. The distance covered would have been more than six thousand miles. If we divide this by the number of days, 344, we find that the boats would have made an average speed of about fifteen to eighteen miles a day, a rate very closely approximating the speed of the currents.

     If the Jaredites took the eastern route suggested above, through the Pacific, they probably got into the Japanese Current and landed somewhere on the western coast of North America after a very long voyage of more than eight thousand miles.

     Whether the foregoing conclusions are right or wrong the western route would have been a perfectly natural one. And in view of these considerations it seems safe to assume, for the present at least, that the Jaredites made their landing at some point on the eastern coast of Central America or Mexico. . . .

     In spite of the fact that Franklin, and perhaps others, had made some study of ocean currents, it is quite improbable that in his early years Joseph Smith had read anything at all concerning ocean currents and their movements. Yet the description of Jaredite boats and the time involved in their journey from the old world to the new world are entirely in harmony with more recent scientific discoveries. This is not a mere coincidence, but a direct evidence in favor of he divinity of the record.

Note* There is nothing said here about a possible Indian Ocean route either through Malaysia or by way of Australia. Apparently the authors had not read all the RLDS writings.

1940^      Joel Ricks, Book of Mormon Geography, Logan, Utah: Manuscript, 1940., p. 3.

     In 1904, Joel Ricks was the first LDS author to propose an Atlantic crossing for the Jaredites (see 1904 notation). Here he elaborates in words and maps:

     The Jaredites were the first people to reach this continent. They came from the tower of Babel, but very little is said about the route they traveled. The location of the great tower is generally supposed to have been near the site of the city of Babylon. From this point the colony went into the valley northward, which was called Nimrod, after the great hunter. This valley is supposed to have been located along the headwaters of the Euphrates river, about 175 miles west of Mt. Ararat. From this valley they were led into that “quarter of the wilderness where there never had man been.” Men had been eastward from Ararat along the Caspian sea, and south to Babylon, so they did not go in that direction. In view of this and other points which occurred on the journey, we incline to a westward course, across Asia Minor, and the straits, into Europe, then into northern Italy, southern France, and Spain to the ocean. From this point the Lord caused a wind to blow them towards the promised land. Just as Columbus in later years was driven towards the same goal; and the Phoenician ship which brought the Mulekites from Sidon to Darien. Those winds still blow. In this even it might be possible that the Rock of Gibraltar, which seems to have been a part of the sierras of Spain, might have been the Mt. Zurin which the Brother of Jared moved out into the straits to become one of the worlds landmarks.

     From geographic references which we shall present later, we feel confident that the Jaredites landed near Puerto Barrios, in the isthmus of Honduras. Within four miles of this point begin the oldest ruins in Central America.

[1940      Map: Old World: Jaredite journey from Babylon. Joel Ricks, Book of Mormon Geography, Logan, Utah: Manuscript, 1940., p. 4]

[1940      Map: New World: Land Northward: Jaredite Landing. Joel Ricks, Book of Mormon Geography, Logan, Utah: Manuscript, 1940., p. 5]

     Note* The above illustrations are also included in another publication by Joel Ricks: The Nephites in Story, 1940, p. 33, p. 49

1941      Albert L. Zobell, Sr., “Jaredite Barges,” in Improvement Era 44, April 1941, pp. 211, 252. Also in A Book of Mormon Treasury. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1959,  1976, pp. 167-169.

However, on page 169 of A Book of Mormon Treasury we find the following:

     Quite probably their route was in the Japan Current, which travels from east to west at a rate of between twelve and twenty-one miles a day, and if the Pacific is about seven thousand miles across, the “three hundred and forty and four days” that they were upon the water would be pretty well consumed. They disembarked near the land called Desolation by the Nephites, “it being the place of their first landing.”

Note* The following is what A. L. Zobell proposed as the design of the barges:

     The Jaredite method of ocean transport described in the Book of Mormon has been variously referred to as a submarine, a hollowed-out tree, and as a conical craft with a cylinder that revolved as the boat rolled on its journey to America. However, if we accept the account recorded in Ether 2:16, 17 and Moroni’s subsequent notations (Ch. 6) wherein these vessels are described as barges, we must agree that their mode of transportation was in flat-bottomed surface craft. . . .

     The barges were of necessity tight, for they were to be buried “in the depths of the sea,” and so a device was provided whereby air could enter to supply the inmates. The top hole supplied the answer to this emergency. The Lord’s command: “And also in the bottom.” What? A hole in the bottom of a boat! “For what purpose?” ridicules the Rev. Alexander Campbell as he queries: “To admit water?”

     This was seemingly rather a peculiar order. Let us discuss the question in this manner: After the hole is made it is seen that water will come into the boat. A tube is built from the bottom to the top of the barge, housing in both holes completely. Now we have a funnel right through the boat. Water can come into the tube as high as the water line of the vessel.

     The model of the barge we have built [see below] has a stop hole both in front and in back of the tube, just at the top of the second deck, the living quarters of man and animals. The hold, or bottom is the place where food and water, and “seed of every kind” are stored. These stop holes can easily be opened or closed as needed. The purpose of the bottom hole is at least two-fold: First, it acted as a stabilizer to keep the barge at an even keel; second, it could be used to get rid of refuse. As a third function, it may also have aided in inducing the circulation of air when the barges were “tossed upon the waves” whereby air would be sucked in and forced out again through the tube.

     In the center of the barges were provided several vats for the storage of [fresh] water, which also acted as ballast, for the barges had to keep their equilibrium. When a vat was emptied for drinking purposes, it could be refilled with sea water.

[1941      Illustration: Jaredite Barges. Albert L. Zobell, Sr., “Jaredite Barges,” in Improvement Era 44, April 1941, pp. 211, 252]      

1944^      Leon C. Dalton, “Routes To The Promised Land,” in Liahona, The Elders Journal, August 8, 1944, pp. 101-103.

     This paper is “A study of the routes taken by the Book of Mormon people in the light of the two elements that made their journeys possible–Wind and Water Currents.” Leon Dalton writes:

     It is popularly assumed by a great many members of the Church that the Jaredites journeyed eastward from the valley of Babel, across Asia to the east coast of China, thence across the Pacific to the western shores of America. From the generally accepted locality of the Tower of Babel to the Pacific shore, let us say at Hong Kong, is about 5000 miles by air, much longer by any possible overland route. Such a journey would traverse formidable mountain ranges that even today thwart man with all his ingenuity and skill; or, would follow the more southern route along the fringe of the continent, through the jungles of India, Burma, and Malaya, with their torrential rains, swollen streams, and dangerous animal life. Of course, by the Hand that Governs, but it is tenet of Mormonism that Deity works along natural lines. It would be a paradox for the Author of Law, to violate His own code of physics and common sense. It seems more reasonable that He would direct His people on a course within the scope of human endeavor.

     However, for the sake of the argument, suppose we find them now on the Pacific coast, gazing eastward toward the Land of Promise. They built barges, devoid of any means of self-navigation, and ventured forth to be carried by the “Prevailing Westerlies” across the thousands of miles of the broad Pacific. For years, that seemed reasonable to the writer of these lines, for did he not dwell in the Northern Hemisphere where winds blow from the west a great deal? However, research into the circulation of the water and the air, obviously the very elements that brought them hither, has demonstrated those “prevailing westerlies” are not as “prevailing” as is popularly supposed, but that the prevailing water and air currents would NEVER carry unguided barges from China to America, at least, not within the period of time the Jaredites were afloat. If the Jaredites had embarked in the early summer they MIGHT have been caught by the “Japan Current,” which, in summer, finds its way to the Aleutians, where they MIGHT have been picked up by the “California Current” which courses down the western coastline of North America, losing itself at about 210 degrees north latitude, just south of the tip of Lower California. This fails to land the Jaredites in Tropical America, where most authorities seem to agree they actually landed.

     If we follow the reasoning of some of our writers who maintain the course lay WESTWARD from Babel, across the Black and Mediterranean Seas, with point of final embarkation somewhere on the northwestern coast of Africa, we encounter no such difficulties. This route from Babel to Morocco has been traversed for thousands of years on foot, on camel, by ship, by rail, and by air. It has existed as long as our continents have existed as we now know them. It would require none of the Supernatural, but could be traversed by any ordinary individuals of the time. Furthermore, and for our purposes, much more important, the direction of flow of both water and air masses, summer and winter, from northwest Africa, is southwestward across the Atlantic to latitude about 10 degrees north, thence westward and then northward along the eastern coastline of North America. What is still more interesting, the stronger elements of both air and water currents follow the northern shore of South America, into the Gulf, and along the eastern coastline of Central America, so that barges could land anywhere from the Amazon Delta to New Orleans, and still be in Tropical waters.

     That this is not a mere academic idea, has been amply proved by the drift of wreckage and debris over this same course. Since there is little doubt that the Mulekites followed such a route when they fled in ships, we can well assume the Jaredites were brought over a natural rather than an obviously unnatural route.

Note* While Dalton makes some good points, he does not address the length of time for the Jaredite journey across the ocean (344 days) nor the scriptural statement that they journeyed through lands where no man had been.

1945^      Alvin Knisley, Dictionary of the Book of Mormon, Independence, Missouri, First printed 1909. Revised to July, 1945.

     Note* This is a revision by Knisley of the former first edition published by Zion’s Ensign, Independence, Missouri, in 1909. I have included some of the original material in italics for the benefit of comparison.

ETHER, Book of

     . . . It gives an account of the first company, estimated to be somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty souls, who came to America from the Tower of Babel at the beginning of the period indicated; crossing the Atlantic ocean and landing on the eastern coast of, probably Mexico, and finally being destroyed about 600-200 B.C.

Note* The following is found in the original 1909 edition

     E’ther, Book of

     It gives an account of the first company, estimated to be somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty souls, who came to America from the Tower of Babel at the beginning of the period indicated; crossing the Atlantic ocean and landing on the eastern coast of C.A. and N. A. and finally being destroyed in New York State about 600 B.C.

. . .  

JA’RED-ITES

     . . . They came from the tower of Babel, retaining by the providence of God their Adamic speech. They journeyed in a westerly direction until they eventually reached the coast of what was evidently the Atlantic ocean, perhaps on the sea-board of Africa or Spain near the strait of Gibralter. Here they dwelt for four years, upon the expiration of which the Lord directed them to prepare for the voyage. Eight barges were built in which they crossed with their seeds and animals of every kind, coming to a land that had been made vegetationless and germless by the deluge. After a passage of 344 days they debarked on the eastern coast of probably northern Mexico. . . .

Note* The following is found in the 1909 edition:

Ja’red-ites

     . . . They came from the tower of Babel, retaining by the providence of God their Adamic speech. They journeyed in a westerly direction until they eventually reached the coast of what was evidently the Atlantic ocean, perhaps on the sea-board of Portugal. Here they dwelt for four years, upon the expiration of which the Lord directed them to prepare for the voyage. Eight barges were built in which they crossed with their seeds and animals of every kind, coming to a land that had been made vegetationless and germless by the deluge. After a passage of 344 days they debarked on the eastern coast of C. A..

1947^      Paul M. Hanson, Jesus Christ Among the Ancient Americans, Independence, MO, 1947  (RLDS)

     On page 149-150 Paul Hanson writes:

     Respecting the landing places of these colonies in the New World, reasoning from the details given in the Book of Mormon bearing on their migration, such as their places of departure, travels, direction followed, topography of the country in which they settled, and taking into consideration ocean currents and trade winds, it is generally assumed by students of Book of Mormon geography that the Jaredites and the third colony landed on the eastern shore of Central America, and the Nephites in the southern part of the western coast of Central America, or on the coast of South America, in northern Chile. Those holding that the Nephites landed on the west coast of South America believe they were founders of the civilization in the highlands of the Andes, later pushing into what is now Central America.

1948      Verneil W. Simmons, “Lest We Forget the Lamanite,” in Saints’ Herald, September 25, 1948.

     Note* While the discussion deals with real geographical places in Mesoamerica, the map is internal. Thus the real location of the Jaredite landing site is implied. The implication here is that the Jaredites landed on the southwestern coast of Mexico, about where Guerrero or Oaxaca are located, which further implies a Pacific crossing.

Note* These ideas by Simmons are further expanded and illustrated in later publications. See the notations for 1977, 1981,

1948^      Verla Birrell, Book of Mormon Guidebook, SLC: Stevens and Wallis, 1948, pp. 60-61.

     Note* While this book by Verla Birrell uses essentially only internal analysis, there is one external proposal for the Jaredite journey found on a map on page 60. On this map there are three alternate routes in the Old World from Babylon: one westward paralleling the Mediterranean to Spain, another westward through the Mediterranean, and another land route westward across the northern coast of the African continent.. According to the map, after an Atlantic crossing the Jaredites could have landed on the east coast of the Americas anywhere between Florida on the north and the northern tip of South America. What is striking here is that in the early days of the Church through the rest of the 1800s, the LDS view had been dominated by the idea that the Jaredites went through China and crossed the Pacific, landing on the west coast of Mexico. These ideas are COMPLETELY absent from Birrell’s maps.

     On p. 60 there is a map (Map 1) On the opposite page we find the following:

     Legend of Map 1

*Suggested Routes of the Jaredites (c. 2700 B.C.) and Mulekites (c. 585 B.C.) Between the ‘Old World’ and the Western Hemisphere.

     (1)      Northern Equaltorial Current (also the direction of the prevailing winds.

     (2)      Southern Equatorial Current converges with the Northern Caribbean Sea and northward to the Gulf of Mexico.

     (3)      Starting point of the Mulekites (People of Zarahemla). (It is suggested by some that these people could have come by Phoenician ships via the Mediterranean.)

     (4)      Starting point of the Jaredites. (The scant information concerning this people states that they went northward down into the valley of Nimrod (named after the great hunter), and that they crossed many waters and finally the great sea which took them 344 days to cross).

     (<—)      Arrows indicate direction of prevailing winds and ocean currents.

     ( x )      Crosses indicate possible landing area.

     (_ . _ . )      Possible routes suggested for Jaredites and Mulekites.

[1948      Map 1: Suggested Routes of the Jaredites and Mulekites. Verla Birrell, Book of Mormon Guidebook, SLC: Stevens and Wallis, 1948, pp. 60-61]

1950      Wells Jakeman (Map), Source: V. Garth Norman, personal collection

1950^      Milton R. Hunter and Thomas Stuart Ferguson (Map), Ancient America and the Book of Mormon,  Oakland: Kolob Book, 1950. Reprinted in 1964

     [p. 24] Migration From the Great Tower [EXPAND]

     Both Ixtlilxochitl and The Book of Mormon declare that the earliest cultured settlers departed from the Old World at the time of the building of a tower. Ixtlilxochitl refers to this structure as “The Very High Tower,” whereas The book of Mormon refers to the structure as “The Great Tower.” The term Babel, it is understood, is a comparatively recent appellation–so no anachronistic error is committed in either of our sources. Other details of the two accounts are in close agreement. Both refer to the confusion of tongues. Ixtlilxochitl dates the exodus from Babel at 3097 B.C.

     The eminent Bernardino de Sahagun (1499-1590) in his History of the Things of New Spain discusses the coming of these settlers to ancient America and even fixes the place of landing at the mouth of the Panuco River, a point not far from the present city of Tampico, Mexico.

Note* In two comparative maps, Hunter and Ferguson compare the Jaredites landing site with that of the “Ancient Ones,” which was across the Atlantic and into the Gulf of Mexico, landing at the mouth of the Panuco River. (see below)

[1950      Map: Fig 5: Landing Places of Ancient Ones, Ulmecs and Nahuas. Fig. 6: Landing Places of Jaredites, Mulekites, and Nephites. Milton R. Hunter and Thomas Stuart Ferguson, Ancient America and the Book of Mormon, Oakland: Kolob Book, 1950, pp. 36-37.]

1950      Walter M. Stout, Landing Places of Book of Mormon Colonies, Manuscript, 1950, p. 1

     On page 1 Walter Stout writes:

     Beginning at a point on the east coast of Nicaragua east of the lake [Nicaragua].

     Just draw a vertical line running North and South. The Jaredites and Mulekites landed in about the same place. (When you find one, you find both.)

     It was on the east coast, east of the great bodies of water (which were on the west) and Lehi landed on the south of this vertical line.

[1950      Map: Landing of Jaredites. Walter M. Stout, Landing Places of Book of Mormon Colonies, Manuscript, 1950]

1950^      Walter M. Stout, Harmony in Book of Mormon Geography, Las Vegas, Nevada: Chief Litho, 1950.

     Note* In “An insert to Harmony in Book of Mormon Geography by Walter M. Stout” he writes:

     Before going into my book, Harmony in Book of Mormon Geography, I want you to see the whole setting as I found it . . .

     In my book I missed one most important point, which is, the landing places of the colonies, but it is very simple.

     Just draw a vertical line running North and South. The Jaredites and Mulekites landed in about the same place. (When you find one, you find both.)

     It was on the east coast, east of the great bodies of water (which were on the west) and Lehi landed on the south of this vertical line.

     The following plates illustrate the Jaredite Landing:

[1950      Map: Plate A.A. showing locations of cities. Walter M. Stout, Harmony in Book of Mormon Geography, Las Vegas, Nevada: Chief Litho, 1950]

[1950      Map: Plate .A. A three point objective to the Book of Mormon geography. Walter M. Stout, Harmony in Book of Mormon Geography, Las Vegas, Nevada: Chief Litho, 1950]

[1950      Map: Plate B. The Jaredites landed on the east sea near Moron, their first inheritance, Eth. 7:6,16. Walter M. Stout, Harmony in Book of Mormon Geography, Las Vegas, Nevada: Chief Litho, 1950]

1952^      Sidney B. Sperry, Book of Mormon Testifies. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1952, p. 352

     On page 352 Sidney Sperry writes:

     “It is the writer’s view that the Jaredites traveled in an easterly direction across what is now Asia to the shores of the Pacific or to waters continuous thereto.”

     On page 359 he writes:

     “Apparently the Jaredites landed somewhere in Central America, because in 7i:6 their land of Moron is spoken of as being ‘near the land which is called Desolation by the Nephites.'”

1952      Hugh Nibley (Map), “The World of the Jaredites,” in the Improvement Era, vol. 54-55, Sept. 1951-March 1952. pp. 628-630, 673-675, 704-706, 752-755, 786-787, 833-835, 862-863, 945-947, pp. 22-24, 92-94, 98, 100, 102, 104-105, 162-165, 167-168, 236-238, 258, 260-265, 316-318, 340, 342, 346, 398-399, 462-464, 510, 550

     [p. 673] To get involved in Andree’s eighty-eight versions of the Flood story, or the sixty-four conflicting accounts of the dispersion listed by von Schwarz, might jeopardize the terseness and brevity that give our little notes their gem-like quality. Let us consign such matters to the decent obscurity of a footnote. (NOTE 1). . . .

     Ether has the support of the latest conclusions, based on Genesis, chapter 10, that when the tower was built the people had already been “spread abroad in the earth after the deluge” for some time. (NOTE 2) When our source describes a particular region as “that quarter where there never had man been” (Ether 2:5), the implication is that men had certainly been in other quarters.

     [p. 752] . . . it is quite as legitimate to think of the days of Peleg as the time when, as the old Jewish writers describe it, “the children of Noah began to divide the earth among themselves,” (NOTE 42) as, without the least authority, to visualize the drifting of the continents or the rending apart of the terrestrial globe.

     . . . The confounding and scattering of the people of the tower was no slow working out of the historical process. It was sudden and terrible, and the Book ok Ether gives the clearest possible indication of what caused it.

     [p. 786] . . . it is when the world’s weather gets out of hand, as it has a number of times in the course of history, that the blowing sands of Asia bring mighty empires to ruin, bury great cities almost overnight, and scatter the tribes in all directions to overrun and submerge the more favored civilizations of the east and west. . . . as the great wind and drought of 2300-2200 B.C. and the world floods of 1300 B.C. . . .

     [p. 787] Eusebius in his Chronicon, which has surprisingly proved one of the most reliable sources of early oriental history, cites the Sibyl to the effect that “when all men were of one tongue, some of them built a high tower so as to mount up to heaven, but God destroyed the tower by mighty winds.”. (NOTE 49) . . The Book of Jubilees (second century B.C.) tells how “the Lord sent a mighty wind against the tower and overthrew it upon the earth, and behold it was between Asshur and Babylon in the land of Shinar, and they called its name ‘Overthrow.'” (NOTE 53) . . .

     [p. 834] This [the Jaredite journey] was no normal crossing and no brief passing storm . . . “the wind did never cease to blow towards the promised land while they were upon the waters” (Ether 6:8) . . . “there were terrible tempests which were caused by the fierceness of the wind” (Ether 6:5-6). . . .

     [p. 835] . . . [However] Not only does the Bible not mention the winds, but the Book of Mormon itself does so casually, albeit very specifically, by way of explaining something else. This very casualness is a strong argument for the authenticity of the record.

     [p. 862] From the plain of Sinear [the location of the tower], the Jaredites moved northward into a valley named after Nimrod, the mighty hunter, and thence “into that quarter where there never had man been.” (Ether 2:5) This would take them into the land of great broad valleys where the Tigris, Euphrates, Kura, and Araks rivers have their headwaters, a “hub of radiating valleys and routes to which the Euphrates owes its importance as a highway of commercial and military penetration. The frequent occurrence of the name of Nimrod in this area may not be without genuine significance, for no historical phenomenon has been more thoroughly demonstrated than the extreme tenacity of place names. In many instances place names still in use among illiterate peasants or nomads have been proved to go back to prehistoric times.

     Note* On page 705 Nibley writes:

       In the book of Ether the name of Nimrod is attached to “the valley which was northward,” . . . at the end of the last century the explorer and scholar Emin found that name attached to legends (mostly of the Mad Hunter variety) and place names in the region of Lake Van, the great valley system due north of upper Mesopotamia. (Note 22) (N. Emin, Izslyedovania i Statyi (Moscow, 1896), pp. 301-3)

     [p. 862] Whether the party moved east or west from the valley of Nimrod is not a major issue, though a number of things favor an eastern course. For one thing, there is the great length of the journey: “for this many years we have been in the wilderness” (Ether 3:3); but most revealing is the report that “the wind did never cease to blow towards the promised land, while they were upon the waters; and thus they were driven forth before the wind.” (Ether 6:8) Now whether the Jaredites sailed from eastern or western shores, they would necessarily have to cross the ocean between the thirtieth and sixtieth parallels north, and where the prevailing winds are westerly right around the world. Since the the cause of these winds is tied up with the revolution of the earth and the relative coolness of the polar regions, it may be assumed that the same winds prevailed in Jared’s time as in ours. Of course, one cannot be too dogmatic on such a point, for weather has changed through the ages, and freak storms do occur; yet the extreme steadiness of the wind strongly suggest prevailing westerlies and a North Pacific crossing, since it would have meant a head wind al the way had the voyagers attempted the Atlantic. . . .

     Only the Book of Ether sees the now dry and dusty landscapes under peculiar conditions: “And it came to pass that they did travel in the wilderness and did build barges, in which they did cross many waters, being directed continually by the hand of the Lord. And the Lord would not suffer that they should stop beyond the sea in the wilderness, but he would that they should come forth even unto the land of promise. . . .” (Ether 2:6-7) The crossing of many waters under continual direction comes as a surprise, “the sea” in question being apparently but one-though the most formidable- of many waters to be crossed. Now it is a fact that in ancient times the plains of Asia were covered with “many waters,” which have now disappeared but are recorded well down in historic times; they were of course far more abundant still in Jared’s time. Even as late as Herodotus, the land of the Scythians (the region into which Jared’s people first advanced) presented formidable water barriers to migration: “the face of the country may have differed considerably from what it is now. . . . The rivers were much deeper and many lakes were still left from the glacial age which later turned into swamps.” (Note 56) Indeed, Pumpelly’s theory of the development of civilization from oasis cultures rests on the existence of vast inland seas, now vanished, in central Asia. He notes that the Chinese annals speak of expansive bodies of water of which Lobnor and other shrunken lakes and brackish tarns are the withered survivals.” (Note 57) The steady and continual drying-up of the Asiatic “heartland” since the end of the last ice age is one of the basic facts of history and is even looked upon by some experts as the mainspring of world history. But it is a relatively recent discovery. Whoever wrote the Book of Ether showed remarkable foresight in mentioning waters rather than deserts along the migrants’ way, for most of the deserts are of very recent origin, while nearly all the ancient waters have completely vanished.

     [pp. 863-864] But how could the Jaredites carry all that stuff with them? The same way other Asiatics have always done–in wagons. . . . “Measuring once the breadth between the wheel ruts of one of their carts,” Wiliam of Rubruck retorts, “I found it to be twenty feet over. . . . I counted twenty-two oxen in one team, drawing a house upon a cart . . . the axletree of the cart was of huge size, like the mast of a ship.” ((Note 66) . . . But can we say the wagon is possibly as old as the Jaredites?

     In all probability it is. We now have a few sample wagons of such high antiquity as to come within hailing distance of the flood itself, and these vehicles have already acquired the form and perfection which they are to keep without major change for thousands of years to come. The teams and wagons from the royal tombs at Ur, the el-Agar chariot model, found in 1937, the Khafaje car that dates back to the fourth millennium, B.C., all point to the great antiquity and central Asiatic origin of the wagon. (Note 71)

[1952      Map: The Way Across. Hugh Nibley, “The World of the Jaredites,” in the Improvement Era, vol. 55, February 1952, p. 92]

[1952      Map: The Way Out. Hugh Nibley, “The World of the Jaredites,” in the Improvement Era, vol. 55, February 1952, p. 93:

33. The Land of Shinear, where the Great Tower was (P. Dhorme, in Rev. Biblique(1928): 509-511). Ether 1:33.
34. “The valley which was northward” (2:1). (The northern headwaters of the Euphrates “command a hub of radiating valleys and travel routes, to which the Euphrates owes its importance as a highway of commercial and military penetration.” A. Moret,Hist. de l’Orient 1:306).
35. “And the name of the valley was Nimrod” (2:1). Nimrod country: home of Nimrod place-names and legends. (N. Emin).
36. “That quarter where there never had man been” (2:5). Anau, once thought to be the oldest city in the world, was originally built in a wilderness.
37. “The sea in the wilderness” (2:7). Both the Aral and Caspian Seas were much larger in ancient times than they are today.
38. “Many waters” (2:6). The Turanian plain was anciently full of lakes, marshes, and streams. The Oxus Delta was a vast lake.
39. Ancient course of the Oxus (as recently as the time of Alexander), now dried up.]

1952^ Hugh Nibley, Lehi in the Desert and The World of the Jaredites, Salt Lake City: Bookcraft Publishing Co., 1952.

     Hugh Nibley reports that

      [171]Eusebius in his Chronicon, which has surprisingly proved one of the most reliable sources of early oriental history, cites the Sibyl to the effect that “when all men were of one tongue, some of them built a high tower so as to mount up to heaven, but God destroyed the tower by mighty winds.”. . . The Book of Jubilees (second century B.C.) tells how “the Lord sent a mighty wind against the tower and overthrew it upon the earth, and behold it was between Asshur and Babylon in the land of Shinar, and they called its name ‘Overthrow.'”. . .

     [173] This [the Jaredite journey] was no normal crossing and no brief passing storm . . . “the wind did never cease to blow towards the promised land while they were upon the waters” (Ether 6:8) . . . “there were terrible tempests which were caused by the fierceness of the wind” (Ether 6:5-6). . . .

     [175] The Way Out

     From the plain of Shinear (the location of the tower), the Jaredites moved northward into a valley named after Nimrod, the mighty hunter, and thence “into that quarter where there never had man been.” (Ether 2:5) This would take them into the land of great broad valleys where the Tigris, Euphrates, Kura, and Araks rivers have their headwaters, a “hub of radiating valleys and routes to which the Euphrates owes its importance as a highway of commercial and military penetration. The frequent occurrence of the name of Nimrod in this area may not be without genuine significance, for no historical phenomenon has been more thoroughly demonstrated than the extreme tenacity of place names. . . .

     [p. 158] In the book of Ether the name of Nimrod is attached to “the valley which was northward,” . . . at the end of the last century the explorer and scholar Emin found that name attached to legends (mostly of the Mad Hunter variety) and place names in the region of Lake Van, the great valley system due north of upper Mesopotamia. (N. Emin, Izslyedovania i Statyi

 (Moscow, 1896), pp. 301-3)

     [175-176] Whether the party moved east or west from the valley of Nimrod is not a major issue, though a number of things favor an eastern course. (A. Moret, Histoire de l’Orient I, 306) For one thing, there is the great length of the journey: “for this many years we have been in the wilderness” (Ether 3:3). Such a situation calls not only for vast expanses to wander in, but a terrain favorable to cattle-raising nomads and a region “in which there never had man been” (Ether 2:5), conditions to which the Asiatic rather than the European areas conform. But most revealing is the report that “the wind did never cease to blow towards the promised land, while they were upon the waters; and thus they were driven forth before the wind.” (Ether 6:8) Now whether the Jaredites sailed from eastern or western shores, they would necessarily have to cross the ocean between the thirtieth and sixtieth parallels north, where the prevailing winds are westerly right around the world. Since the cause of these winds is tied up with the revolution of the earth and the relative coolness of the polar regions, it may be assumed that the same winds prevailed in Jared’s time as in ours. Of course, one cannot be too dogmatic on such a point for weather has changed through the ages, and freak storms do occur; yet the extreme steadiness of the wind strongly suggests prevailing westerlies and a North pacific crossing, since it would have meant a headwind all the way had the voyagers attempted the Atlantic. The length of the sea journey, 344 days, tells us nothing, since the vessels, though driven before the wind, apparently did not use sails: the almost perpetual hurricane conditions would have made sails impossible even if they had had them. But the fact that the part spent almost a year on the water even with the winds behind them certainly suggests the Pacific, and recalls many tales of Chinese junks that through the centuries have been driven helplessly before the wind to end up after a year or so at sea stranded on the beaches of our West Coast. (See Chas. E. Chapman, A History of California: The Spanish Period (N. Y.: Macmillan, 1928), Ch. III, pp. 20-31.) Then too, we must not forget that a mountain of “exceeding height” stood near the point of Jaredite embarkation (Ether 3:1), and that there is no such mountain on the Atlantic seaboard of Europe, as there are at many points on the Asiatic shore.

Note* The above text has not only been edited, but the bolded part was added to the original 1951-52 Improvement Era articles.

     [p. 177] The crossing of many waters under continual direction comes as a surprise, “the sea” in question being apparently but one–though the most formidable–of many waters to be crossed. Now it is a fact that in ancient times the plains of Asia were covered with “many waters,” which have now disappeared but are recorded as existing well down into historic times; they were of courses far more abundant still in Jared’s time. Even as late as Herodotus, the land of the Scythians (the region into which Jared’s people first advanced) presented formidable water barriers to migration: “the face of the country may have differed considerably from what it is now,” says Vernadsky, ” . . . the rivers were much deeper and many lakes were still left from the glacial age which later turned into swamps. (Geo. Vernadsky, Ancient Russia (New Haven: Yale University, 1934) p. 6. ) . . . The steady and continual drying up of the Asiatic “heartland” since the end of the last ice age . . . is a relatively recent discovery. Whoever wrote the book of Ether showed remarkable foresight in mentioning waters rather than deserts along the migrants’ way, for most of the deserts are of very recent origin, while nearly all the ancient waters have completely vanished.

Note* The maps illustrating the direction of the Jaredite journey which were present in the Improvement Era articles are absent from the book!

1954      Norman C. Pierce, Another Cumorah. Another Joseph. Self published, 1954.

     On his map Norman Pierce has the Jaredites landing in the same place as the Mulekites, on the shores of Belize in the Bay of Honduras. On page 9 he writes:

     The trade winds combined with the great Canaries drift would carry a floating object over this five or six thousand mile course (to America from Spain) at the tested rate of eighteen miles per day.

Note* If the Jaredite barges traveled at the rate of eighteen miles per day, a 344-day journey would total 5,792 miles. This distance is sufficient for one to cross from Spain to Mexico.

1956^      Hugh W. Nibley, “There Were Jaredites,” in Improvement Era 59-60, Jan 1956-February 1957, pp. 30-32, 58-61, 88-89, 106, 108, 150-152, 185-187, 244-245, 252-254, 256, 258, 260, 308-310, 334, 336, 338-340, 390-391, 460-461, 509-511, 514, 516, 566-67, 602, 630-32, 672-75, 710-12, 745-53, 818-19, 857-58, 906-7, 26-27, 41, 94-95, 122-24. Reprinted in 1988 IN CWHN 5:283-454.

     Hugh Nibley attempts to discuss the Jaredites within their historical setting by creating a hypothetical discussion among a group of intellectuals: Professor F., Mr. Blank, and a Dr. Schwulst. This discussion on the Jaredites includes the idea that the Jaredite boats resembled the boat of Ut-Napitshtim, the name for the character of Noah in Sumerian epic literature. The discussion also addresses some old Jewish and ancient Indian sources relative to shining stones and Babylonian stories of the Flood. Starting on page 514 we find the following. He writes:

     [p. 514] “Thank you for getting us back to the subject so tactful. The Gilgamesh Epic as you know is the great Babylonian epic . . .

     “I mention this epic with a purpose,” said Black. “Everybody knows how in his wandering the hero Gilgamesh visited Ut-Napishtim, the Babylonian Noah, who told him the story of the flood.” . . .

     “The original story of the flood, by the way,” F. commented with devastating emphasis. But Professor Schwulst shook his head.

     “For forty years,” he said, “scholars were convinced that the Babylonian flood story found by Layard in the library of Assurbanipal at Nineveh was just what you say-the original version of the Genesis flood story. But they were very wrong. Many of the texts found in that seventh-century library contained statements to the effect that they were merely copies of much older originals reposing in a far older temple library at Nippur. When the University of Pennsylvania finally got around to digging at Nippur, they immediately discovered a version of the flood story some fifteen hundred years older than the Assurbanipal text, and this Nippur version ‘differs fundamentally from the two Nineveh versions, and agrees most remarkably with the biblical story in very essential details both as to contents and language.’ (Note 28) For a generation the educated had proclaimed in loud and strident voices that the Nineveh finds had debunked the flood story once for all, but when the later discoveries debunked them in turn everyone was expected to preserve a polite silence. . . .

     [p. 566] “With your permission I would like to place side by side before you two descriptions of a remarkable type of boat, the one is from the book of Ether, the other from Professor Hilprecht’s study of the ‘ark’ as depicted in three versions of the Babylonian flood story, to which we add a fourth text (No. xvi in Gadd’s Reader). First let me present a list of some dozen peculiar features of a Jaredite ship in the words and roughly in the order in which they are given in the second and sixth chapters of Ether.

Note* I have rearranged the text to merge the references to the Babylonian descriptions of the magur boat that Ut-Napishtim built to survive the flood which directly follow in the text]:

     “First, they were built ‘after the manner of barges which ye have hitherto built’ (Ether 2:16). That is, except in some particulars these boats were not a new design but followed an established and familiar patter-there really were such boats.

     “One, ‘This class of boats [we are quoting Hilprecht], according to the Nippur version [the oldest, ca. 2100 B.C.], [were] in use before the Deluge.’ In historic times the archaic craft was preserved only in ritual, . . . the Babylonian canals serving as means of communication for the magur boats of the gods between their various temples at certain festival days. . . Billerbeck and Delitzch show that a certain class of boats really had such a shape.”

    “Second, they were built ‘according to the instructions of the Lord’ (Ether 2:16).

     “Two, ‘In all three versions of the Deluge Story of Utnapishtim receives special instructions concerning the construction of the roof or deck of the boat. . . .

     “Third, ‘ . . . they were exceedingly tight, even that they would hold water like unto a dish; and the bottom thereof was tight like unto a dish; and the sides thereof were tight like unto a dish’ (Ether 2:17).

     “Three, there was ‘of course a solid part, strong enough to carry a heavy freight and to resist the force of the waves and the storm.’

     “Fourth, ‘. . . and the ends thereof were peaked’ (Ether 2:17).

     “Four, ‘Jensen explains MA-TU as a “deluge boat,” . . . adding, that when seen from the side it probably resembled the crescent moon. . . . Moreover, the representations of the sea-going vessels of the Tyrians and the Sidonians show that a certain class of boats really had such a shape.’

     “Fifth, ‘. . . and the top thereof was tight like unto a dish’ (Ether 2:17).

     “Five, ‘. . . the principal distinguishing feature of a magur boat (was) . . . the roof or deck of the boat. . . . We notice that in the Biblical as in the Babylonian version great stress is laid on the preparation of a proper “roof” or “cover,” . . . “Cover it with strong deck,” (Nippur Version, line 9). “With a deck as strong as the earth” or “let its deck be strong like the vault of heaven above” ‘(Second Nineveh Version, lines 2-3)

     “Sixth, ‘. . . and the length thereof was the length of a tree’ (Ether 2:17), ‘And they were small, and they were light upon the water, even like unto the lightness of a fowl upon the water’ (Ether 2:16). It is quite plain from this emphasis that the usual type of vessel in those days was some sort of raft, designed simply to float, not to keep out water.

     “Six, the lines containing ‘a brief statement concerning the measures of the ark’ have been effaced in the Nippur version. The First Nineveh text says simply: ‘Its measures be in proportion, its width and length shall correspond.’ Since only one ark was built, as against eight Jaredite vessels, one would hardly expect the dimensions to be the same.

     ‘Seventh, ‘. . . and the door thereof, when it was shut, was tight like unto a dish’ (Ether 2:17).

     “Seven, ‘Furthermore in the First Nineveh Version the boat . . . has a door to be shut during the storm flood.’ . . .

     “Eighth, ‘And the Lord said . . . thou shalt make a hole in the top, and also in the bottom; and when thou shalt suffer for air thou shalt unstop the hole and receive air. And if . . . the water come in . . .ye shall stop the hole, that ye may not perish in the flood’ (Ether 2:20).

     “Eight, ‘. . . the boat has . . . a door to be shut during the storm flood and at least one “air-hole” or “window” (nappashu, line 136).’

     “Ninth, ‘. . . ye shall be as a whale in the midst of the sea; for the mountain waves shall dash upon you’ (Ether 2:24)

     “Nine, ‘The vessel built by Ut-napishtim being such a “house boat” or magur, this word could subsequently also be rendered ideographically by MA-TU, a “deluge boat.” . . . A magur boat, then is a “house boat” in which gods, men and beasts can live comfortably, fully protected against the waves washing overboard, the driving rain from above and against the inclemencies of wind and weather.’

     “Tenth, ‘ . . . the Lord caused stones to shine in the darkness, to give light unto men, women, and children, that they might not cross the great waters in the darkness’ (Ether 6:3).

     “Ten, ‘. . . Sin’s magur boat is called “A bright house” (esh azag) . . .

     “Eleventh, ‘. . . their flocks and herds, and whatsoever beast or animal or fowl that they should carry with them . . . got aboard of their vessels or barges’ (Ether 6:4).

     “Eleven, in a magur boat ‘men and beasts live comfortably. . . .

     “Twelfth, ‘. . . the Lord caused that there should be a furious wind’ (Ether 6:5). ‘. . they were tossed upon the waves of the sea before the wind’ (Ether 6:5). ‘The wind did never cease to blow . . . and thus they were driven before the wind’ (Ether 6:8).

     “Twelve, . . . Jensen explains MA-TU as a “deluge boat,” seeing in it “a boat driven by the wind,” “a sailing vessell.” . . . Though driven by the storm it had ‘nothing in common with a boat in full sail, (and) nowhere . . . is a sail mentioned, nor would it have been of much use in such a hurricane as described. . . . A magur boat was driven by the wind, but not with sails.

     “Thirteenth, ‘. . . they were many times buried in the depths of the sea’ (Ether 6:6). ‘When they were buried in the deep there was no water that could hurt them, their vessels being tight like unto a dish, and also they were tight like unto the ark of Noah’ (Ether 6:7). ‘And no monster of the sea could break them, neither whale that could mar them’ (Ether 6:10).

     “Thirteen, ‘It shall be a house-boat carrying what is saved of life,’ says the Nippur version, its purpose being to preserve life and offer full protection ‘against the waves washing overboard.'” (Note 31)

     “Nothing is more remarkable in my opinion,” said Blank, “than the specific statement of Ether that the submarine nature of his ships made them ‘like unto the ark of Noah,’ since that aspect for the ark has never been rightly understood.”

     “That is quite right,” Dr. Schwulst volunteered. “Ancient, medieval, and modern Bible illustrators have made it perfectly clear that they have not the remotest idea what the real ark was like. The window and the door are the only peculiarities mentioned in the brief three verses in Genesis (6:14-16). Old pictures depict the ark either as nothing but a big box or chest or as a regular boat: attempts to combine the two forms lead to comical combinations that show plainly enough how inadequate information ahs been on the subject. I think it is remarkable that the word for window in the Babylonian texts, nappashu, means literally breather or ventilator. This is also the interpretation in Ether, whereas the window in the ark is called a tsohar in Genesis, that is a shiner or illuminator.“

[1956      Illustration: Noah’s Ark. A scholarly attempt by the Reverend Thomas Brown to depict a vessel which is both an “ark” or box and a boat. The solution of the problem is given in the book of Ether and confined by early Babylonian accounts. The Improvement Era, Vol. 59 (July, 1956), p. 511]

Note* Neither the revised chapter in An Approach to the Book of Mormon (1957) nor the article reprinted in A Book of Mormon Treasure (1959) include the illustration of the Noah’s ark as found in the Improvement Era articles.

     The Shining Stones

[Note* This section, starting with “The Shining Stones and covering the articles appearing in the July, August, and September 1956 issues of The Improvement Era would be added to, revised, reformatted and printed in the 1959 publication, A Book of Mormon Treasury (SLC: Bookcraft) under the title, “Strange Ships and Shining Stones” (pp. 133-151) –see the 1959 notation.]

     [p. 567] “Which do you think is the older version” F. asked, “the air hole or the skylight?”

     “That would be hard to say,” was the reply, “since both are found in the Babylonian texts. As a matter of fact, the rabbis could never agree as to just what the tsohar was.”

     “What did they say it was?”

     “Some said it was a window, but others maintained it was some kind of luminous object by which Noah could tell night from day.” (Note 32)

     “Why would he need a gadget to tell night from day?” Blank asked with interest.

     “Because according to some, the ark was completely covered like a tightly shut box, and according to others, it was under the water a good deal of the time.”

     “Hold on!” said F. with a laugh. “Aren’t we getting mixed up with Mr. Jared’s ships?”

     “And why not?” Blank replied. “Ether himself says the two types of ship followed the same model.”

     “As a matter of fact,” said Professor Schwelst half to himself, “there may be something to that. Now that I think of it, that luminous object into he ark was supposed to have been some sort of shining stone.”

     “So that’s the source of your Jaredite story!” F. cried with satisfaction.

     “Not at all,” the Professor rejoined. “The Ether version I believe is a much fuller one than that of the rabbinical tradition and contains some very archaic and significant material that is not found in the other. It has been many years ago, but I am almost sure I once saw some important studies on shining stones.” . . .

     “Do you mean that the shining stone episode is found in the Gilgamesh epic?” Blank asked with surprise.

     “No, no! At least not directly. . . .

     [p. 630] “. . . Let us begin by considering the Jewish sources that worried us yesterday, going from the latest to the earliest. The Midrash Rabbah tells us that the various conflicting opinions of the rabbis as to the true nature of the tsohar, the light in the ark, simply demonstrates the fact that none of them knew what it was. (Note 34) Rabbi Akiba ben Kahmana, for example, says it means a skylight, while R. Levi says it was a precious stone. R. Phineas, quoted by R. Lehi, explains that ‘during the whole twelve months that Noah was in the Ark he did not require the light of the sun by day or the light of the moon by night, but he had a polished gem which he hung up: when it was dim he knew that it was day, and when it shone he knew it was night.’ (Note 35) To illustrate this odd arrangement, Rabbi Huna tells a story: ‘Once we were taking refuge from [Roman] troops in the caves of Tiberias. We had lamps with us: when they were dim we knew that it was day, and when they shone brightly we knew that it was night.’ (Note 36) The reference to hiding from the Romans shows that this tradition is at least two thousand years old. But all such stories seem to go back to a single source, a brief notice in the Jerusalem or Palestinian Talmud, which reports that Noah was able to distinguish day from night by certain precious stones he possessed, which became dim by day and shone forth by night.” (Note 37) . . .

     “What is so inaccessible about the Palestinian Talmud?”

     “Everything. One might have been reading sometime in the Babylonian Talmud, but in the Jerusalem Talmud? Never!-only eminent rabbbis ever read or cite it. (Note 38) Do you see these four modest volumes? They represent all the printed editions of the Palestine Talmud that have ever appeared/1 Two of them came out after 1860, and could not have been used by the author of Ether; the other two are the Bomberg edition of 1523 and 1524 which as you see contains no commentary, and the Cracow edition of 1609, with a very short commentary on the margin.”

     “Even worse. IN 1781 a small section was translated into German-it was not the section in which our story occurs, by the way-and there was nothing after that until the German translation of 1880. . . . But no translation was available in any modern language in 1830, and who could read the original? (Note 39) Who can read it today? . . . The scholars and ministers who studied Hebrew in America in the 1830s knew rabbinical Hebrew no better than they do today; their whole interest was in the Old Testament, and if any of them ever looked in to Talmud, you can be sure it was not the Jerusalem. Then too we must not overlook the fact that the Jewish accounts do not say that Noah used the gems for illumination, but only to distinguish day from night.” . . .

[Note* See the 1810 notation for Adam Clarke’s Bible Commentary on the book of Genesis wherein he cites the Jerusalem Talmud.]

     [p. 631] ” . . . the brother of Jared made some transparent stones by ‘moltening’ them out of rock, a process requiring a very high temperature indeed. Now the oldest writings of India, reporting her oldest traditions, have a good deal to say about a particular stone that shines in the dark (Note 41) . . .

     “And what,” said F., “has that to do with the shining stones of the ark?”

     “A great deal, if you will follow me. The stone was known to the Greeks and hence to the Middle Ages as Pyrophilos or ‘Friend of Fire,’ and is most fully described in the Indian sources which say it was a perfectly transparent crystal and also went by the name of ‘Moonfriend’ and Jalak-anta or ‘that which causes the waters to part.’ For among all its marvelous properties, such as protecting its bearer from poisons, lightning, fire, and enemies, its most particular power and virtue was that it enabled its possessor to pass unharmed through the depths of the waters.” (Note 44)

     “Dear me!” Blank interrupted. “That is surely something of a coincidence: a transparent stone formed with fierce heat that shines in the dark and guides and preserves its owner beneath the waves! Where do you think the Indians got all that?”

     “That has been the subject of considerable search,” Schwelst replied, “and it is quite clear that the tradition did not originate in India, though it may have been brought there at a very early time by an offshoot of the same Indo-European people to whom the tory has been traced far to the north. But it has been so traced only by following a trail that led to the earliest Babylonian accounts of guess what-the deluge! . . .

     [p. 673-674] “Let us sum up this business of the shining stones as it stands,,” Blank suggested.

     “A good idea,” replied the Orientalist, “especially since I have led you on such a tortuous way. Well, then, first we found, tucked away in the corner of an old, obscure, and completely neglected Jewish writing, a very brief passage that suggested, along with alternatives, that Noah had shining jewels or stones in the ark, which he used for telling night from day rather than as illumination. That is all the Jews tell us, so far as I can find out, and it is not much. Next we found some traditions about the forming of shining stones by a heat process, and noted that the world-wide dispersion of those traditions indicated their great antiquity. We found then that the shining stone thus produced everywhere went by the same name and was thought to possess the same marvelous properties and woers, the most remarkable of which was its power to enable its owner to pass through the depths of the water. . . . Next it was easy to identify this stone with . . . a central occurrence in the Gilgamesh epic: the loss of the plant of Life which had once belonged to Ut-napishtim, the Babylonian Noah, who alone could tell the hero Gilgamesh where and how to obtain it.

1956^      G. Reynolds and J. Sjodahl, Commentary on the Book of Mormon (7 vols), SLC: Deseret Book Co., vol. 6, 1956. (Philip C. Reynolds comp.)            

     See the commentary in the 1959 Reynolds and Sjodahl notation.

1957^      Hugh Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon: Course of Study for the Melchizedek Priesthood Quorums of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1957. 

     In Lesson 25, “Some Test Cases From the Book of Ether” of this Melchizedek Priesthood manual, we find a summary of some of the material (revised and edited) originally published in The Improvement Era as well as some new material. Starting on page 288 we find the following:

     The test of the Epic Milieu is a rigorous and convincing one, (See The Improvement Era, Jan. 1956 to Feb. 1957!) but there is a great deal of detail in the Book of Ether that can now be checked against new evidence. Let us consider a few conspicuous examples of this.

     Since the idea of the scattering of the nations from the great tower is not original to Ether we need not discuss it here, but there are some peculiar aspects of the event which deserve a word. The tower of the dispersion is never called the Tower of Babel in the Book of Mormon; it is never referred to as anything but “the great tower.” Where it stood we do not know; the expression “land of Shinar” in Gen. 11:2 is a vague and general destination for all of Babylonia, (note 1) and the orientation of the wandering “down into the valley which is northward” (Ether 1:42) and the long migration that followed with “flocks both male and female of every king” (Ether 1:41) certainly looks towards the steppes. . . .

     The great philologist Hrozny has recently concluded that . . . all the great languages of the earth, ancient and modern, spring from a single center! This center Hrozny finds “north of the Black Sea, Caucasus, and Caspian. “It seems altogether likely,” Hrozny continues, “that the earth was populated from Central Asia.” . . . [The Caspian area] is what the present writer has always referred to as “Jaredite country.” It was our guess that the Caspian was “the sea in the wilderness” that the Jaredites had to cross. (Ether 2:7) . . .

     . . . there is much to indicated that the violent winds on which the book of Ether insists (Ether 6:5, 5, 8) were a reality.

     In one interesting [Egyptian] text God is described as “letting go a tempest on those who did wrong,” and as pushing over ‘the wall on which thou leanest.” (Note 7) Can this be a reference to the flood, the great wind and the fall of the tower? . . .

     Haldar has made a study of the wind in the oldest Babylonian texts. Acfording to these, when the divine presence is withdrawn from man “the raging storm blows in over the country, bringing with it locusts and other accompaniments of the desert wind, whereby the country is laid waste and becomes the desert,” the “pasturage of cattle” being destroyed. (Note 10) . . .

     Haldar cannot avoid the conclusion that all these references to the winds that ruin the grazing and destroy civilization are no mere ritual inventions but are actually “describing historic events in the terms of religious language,” even though they may not refer to one “specific historic situation.” (Note 15)

     [p. 292] Eisler has examined the Jewish tradition that tells of how the baptism of the earth by water in the days of Noah, purging it of its wickedness, was later followed by a baptism of wind, to be followed in turn at the end of the world by a baptism of fire. [Note* how this parallels the symbolism of the ordinances of the Church-Baptism and the Gift of the Holy Ghost] The baptism of winds, we are told, took place at the time of the tower.(Note 18) According to the Book of Jubiless (called the “Little Genesis”), “The Lord sent a mighty wind against the tower and overthrew it upon the earth, and behold it was between Asshur and Babylon in the land of Shinar, and they called its name ‘Overthrow’.”(Note 19) Of these traditions by far the most interesting is the Mandaean teaching that when the world was purged at the time of the great wind the human race was broken up into many languages, but there were two men whose language was not changed: they were Ram and his brother Rud.(Note 20) The names are contractions, the second from Jared, the first from some unknown name. . . .

     [pp. 295-297] Jared’s Ships: . . . The key to [Jared’s] barges is found in the declaration that they were built on conventional lines and yet in their peculiarities patterned after Noah’s Ark. (Note 27) The discovery of a number of Babylonian texts has given rise to a good deal of speculation as to just what the ark of Noah may have been like. According to Babylonian versions of great antiquity which add some important items to the brief Biblical account without in any way contradicting it, Noah’s ark must have had certain peculiar features which had never been noted by Biblical scholars, even though the Bible hints at some of them. These peculiar features are precisely those that have beguiled and amused the critics of the Jared story. Both Noah’s and Jared’s boats were designed from conventional lines, but, “according to instructions of the Lord,” both were made water tight above as well as below, were peaked at the ends, had a door that could be sealed tight, had a special kind of air-hole, were designed to go under the water, containing all sorts of animals as well as men, were driven by the wind without the use of sails, and were designed to resist the force of unusually violent weather, especially hurricane winds. (Note 28)

     The Luminous Stones: But the Babylonian texts do not tell us how the Ark was lighted and the Bible mentions only a tsohar, about the nature of which the Rabbis could never agree.(Note 29) Jared’s shining stones have been held up to ridicule as a remarkable piece of effrontery and the invention of a diseased imagination. yet it can now be shown beyond any dispute:(Note 30)

     (1) That there existed throughout the world in ancient and medieval times the report of a certain stone, the Pyrophilus, that would shine in the dark. This stone it was believed was a pure crystal and could only be produced and made luminous by the application of terrific heat. It had the miraculous quality of enabling its possessor to pass unharmed through the depths of the water.

     (2) The story is not a folk-tale but is found only in the recondite writings of the most celebrated scholars in the East and West . . .

     (3) {The accounts] have easily been traced back to the Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic, in which the stone appears as the Plant of Life which Gilgamesh seeks from Utnapisthtim, the Babylonian Noah. The Pyrophilus legend wherever it is found has accordingly been traced back ultimately in every case to the story of Noah.

     (4) The most wonderful object in the inmost shrine of the great cult center of Aphek, in Syria, where the deeds of Noah and the story of the flood were celebrated in word and ritual, was a stone that shone in the dark.

     (5) One of the explanations of the Zohar given by the ancient Rabbis was that it was a polished jewel which Noah hung up in the ark so that he could tell night from day; the source of this seem to be a very brief, obscure and little-known remark in the Palestinian Talmud and attributed to R. Ahia ben Zeira, to the effect that “in the midst of the darkness of the Ark Noah distinguished day from night by the aid of pearls and precious stones, whose lustre turned pale in the daylight and glittered at night.” (Note 31) This is far from the Ether account, which could hardly have been inspired by it, even if the writer of the Book of Mormon had known of this still untranslated passage from the Talmud Jerusalem. But it is obviously an echo of the old account of the shining stones, the association of which with Noah no one suspected until the discovery of the Gilgamesh Epic. It was that discovery which put scholars on its trail at the end of the last century. . . .

Note* Nothing more is said on the Jaredite journey that would definitely link it to a course eastward across the China and the Pacific.

Note* These stones will later be tied to Jade, China and the Olmecs–see the 199??? notation.

1957^      George Reynolds and  Janne M. Sjodahl , Book of Mormon Geography: The Lands of the Nephites: The Jaredites. Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Company, 1957, pp. 57-62.

     According to the Book of Mormon, a colony now known as Jaredites (Moroni 9:23), some time shortly after the attempt to build the famous Tower of Babel, came to America from the region occupied by the tower builders.

     Very little is known about these colonists and their descendants, but we may suppose that their migration was part of a general movement in all directions, which took place at that time, from the land of Shinar, afterwards called Chaldea.

     A General Migration from Babylon. That such a general migratory movement actually took place can hardly be doubted. Josephus, who drew information from both Hebrew and Greek sources, says:

     “After this they were dispersed abroad, on account of their language, and went out by colonies everywhere, and each colony took possession of that land which they lit upon and unto which God led them; so that the whole continent was filled with them, both the inland and the maritime countries. There were some, also, who passed over the sea in ships and inhabited the islands.” (Note 1. Antiquities of the Jews, Book 1, Chapter 5.)

     In a much more recent work we read: ( Note 2. Schoolcraft, Hist. and Statist. Information, Vol. 1, p. 14; Philadelphia, 1852).

     “All history demonstrates that from that central focus (Babylon) nations were propelled over the glove with an extraordinary degree of energy and geographical enterprise.”

     A Chinese tradition is mentioned by Dr. Fisher of Yale, thus:

     “The nucleus of the Chinese nation is thought to have been a band of immigrants, who are supposed by some to have started from the region southeast of the Caspian Sea, and to have crossed the headwaters of the Oxus. They followed the course of the Hoang Ho, or Yellow river, having entered the country of their adoption from the northwest, and they planted themselves in the present province of Shan-se.” (Improvement Era, Feb., 1927, p. 314.)

. . .

     Date of the Jaredite Migration. According to the chronology of Bishop usher, which appears in English versions of the Bible, the building of the Tower was undertaken about 2,200 B.C. Dr. Joseph Angus, in his Bible Handbook, suggests 2,247. According to Babylonian tradition the City of Babel was founded about the year 2,230 B.C. But as early as 2,000 B.C., there were in the Babylonian library clay tablets, now preserved in the British Museum, containing the story of the Tower-building. It must have been ancient history already at that time. Everything considered, the great dispersion can hardly have taken place much later than 2,500 B.C.

     Location of the Tower. Near a place called Hillah on the east bank of the Euphrates, three is a splendid ruin, known as Birs Nimrud, standing like a watch-tower on a vast plain. It is in the shape of a pyramid and is 150 feet high. On its top there is a solid mass of vitrified bricks. From inscriptions Sir Henry Rawlinson found its name to be The Temple of the Seven Planets. (Note 3. Assyrian Discoveries, p. 59) This ruins has been supposed to be what is left of the Tower of Babel.

     The Jaredites at Moriancumer. According to the Book of Ether (1:42; 2:1) the Jaredites began their journey by going northward into the Valley of Nimrod. . . .

     [p. 61] Settlements in the Land of Promise. The first country settled in the Land of Promise was called Moron. Where that country was, we know not, except that it was near the land which was called Desolation, by the Nephites. (Ether 7:6) . . .

     Orson Pratt was of the opinion that “the [Jaredite] colony, . . . landed on the western coast of Mexico, and extended their settlements over all the North American portion of the continent . . .” (Mill. Star, Vol. 38, p. 693).

1959^      G. Reynolds and J. Sjodahl, Commentary on the Book of Mormon (7 vols), SLC: Deseret Book Co., vol. 4, 1959. Reprinted in 1977.  (Philip C. Reynolds comp.)     

     In volume 4 we find the following:

     [pp. 171-172] According to the Book of Ether, a colony, some time shortly after the attempt to build the famous Tower of Babel, came to America from the region occupied by the tower builders.

     Very little is known about these colonies and their descendants, but we may suppose that their migration was part of a general movement in all directions, which took place at that time, from the land of Shinar, afterwards called Chaldea.

     A general migration from Babylon. That such a general migratory movement actually took place can hardly be doubted. Josephus, who drew information from both Hebrew and Greek sources says:

     After this they were dispersed abroad, on account of their languages, and went out be colonies everywhere, and each colony took possession of that land which they lit upon and unto which God led them; so that the whole continent was filled with them, both the inland and the maritime countries. There were some, also who passed over the sea in ships and inhabited the islands. (Antiquities of the Jews, Book 1, Chapter 5.)

     In a much more recent work we read: “All history demonstrates that from the central focus (Babylon) nations were propelled over the globe with an extraordinary degree of energy and geographical enterprise.” (Schoolcraft, Hist. and Statis. Information, Vol. 1, p. 14; Philadelphia, 1852.)

     A Chinese tradition is mentioned by Dr. Fisher, of Yale, thus:

     The nucleus of the Chinese nation is thought to have been a band of immigrants, who are supposed by some to have started from the region southeast of the Caspian Sea, and to have crossed the headwaters of the Oxus. They followed the course of the Hoang Ho, or Yellow river, having entered the country of their adoption from the northwest, and they planted themselves in the present province of Shanse. (Improvement Era, Feb., 1927, p. 314.)

     It is not impossible that others of the Jaredite race followed the pioneers of the Book of Ether, and remained at the sea shore, laying the foundation of the Chinese empire. The annual pilgrimage of Chinese to the top of their sacred mount just at the point of the peninsula of Shantung confirms this supposition.

     [p. 172] Date of the Jaredite Migration. According to the chronology of Bishop Uisher which appears in English versions of the Bible, the building of the Tower was undertaken about 2,200 B.C. Dr. Joseph Angus, in his Bible Handbook, suggest 2,247. According to Babylonian tradition the City of Babel was founded about the year 2,230 B.C. But as early as 2,000 B.C., there were in the Babylonian library clay tablets, now preserved in the British Museum, containing the story of the Tower building. It must have been ancient history already at that time. Everything considered, the great dispersion can hardly have taken place much later than 2,500 B.C.

     Location of the Tower. Near a place called Hillah on the east bank of the Euphrates, there is a splendid ruin, known as birs Nimrud, standing like a watchtower on a vat plain. It is in the shape of a pyramid and is 150 feet high. On its top there is a solid mass of vitrified bricks. From inscriptions Sir Henry Rawlinson found its name to be The Temple of the Seven Planets (Assyrian Discoveries, p.59) This ruin has been supposed to be what is left of the Tower of Babel.

     [[p. 173] Orson Pratt was of the opinion that “the [Jaredite] colony, . . . landed on the western coast of Mexico, and extended their settlements over all the North American portion of the continent, where they dwelt until about six centuries before Christ, when because of wickedness they were all destroyed.” (Mill. Star, Vol. 38, p. 693)

[Note* The above information seems to imply an eastern movement across China, however some commentary which appears in Volume 2 of Reynolds & Sjodahl Commentary (1956) seems to be in conflict with the above Chinese crossing. Perhaps nothing of this linkage is noted because of the time-period (3 years) between the publication of Volume 2 and Volume 4]

     [Vol 2, p. 319] Many attempts have been made to derive that name [Yucatan] from different sources, but a satisfactory solution of its etymology has not been found. Our suggestion is that Yucatan was so named by the original settlers in memory of Jikktan, the younger son of Eber.

     We are told that Eber, who was the son of Shem, had two sons, Peleg and Joktan. (Gen. 10:25-30) Further that Peleg) which means “division”) was so names, “for in his days was the earth divided, “which evidently refers to the allotment of the habitable portions of the earth to various families, tongues and nations after the flood, under patriarchal inspiration. (See Gen 10:32; 11:8) Concerning the division of the land we are also informed (Deut. 32:8) that the lord, in his allotment, had special reference to the number of the Children of Israel. The text referred to is, ” When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. “In other words, he planned to reserve adequate place for the chosen race.

     Now, the descendants of Shem through Eber, generally located in Chaldea, Armenia, and Syria. His descendants through Joktan went eastward to Jemen, and from there toward India, and perhaps to China. The Jemen Arabs still have preserved the tradition that they are the descendants of Joktan, whom, in their language, they call Kachtan. They consider themselves as “genuine” Arabs, different from the descendants of Ishmael.

     It is not improbable that Jared and his wonderful brother, along with their companions in their miraculous voyage, came from this branch of the sons of Shem. They were, in other words, Joktanites.

[Note* There are some misleading statements in what is said here. If by “Jemen” it is meant Yemen, then from Chaldea to Yemen (on the southwestern coast of the Arabian peninusla) is southward not “eastward.” Thus if the descendants of Joktan went from Yemen to India they would probably have crossed either the Persian Gulf or the Indian ocean in a journey eastward. This would mean that if the Jaredites were connected to this group, they would have traveled southward to the Indian ocean and eastward to India and possibly China before crossing the Pacific. But in volume 4, the commentary by Reynolds and Sjodahl seems to imply that the Jaredites went northward to the Caspian Sea and then eastward through China.

[Note* Chris Heimerdinger quotes this section and discusses it — see the 2003 Heimerdinger notation]

     The promise of the Lord to Jared and his brother was that He would go before them into a land “which is choice above all the lands of the earth. “That is the entire America. “And there will I bless thee and thy seed, “the Lord said, “and raise up unto me of thy seed, and of the seed of thy brother, and they who shall go with thee, a great nation. And there shall be none greater than the nation which I will raise up unto me of thy seed, upon all the face of the earth.” (Ether 1:43) Accordingly, we may suppose that some of the Jaredites, in the course of time, came to Yucatan and perpetuated the name of their ancestor, by naming the country after him, in his honor.

     [Vol 6, pp. 36-37] The next fact concerning the newcomers [Jaredites] is, that “they went forth upon the face of the land,-the Promised Land, the North American Continent-“and began to till the land. “We read further, that “they began to spread upon the face of the land, and to multiply and to till the earth, and they did wax strong in the land.”

     These two statements read together can only mean that the various families of the Jaredites, soon after their arrival, separated and occupied each its own territory for cultivation, under the administration of the great leaders, as appears later. From the outset, they were avoiding the mistake of the tower builders. They were not centralizing the population, but distributing it. Settlers went forth from the place of landing as soon as naturally convenient, and established themselves in new localities. This process was repeated in the following generations, and the whole continent became gradually well populated.

     The record, having stated that the country had a numerous population, breaks the historical chain of events, and joins the disconnected links years afterwards, when the Brother of Jared let it be known that he felt old age and dissolution approaching. Many years, with their rapidly progressing developments, are thus passed by in silence. How many we know not. But the two sons of Joktan, Jared and his brother, must have reached a very high age before they realized that their work was nearly finished. They were, perhaps, nearing the end of their second century. We venture this supposition on the strength of Genesis 11:11-26, where the age of each of the ancestors of Abraham is given.

     Peleg, the brother of Joktan, lived 239 years. Regu, the son of Peleg, was also 239 years of age when he died. Serug, Regu’s son, was 230 at the time of his death. Nahor, the son of Serug and the grandfather of Abraham, reached the age of 148 years. It is a reasonable conclusion that the two sons of Joktan, Jared and his brother, reached at least the average age of the mentioned descendants of Peleg, the brother of Joktan, or about 214 years. During that time, important geographic changes must have occurred in the Jaredites settlements, as well as progress in other directions, for the purposes of replenishing the Earth ( Genesis 9:1), not gathering.

     Another conclusion is, also, in our judgement, unavoidable. We must not expect to find the administration of the two great leaders of the people, a century or a century and a half after the landing, to be located at the coast. As settlers went forth in various directions and founded colonies, the centers of population changed, and, at a time when the means of communications were not what they are today, the convenience of the government must have demanded that its seat be moved to the more populous and influential of communities. Jared and his brother must, therefore, at the end of their long career, have had their capital, probably far from the coast. If, as some have said, the landing place was somewhere “south of the Gulf of California and north of the Isthmus of Panama,” such moves, either north or south, would have been feasible.

     The foregoing comments are offered on Ether 6:19-20, where we read that the Brother of Jared proposed to take a census preparatory to submitting the question of the future form of government to a general vote. The necessity of a registration of the voters indicates that the Jaredites were numerous at that time.

1959^      Hugh Nibley, “Strange Ships and Shining Stones,” in A Book of Mormon Treasury . Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1959, pp. 133-151.

     This article has been taken from material originally appearing in a series of articles entitled “There Were Jaredites” appearing in the Improvement Era from January 1956-February 1957, specifically a section, starting with page 566, covering the articles appearing in the July, August, and September 1956 issues, and ending with page 674. This section was reformatted from a discussion between three intellectuals to a simple apologetic exposition.

     Nothing more is said on the Jaredite journey that would directly link it to a course eastward across China and the Pacific. However, in footnote 24 we find: “Though many precious stones have been suggested as the original fire-stone–sapphire, smaragd, etc. the favored candidate in Indian lore is the ruby, called the sun stone because of its fiery nature. Regardless of the original substance, however, it was the hardening and purifying action of the fire that achieved the transformation. . . . ” This type of stone that the brother of Jared used might be an important clue as to the direction of travel. In 1981 (see notation) Sherrie Smith would link Jade with the Chinese and Olmecs. In a 1992 follow-up article (see notation) she gives many more interesting details on why jade would fit the criteria for the “sixteen small stones” which the brother of Jared “did moulten out of rock,” which “were white and clear, even as transparent glass.”

1959^      Albert L. Zobell, Sr., A Book of Mormon Treasury. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1959, pp. 167-169. Reprinted in 1970, 1976. See also “Jaredite Barges,” in Improvement Era 44, April 1941, pp. 211, 252.

     This article deals mostly with the design and construction of the Jaredite barges. However, on page 169 we find the following:

     Quite probably their route was in the Japan Current, which travels from east to west at a rate of between twelve and twenty-one miles a day, and if the Pacific is about seven thousand miles across, the “three hundred and forty and four days” that they were upon the water would be pretty well consumed. They disembarked near the land called Desolation by the Nephites, “it being the place of their first landing.”

1959^      Fletcher B. Hammond, Geography of the Book of Mormon, Salt Lake City, Utah: Utah Printing Company, p. 111.

     Fletcher Hammond makes the following argument in favor of the Jaredites crossing the Pacific and landing on the west coast of Central America:

     “And the Lord warned Omer in a dream that he should depart out of the land; wherefore Omer departed out of the land with his family, and traveled many days, and came over and passed by the hill Shim and came over by the place where the Nephites were destroyed and from thence eastward, and came to the place which was called Ablom, by the seashore, and there he pitched his tent, and also his sons and his daughters and all his household, save it were Jared and his family.” (492:3)

     On the question of where the Book of Mormon hill Cumorah was this quotation is one of the most important in the Book of Mormon, if not the most important. From it and from other quotations above on the location of the land of Moron “where the king dwelt,” it appears that Omer began his journey from the west coast of what is now Central America and halted on the east coast of Central America by the seashore. Note carefully: Omer was reigning in Moron when he began his journey. If Moron were on the east coast of Central America, as some Book of Mormon scholars insist, how could Omer begin his journey from the east coast and wind up on the east coast after having traveled “eastward?” To fortify their position on this question these same scholars aver that in coming from the Old World to this “Promised Land,” the Jaredites made an Atlantic crossing, instead of a Pacific crossing, as we aver, and therefore they disembarked at Moron on the east coast of Central America. But, the Book of Mormon, again, seem s to sustain our Pacific crossing.

1961^      G. Reynolds and J. Sjodahl, Commentary on the Book of Mormon (7 vols), SLC: Deseret Book Co., vol. 6, 1961.(Philip C. Reynolds comp.)  See the 1959 Reynolds and Sjodahl notation.

1964      Naomi Woodbury, “On the Origin of the Jaredites,” in 15th Symposium on Archaeology of the Scriptures. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University, 1964, pp. 67-72.

     The religious and cultural elements on the book of Ether should be compared with those of Mesopotamia prior to 2000 B.C. A comparison of the religious teachings of the book of Ether and known Sumerian historical facts is made. Jaredite names are found to be similar to many names belonging to the Sargoisd period. [J.W.M.]

1964^      Hugh Nibley, “Since Cumorah,” in Improvement Era vol. 67-69, (Oct 1964-May 1966)

     There is a small section on the Jaredites (see Dec. 1965, pp. 1090-1091). This section was added to for publication in book form in 1967 (see the 1967 notation). In the Nov-Dec 1965 Era we find the following on the Jaredites:

     [p. 977] A Recapitulation

     Since it is normal procedure to list parallels between Qumran and this or that book or society, and since the significance of such parallels is greatly enhanced by their cumulative effect, the following list needs no apology or explanation.

     (1) First of all, the Book of Mormon opens with a group of pious separatists from Jerusalem moving into the refuge of the Judean wilderness in the hopes of making a permanent settlement where they could live their religion in its purity free from the persecution of “the Jews at Jerusalem.” This we pointed out in Lehi in the Desert before the publication of any of the Dead Sea Scrolls. . . .

     [p. 1091] . . .

     A much earlier migration than Lehi’s, as reported in the Book of Mormon, brings us face to face with (39) the Epic Milieu with its heroic tradition of literature, first brought to light as a historical reality by Chadwick in the 1930’s but again, as we have shown at considerable length, vividly and fully set forth in the Book of Ether. This is good for at least a score of parallels, but we shall take them altogether, only adding the case of

     (40) the strange ships of the Jaredites, which can be matched in the oldest traditions of the Deluge, and by

     (41) the shining stones with which they were illuminated, the equal of the Liahona for oddity, but well attested by the earliest records of the race. (Note 27)

1967^      Hugh Nibley, Since Cumorah, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1967. Reprinted in 1967, 1970. Reprinted by FARMS in 1988.

     The is a formal publication based on the material which first appeared in the Improvement Era vol. 67-69, (Oct 1964-May 1966). This original material was reformatted and added to for publication in book form. The small section on the Jaredites found on pages 237-239 (1976 edition) contains added material from Nibley’s An Approach to the Book of Mormon. The following is from that which originally appeared in the Era:

     [pp. 237-239] With the story of the Jaredites the Book of Mormon launches boldly forth into the shadowy half-world of the dawn of history. Here is another field win which an awful lot has been discovered “since Cumorah.” We have demonstrated at great length that there is no more perfect exposition of that ancient “Epic Miliu” which produced the earliest literature of the race than is to be found in the Book of Ether. (Note 78) But it was not until the present century that the Chadwicks first showed the world what an Epic Milieu was and then demonstrated its tangible historic reality. (Note 79) Among other things, the Book of Ether makes much of the role played by terrific winds in the Great Migration; for a time it was fashionable to minimize the importance of the weather in influencing major migrations, but of recent years increasing respect has been shown towards the role of weather in history. (Note 80)

[ Note* In his 1956 articles, Nibley used these winds to argue for a coordinated eastern journey and Pacific crossing for the Jaredites. ]

     In our studies of Ether we overlooked one significant expression that deserves notice: When the human race had defiled the earth with sin, the righteous brother of Jared was ordered to move out and establish a righteous foundation in the earth. His people were not saints-they were just not quite as bad as the others. But the specific instructions to Jared were to go with his people “into that quarter where there never had man been.” (Ether 2:5) Some years ago H. Gressmann, in examining the traditions of the great natural catastrophe and moral overthrow of the time of the Tower of Babel (when our Jaredite migration takes place), came across the ancient concept found among the Hebrews, that when the earth was defiled by men, it was necessary for those whom God would preserve from the general destruction that they be sent into some undefiled part of the earth, which could only be, as Gressmann’s sources have it, “a Land of the beyond, where no member of the human race had as yet inhabited.” (NOTE 81) This is exactly the sense of God’s instructions to the Brother of Jared. . . .

     Finally we should mention the crossing of the waters in a peculiar type of ship, constructed according to the Book of Ether after the manner of the ark of Noah. The description of the ships suggests nothing in the Bible, where aside from its general dimensions (which are symbolic) nothing is said as to how the ark actually looked, but it exactly matches the description of those sacred magur-boats in which, according to the oldest Babylonian stories, the hero of the Flood was saved from destruction. (Note 84- An Approach to the Book of Mormon, 1964 ed., pp. 274-281) Moreover, that particular hero was in possession of a life-giving talisman which in many legends is a stone that shines in the dark–a reminder that the Zohar itself was, according to the Palestinian Talmud, a shining stone with which Noah illuminated the ark. (Note 85 – Ibid., pp. 281-291) The point here is that Jared’s ships were illuminated by such shining stones. . . .

1968^      Edith Brockway, The Golden Land. Independence, MO: Herald House, 1968. (RLDS)

     Although this is a “fictional account of the Jaredite migration” written for youth, author Edith Brockway includes some obvious clues that the Jaredites traveled in a westerly direction to reach the Mediterranean Sea (referred to as the “Great Sea”) which they traversed in a westerly direction until they reached and rounded in a northerly direction the tip of the Iberian peninsula. From there they traveled in a southwesterly and westerly direction until they finally bypassed and landed on an island and viewed the mainland, which is described in tropical terms much like Mesoamerica. Edith Brockway writes:

     [p. 68-69] Once the people of Jared had set their course, they did not look behind but drove their animals and carts northward along the route of the trade caravans which edged the swollen split of the eastern Euphrates. They were leaving the lowlands of Shinar forever. . . .

     . . . “We rest when we see the shimmering lake and hear the roar of the lions in the Valley of the Great Hunter. . . . Many years ago, when we were boys, our tribes hunted here with Nimrod. Since then it has been named for him.”

     [p. 98-99] With his finger he traced lines in the wet sand. “Go south Amorite . . . on to mountains . . . Lebanon . . . forests . . . to great sea.” . . . It was decided that the migration would follow the route suggested by the oarsman. It would leave the river trail and go directly west, away from the Amorite village, toward the Great Sea.

     [. 108] “He is an Egyptian shipbuilder from the city of Gubla. He and his sons live at the shipyards along the Great Sea–not too far from here.

     [p. 137] With winds blowing from the east, then from the south, the boats followed the coastline to the north, going in a great curve of the arm of the sea into the mouth of a river. Up the river lay a lake, and to the side of the lake lay an islands, and on the island the wanderers pitched their tents and called it Moriancumer–land given by God.

     [p. 148] If the voyage lasted many more weeks, all the animals would have to be killed . . . Drifting on westward . . .

     [p. 153] The winds . . . carried them westward . . . For many days they saw islands and inlets out of their reach

     [p. 156] Ori, sailing along the coast the next morning with the sons of Sephar, came upon another river emptying into the sea. This was edged with great forests where snowy-white cranes flapped from the shallows to perch among the upper foliage. Brilliantly colored birds flitted from tree to tree as they passed . . . White smoke could be seen curling from the highest peak

1969      John L. Sorenson, “The Years of the Jaredites,” Provo, UT: FARMS, 1969. In an earlier version “A Possible Absolute Chronology for the Jaredites.” Book of Mormon Working Paper No. 5, December 1963. Duplicated by the author.

     The book of Ether is analyzed historically and logically to infer a scheme of absolute dates extending from about 3000 to 4500 B.C. also divides Jaredite history into seven developmental stages. [J.L. S.]

GET COPY FROM FARMS LIBRARY FROM DAN MCKINLEY CHECK ON JOHN WELCH CHRONOLOGY ALSO.

1970^      John D. Hawkes, Book of Mormon Digest (Revised and Improved Edition), Salt Lake City, Utah: Hawkes Publishing, Inc., 1970, p. 129.

     Note* This book first came out in 1966, with an “Improved Edition” in 1968. On page 129 we find a map entitled “Possible Jaredite Travels” showing a rather undefined Old World and a recognizable New World. The Jaredites are shown coming from the Tower of Babel (2200 B.C.) northward through the Valley of Nimrod, through a “wilderness” by an illustrated cart, and going westward through “many waters” resembling the Mediterranean Sea. From here, however, this map is UNIQUE, because it has the Jaredites drifting for 344 days southward around the southern tip of South America along a “Route Unknown” and then up the westward coast of South America all the way to a landing place on the western coast of Central America. A note at the bottom of the map says it was “Conceived & Copyrighted by John D. Hawkes 1970.”

[1970      Map: Possible Jaredite Travels. John D. Hawkes, Book of Mormon Digest (Revised and Improved Edition), Salt Lake City, Utah: Hawkes Publishing, Inc., 1970, p. 129.]

1971^      W. Cleon Skousen, Treasures From the Book of Mormon, Vol. 4.[no publisher listed], 1971, pp.4255-6, 4280. Reprinted in 1974, 1976.

     On page 4255 he writes:

     We have no way of knowing of certain which way the Jaredites went. Either east or west they could have run into large bodies of water which had to be crossed before they reached the great sea. The longest journey, of course, would have been to the east where vast sheets of water remained for many centuries after the flood. These are now large stretches of lake bottoms or deserts which spread over great regions of Asia. On the other hand, if the Jaredites had turned toward the west they may have crossed the Black Sea or even a branch of the Mediterranean Sea, such as the Aegean. . . .

     Apparently it was a monumental task to build the barges which were necessary to cross the “many waters” referred to in verse 6. . . . You will note that in verse 6 the Jaredites are described as having crossed “many waters” yet in this verse it is stated that what they had actually crossed was “the sea in the wilderness.” (Note the singular.) This would imply that they only crossed one great body of inland water, but it was so large that they called it, “many waters.”

Note* Skousen has this happening at 2,200 B.C.

     On page 4280 he writes:

     One can very well imagine the deep relief of the Jaredites as their little fleet of eight barges slid onto the beaches of the promised land. We might mention that it would have been extremely dangerous if not impossible to chain or lash these vessels together during their turbulent voyage. It is therefore virtually miraculous that they all arrived at the same place and about the same time. Bottles thrown into the sea current often land hundreds of miles apart, but the Jaredites arrived in America with all eight barges accounted for and intact.

[1971      Illustration: “The Lord God Caused That There Should Be a Furious Wind Blow Upon the Face of the Waters, Towards the Promised Land (Ether 6:5) W. Cleon Skousen, Treasures From the Book of Mormon, Vol. 4.[no publisher listed], 1971, p.4278. Reprinted in 1974, 1976.]

1972^      Louise Clark Gregson, Gregson’s Book of Mormon Story and Color Book. Independence, MO: Gregson’s Storybooks, 1972. (RLDS)

     This is a children’s book that internally summarizes the story of the Jaredites from the Tower of Babylon. There is no external geographical information given. In reference to the barges, however, Gregson does say that “they were the first submarines on record.”

1974^      F. E. Butterworth, Pilgrims of the Pacific. Independence, MO: Herald House, 1974. (RLDS)

1. E. Butterworth give the most detailed Indian Ocean route to date for the Jaredite journey, along with various supporting cultural details, maps and illustrations. He links these fascinating details with the Polynesians seafaring legends and the type of barges that were used. He also includes multiple illustrations of his proposed design (and constructed model) of the Jaredite barges. He writes:

[p. 19] Tower of Babel Legend in Ancient America

     Historian Hubert H. Bancroft says that a mysterious personage ” . . . closely resembling Quetzalcoatl . . . assisted at the building of the Tower of Babel. After the confusion of tongues, he led a portion of the dispersed people to America.” (Hubert H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, Volume 5, pp. 27-28) John T. Short (John T. Short, North Americans of Antiquity, p. 206) and Josiah Priest (Josiah Priest, American Antiquities, Albany, New York: Hoffman and White, 1833, p. 199) made similar statements. In Ether it is indicated that the “promised land” to which the Jaredites were led was beyond the “great sea which divideth the lands.” I believe this to be the Pacific Ocean.

[p. 32] Nimrod

     I pointed out to Horahitu from a map of the area the names Nimrud, Nimroud, and Nimrod, all north of Babylon and below the mountain range.

     “To travel northward to Nimrod, the Jaredites no doubt followed the Tigris River,” I began. “The Euphrates would have taken them northwestward away from the mountain.” I pinpointed an area at the confluence of the Great Zab and Tigris rivers, because it is surrounded by mountains on three sides. It was indeed a great valley, and interestingly the name Nimrod is still connected with it.

[1974      Illustration: Valley of Nimrod. F. E. Butterworth, Pilgrims of the Pacific. Independence, MO: Herald House, 1974, p. 33.]

     [p. 34-36] The Jaredites Went East

     I pointed out to Horahitu the peculiar language used by the Lord when he answered the question about the direction the colony should follow when it left Nimrod: “Go into that quarter where there never had man been” (Ether 1:26).

     “You see,” I said, “from the Valley of Nimrod, if they were to go into an area where man had never been, they would have to go east. They themselves had come from the south, and directly in front of them to the north stood Mount Ararat on which the ark of Noah is said to have alighted. Noah and his children had traversed and settled the area to the north and west along an arc from Ararat past the eastern seaboard of the Mediterranean Sea and as far south as Babylon. This would preclude any other route open to them, except toward that difficult and strange terrain to the east.”

     “That is logical,” Horahitu said.

     “But going eastward has been opposed by many because of the statement in Genesis 11:1, ‘as they journeyed from the east.’ This seems to say that the Babylonians settled at Babel after having come from the east. If so, then there were people once living in that eastern area. However, the marginal reference explains that the phrase ‘from the east’ should simply read ‘eastward,’ citing Genesis 13:9 ‘and Lot journeyed east’ as supporting evidence. So there evidently were no people in this area near the Zagros Mountain range on or beyond its eastern slope.”

     Being confronted by such a natural barrier as the Zagros Mountains would have been an insurmountable problem if the Jaredites were not under divine guidance.

     “How did they get over those rugged mountains?” Horahitu asked.

     “To pass through such a barrier to the east required divine assistance. Ether 5:30 indicates that the Brother of Jared prayed for direction in this matter and received an answer. He prayed that Mount Zerin be moved, and it was. The reference states, ‘for the Brother of Jared said unto the Mount Zerin, Remove, and it was removed. And if he had not had faith, it would not have moved.’ This clarifies two points,” I continued. “It shows first that the Valley of Nimrod was near the mountains, and second, that the mountain was moved. It was not necessarily picked up bodily and moved to another location.” I showed Horahitu a picture I had taken from National Geographic which showed evidence of great turbulence in the Zagros Range at one time. Great cracks, large enough to allow whole colonies of people to pass through, are found along the approximate route of the Jaredite exodus.

[1974      Illustration: Possible route of the Jaredites: (1) traditional site of Babel; (2) probable site of Nimrod Valley; (3) the Zagros Mountains; (4) east to India. F. E. Butterworth, Pilgrims of the Pacific. Independence, MO:Herald House, 1974, p. 35.]

[p. 38] Many Waters

     Passing through the mountains toward the east the Jaredites crossed “many waters” (Ether 1:28). The fact that few streams or rivers are now in the area is of little importance. This journey was being made only a few years after the great flood waters of Noah’s time were still draining off the land. Even today, however, the streams from Kermanshah and Hamadan in the heart of the Zagros Mountains flow eastward. (Harold Lamb, “Mountain Tribes of Iran and Iraq,” National Geographic Magazine, pp. 385-408)

     [p. 40-42] India’s Mystery City

     Tracing the trail of the wandering Jaredites from Babel to Nimrod and finally to India presupposes that there is to be found along this route the remains of an ancient civilization. Mohenjo-daro, India’s mystery city mentioned by Mr. Stimson, fits neatly into this category. It was once a rambling community of stone, not unlike the aboriginal cities of Ancient America.

     As noted on the map above, Mohenjo-daro is directly on the western shore of the Indus River, the probable and most likely landing place of any migrating peoples traveling on temporary craft from the west. . . .

     Traveling eastward would ultimately have brought them [the Jaredites] to the Indus River. Their last campsite on the mainland, I believe, was on the west bank of the Indus at Mohenjo-daro. . . .

     The systematic scattering of the people from Babel was in progress. Now Asia, China, Africa, India, and finally the islands of the sea would be populated.

     The Jaredites’ launching at Mohenjo-daro would have carried them into the Arabian Sea. Traditions speak of at least one noted migration out of Babylon under Votan who made it all the way to Ancient America. (Hubert H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, Volume 5, pp. 10-21)

[1974      Illustration: The Civilization of the Indus Valley: Mohenjo-daro, India. F. E. Butterworth, Pilgrims of the Pacific. Independence, MO: Herald House, 1974, p. 41.]

[p. 49-54] The Arabian Sea

     After repairing their reed vessels at Mohenjo-daro, possibly even changing the design to sail out into the ocean, they probably drifted down the swift waters of the Indus River and entered the Arabian Sea. One may easily follow the trail of those who drift out of the mouth of the Indus into the Arabian Sea by following the currents. The maps by Sverdrup on the following two pages show the direction of the currents at different times of the year.

     As we have seen, the nature of the ocean currents in this area would normally carry drifting vessels from the mouth of the Indus River along the African coast to Madagascar. . . .

[1974      Illustration: Ocean Currents: September—March. F. E. Butterworth, Pilgrims of the Pacific. Independence, MO: Herald House, 1974, p. 50.]

[1974      Illustration: Ocean Currents: March—September. F. E. Butterworth, Pilgrims of the Pacific. Independence, MO: Herald House, 1974, p. 51.]

[pp. 52-54] Australia

     In the study of Indian Ocean currents shown on the preceding charts, Sverdrup says the currents change from summer to winter and that it is possible to travel by ocean current all the way to the south coast of Australia and beyond.

     The Jaredites could have landed somewhere along South Australia as the ocean current charts clearly show. In the Arabian Sea the currents are erratic due to the monsoons, but Sverdrup says that between “South Africa and Australia the current is directed in general from West to East, while in winter the current appears to reach Australia and, in part, to continue toward the Pacific along the Australian South Coast.” (23 p. 187) . . .

Moriancumer

     The record of Ether describes Moriancumer as a place “beyond the sea in the wilderness.” The “sea” mentioned here was no doubt the Arabian Sea or the Indian Ocean or both, which the Jaredites had successfully crossed. But the record of Ether indicates that the wilderness of Moriancumer was on the shores of the “great sea which divideth the lands” (Ether 1:29, 36,37). This could be somewhere along the Australian coast. . . .

     The location of Moriancumer probably was on the east or northern shores of Tasmania, on the south or eastern shores of southern Australia, or on the South Island of New Zealand. I favor the coast of southeast Australia. . . .

[1974      Illustration: Side view of Jaredite barge model. F. E. Butterworth, Pilgrims of the Pacific. Independence, MO: Herald House, 1974, p. 64.]

[1974      Illustration: Note the rear door of the barge that can be raised and lowered. Being wedge-shaped on the front and rear allowed the barge to go through the waves.. F. E. Butterworth, Pilgrims of the Pacific. Independence, MO: Herald House, 1974, p. 64.]

[1974      Illustration: (1) Hole in loft for dropping hay to animals. The front stone would also light the front half of the barge through the loft opening. (2) Loft for hay and sleeping. (3) Open rear door that extends deck space. (4) Steering device that could be lifted to the top of the barge. F. E. Butterworth, Pilgrims of the Pacific. Independence, MO: Herald House, 1974, p. 65.]

[1974      Illustration: (1) Animal quarters. (2) Reserve rainwater tanks. (3) Reserve saltwater fish-holding tank. (4) Nests for fowl. (5) Steering device. (6) Storage bins in pontoons. (7) Hole in the bottom. (8) Ladder to loft. (9) Lowered rear door. (10) Sail. (11) Stone light. F. E. Butterworth, Pilgrims of the Pacific. Independence, MO: Herald House, 1974, p. 65.]

[p. 73]

     Before arriving at the great sea which divided the lands the Jaredites had already crossed a body of water large enough to be referred to as a “sea” (Ether 1:36,37). If they were following the route I have suggested this first would have been the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean.

     The ocean currents could have carried them past Madagascar along the southern shores of Australia and into the bay at Port Phillip or on the shores near Wonthagg or even farther east. The reason I have arrived at this conclusion, in addition to the movement of ocean currents, is that they landed in a “wilderness” and evidently traveled on foot the final distance to the Pacific Coast: “And the Lord would not suffer that they should stop beyond the sea [Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean] in the wilderness [of Australia], but he would that they should come forth even unto the land of promise” (Ether 1:29).

     Later “the Lord did bring Jared and his brethren forth even to that great sea [Pacific Ocean] which divideth the lands” (Ether 1:36). The next phrase “And as they came to the sea, they pitched their tents” suggest they were going through the wilderness on foot.

     Therefore, my theory places the tent city of Moriancumer on the coast of Eastern Victoria. The mountain of “exceeding height” near here would be Mt. Kosciusko. That the Brother of Jared “went forth” to the mountain for the sixteen small stones shows that it was probably a considerable distance from the camp.

     The Paleozoic rocks in this range are silver, zinc, and tungsten, as well as other minerals and fuel that could have supplied the Brother of Jared with the materials for his sixteen small stones.

     [p. 88]

     . . . If my theory is correct, they went northward to a great valley, paused there for a time, then went eastward through the Zagros Mountains and across the continent to Mohenjo-daro, India. At this point they probably turned south, crossed the Indian Ocean to Australia, then sailed the Pacific Ocean to Ancient America.

[1974      Illustration: Possible Jaredite Route. F. E. Butterworth, Pilgrims of the Pacific. Independence, MO: Herald House, 1974, p. 68.]

1975^      Venice Priddis, The Book and the Map. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1975, p. 33 Reprinted in 1976.

     Book of Mormon passages such as Ether 9:31-33 and 10:20-21 indicate that the Jaredite nation occupied “the land northward,” that land “which was northward of the land Bountiful” (Alma 50;11). this was the land at and northward of the narrow neck of land, which the previous chapter identifies with the Gulf of Guayaquil on the west and the Andean coastline of the former East Sea on the east. The reasonable conclusion, therefore, is that the Jaredite landing took place on the coast of today’s Ecuador, north of Guayaquil.

     This conclusion coincides not only with the Book of Mormon but also with incidents recorded by Spanish chroniclers, as told them by ancient record- (quipu) keepers and “remembers of history.” for instance, Philp Ainsworth means, in his book Ancient Civilizations of the Andes, quotes the interpretation of an Inca quipu- or record-keeper named Catari, as follows: “The remote forebears of the Indians were driven to America from the Old World after the Deluge, and eventually some of them reached Caracas, which may possibly be identified with Caraques, on the Ecuadorian coast. . . . Others landed at Sampu, called by the Spaniards Santa Elena . . . also on the Ecuadorian coast.” (Philip A. Means, Ancient Civilizations of the Andes (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1931), p. 210.

1975      Alexander Von Wuthenau, Unexpected Faces in Ancient America, 1500 B.C. – A.D. 1500; the Historical Testimony of Pre-Columbian Artists. New York: Crown, 1975. See also Ralph Lesh, “Development of the Map,” in Recent Book of Mormon Developments; Articles from The Zarahemla Record, Raymond C. Treat ed. Independence Missouri: Zarahemla Research Foundation, 1984, pp. 81-82.

     This book by a non-LDS author supports the idea of pre-Columbian transoceanic contact. Chapter 8 is entitled “Historical Opinions on Semitic Diffusionism in America during the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries. On page 51 he writes:

     Mormonism got started in America in the first part of the nineteenth century. Mormon ideology quite obviously accepted the theory of an early presence of Jewish elements in the New World as mentioned above. Religious beliefs do not belong in the same realm of intellectual activity as scientific investigation, yet religious beliefs can and will form a background for historical facts. Precisely in our times we have witnessed many scientific confirmations of events alluded to in the Bible, which were hitherto misunderstood, ignored, or depreciated. In my last class on pre-Columbian art at the University of the Americas in Chollula, Mexico, I had a Mormon student named Neil Steede. I asked this young man to write down his own interpretation of the Book of Mormon in relation to the geographic sites of pre-Columbian times in Mesoamerica. According to Steede, the first, or the Jaredite migration was induced by the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel (circa 2300 B.C.). This migration moved slowly north and east through an “uninhabited, barren region” and subsequently through India and the “Dzungarian Gates” into the China of the Shang Dynasty. “For four years the Jaredites camped beside the ocean, while preparing to come across, at the place they called Moriancomer (Mormon: Ether 1:37). Close to this camp was a mountain named Shelem (Ether 1:60). There are four mountains of exceeding height on the shores of China. The important fact is that there are no single large mountains of this description on the Atlantic Coast.” Crossing on the North pacific Drift they landed on the Western Hemisphere near the “narrow neck” of the “land of Bountiful,” which means the land not far from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. This narrative dovetails somehow with my chronology of the intrusion of Proto-Olmec elements in the southern coast of Guerrero and Oaxaca and the strange finds of archaic, Jewish-looking incense burner prongs in the digs near the pacific coast of Guerrero and in Kaminaljuyu (Charcas phase) in Guatemala (Ils. 5-8). . . .

Note* Steede’s illustrations appear in the Appendix “a”. Of the four Steede maps there are three that are pertinent: (1) “Routes to the New World,” (2) “Meso-America,” and (3) “Jaredite Group: Asia (see below)

[1975      Map: Routes to the New World. by Neil Steede. Alexander Von Wuthenau, Unexpected Faces in Ancient America, 1500 B.C. – A.D. 1500; the Historical Testimony of Pre-Columbian Artists. New York: Crown, 1975, ]

[1975      Map: Meso-America. by Neil Steede. Alexander Von Wuthenau, Unexpected Faces in Ancient America, 1500 B.C. – A.D. 1500; the Historical Testimony of Pre-Columbian Artists. New York: Crown, 1975]

[1975      Map: Jaredite Group: Asia. by Neil Steede. Alexander Von Wuthenau, Unexpected Faces in Ancient America, 1500 B.C. – A.D. 1500; the Historical Testimony of Pre-Columbian Artists. New York: Crown, 1975]

     Interestingly, this information correlates with the ideas and illustrated maps which Von Wuthenau presents on the origins of the Olmecs. On page 71 he writes:

     The map (see below) of Olmec migrations in Coe’s book (page 102, reproduced on page 72 with permission of American Heritage Publishing Company) has one flaw in that the line traversing the State of Guerrero does not go all the way through from Juxtlahuaca to Puerto Marques on the Pacific Ocean. One need only turn the arrow of that line into the opposite direction and round out the corner between Chalcatzingo and Tlapacoya to arrive at exactly the same ideas on Olmec origins in Guerrero that the late Miguel Covarrubias professed to everyone, including the author of this book. Covarrubias was one of the most authentic scholars and connoisseurs of pre-Columbian history. . . . Covarrubias died in 1957 and did not even know about the excavation site explored by Charles and Helen Brush in Puerto Marques near Acapulco . . . nor the recent excavation of the pyramid of Cholula where terracotta heads were found in pre-Classic layers . . .

Note* In essence, what Von Wuthenau is saying is that, contrary to Coe’s map, the Olmecs originated on the Pacific coast near Puerto Marques near Acapulco in the state of Guerrero, and spread toward the coast of Veracruz. (see illustration below)

[1975      Map: Olmec “Heartland” and Archaelogical Sites in the State of Guerrero. Alexander Von Wuthenau, Unexpecteed Faces in Ancient America, 1500 B.C. – A.D. 1500; the Historical Testimony of Pre-Columbian Artists. New York: Crown, 1975, p. 72]

1976      Marian Blumenschien, “America’s Legacy from Sumer,” in Saints Herald 123, August 1976, pp. 476-79.

     Compares the studies of Samuel N. Kramer on the Sumerian culture at the time of the tower of Babel with the Jaredite culture as explained in the Book of Mormon. [B.D.]

1977      Verneil W. Simmons, Peoples, Places and Prophecies: A Study of the Book of Mormon. Independence, MO: Zarahemla Research Foundation, Inc., 1977. Reprinted in 1981.  (RLDS)                             

     Verneil Simmons details a very expanded logic related to the Jaredite journey. She writes:

     [p. 20] The book of Ether, the next to the last in the Book of Mormon, is the account of a people, a place, and a prophecy that antedates by two millennia the world of Lehi and the writings of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. To find the world of the Jaredites we must go back to the dawn of history, to the land of Sumer. . . .

     Due to the work of dedicated scholars, the Sumerian civilization is now one of the best known of the Near East. Tens of thousands of clay tablets are available for study . . . archaeological research has added to modern knowledge of the long forgotten Sumerians. Though their racial identity (and their original home) is still unknown, it is now understood that before 3000 B.C. they occupied the flood plain which lies at the head of the Persian Gulf, between Tigris and Euphrates River-the plain called Shinar in the Bible. . . .

     [pp. 22-23] The[ir] literature containing accounts of creation, the sinfulness of men, and the great flood were thought to foreshadow the Bible stories of these events. Certainly the Sumerians had earlier sources to draw upon. Of interest is the following, as reported in Time magazine.

     Last week at a meeting of the American Oriental Society at Yale, Sumerologist Samuel Kramer reported that 31 clay tablets, excavated 30 years ago at the ancient city of Kish and now at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, have been deciphered. The cuneiform writing recounts a story composed around 2000 B.C. similar to that of the Bible’s Babel. It tells of the god of wisdom. Enkl, who, probably jealous of a rival god, “changed the speech of man, that had until then been one.” (Note 3) . . .

     It is in this land of Shinar, or Sumer, that we begin our study of the people of Ether’s account-the Jaredites. (Map 1)

[1977      Map #1: Ancient Cities of Mesopotamia. Verneil W. Simmons, Peoples, Places and Prophecies: A Study of the Book of Mormon. Independence, MO: Zarahemla Research Foundation, Inc., 1977. Reprinted in 1981, p. 22]

     [pp. 24-26] We have no specific dates given for the beginning or the ending of Ether’s record. We must deduce them from other sources. Ether tells us that the colony left the Old World from the “great tower,” under the leadership of Jared and his brother. No date is given. Traditionally we have used the date of 2200 B.C., following the now discredited Ussher chronology. We also accepted the legend that linked the “great tower” with the city of Babylon, with the result that we use the word Babel to mean a confusion of tongues. Actually it is a Babylonian word and means “gate of God.” Modern scholarship has changed our thinking on both matters.

     When James Ussher, in 1650, a theologian of the Church of England, published his chronology for the Old Testament, he did so by counting the generations as given in the genealogy lists. Today’s scholars know that the lists do not always denote a father-to-son relationship; consequently his dates could fall short of the actual period of time represented. Many ancient languages, including Hebrew, have only one word for both “son” and “descendant.” In Hebrew the word “ben” can be read either to mean “son” or “descendant,” and a scribe copying from an ancient text might not know which was intended.

     We find such discrepancies in the genealogies as given in the Bible. For instance, Matthew lists 28 generations from David to Jesus while Luke gives the generations as 42 (Matthew 1:1-16, Luke 3:23-31). Such discrepancy is also found in the “king-lists” of the Old Babylonian period and in other ancient records. It also occurs in the book of Ether. . . .

     The other matter is the problem of the “great tower.” The Tower of Babel is probably the best known story of the Old Testament and has been traditionally assigned to the city of Babylon by Jew and Christian alike. When Joseph Smith translated the account of the confusion of tongues, as given in the book of Ether, why did he not automatically identify the “great tower” as the Tower of Babel? Certainly all of his religious experience had taught him that the story in Genesis 112:1-9 had occurred in the city of Babylon. Yet he did not. Only the term “great tower” appears in the record. Had he used the accepted identification he would have thrown all of the Jaredite account into grave question, in view of the new information acquired through modern research. How fortunate for his status as a prophet that he “stayed with the script” and wrote only that which Moroni had inscribed on the plates!

     The Old Testament, as we have it today, was canonized after the return of the Jews from their captivity in the land of the Babylonians (587-530 B.C.). Since the ancient towers of the Sumerian cities were already lost and forgotten, it was a natural mistake of the Jewish writers to associate the tower story with the only standing temple-tower of their experience-the great stepped ziggurat which dominated the city of Babylon. Babel is the Hebrew word for Babylon and is thought to be a play on the Hebrew word “balal,” meaning “to mix”–hence our Tower of Babel.

     The archaeological excavations at Ur, or Urim, the supposed capital of Sumer at one period, disclose a stepped pyramidal tower which far antedated the one at Babylon. Apparently all the cities of the southern plain had similar towers at a time when Bab-ilu (future Babylon) was only an insignificant village in Akkad. The tower story was known, and recorded in Sumerian records, much too early to be identified with Babylon, and must rather be looked for as having taken place in a city of Sumer, during the First Dynasty (c. 2800– c. 2350 B.C.). (NOTE 4) . . . [Thus] The date of [the Jaredite] departure could have been no later than 2350 B.C. and possibly several centuries earlier.

     [pp. 28-29] From the Sumerian temple records we learn that the merchant trade relied on the pack ass . . . It is possible that the [Jaredite] people used wagons for the beginning of their journey, where roads were available across the level plains, but in all probability the pack ass carried most of their possessions.

     Jared and his brother led this large company into the valley of Nimrod, which lay to the north of their city, named for the mighty hunter of biblical fame. They would have been following the Tigris River. At this point the Lord came down and talked with His prophet from within a cloud. Here they learned they were not to follow the known trade routes which ran between their land and neighboring countries, but they were to go forth into the “wilderness” where man had not yet been.

     The dictionary defines wilderness as an “uncultivated, uninhabited, barren” region. Had these travelers turned westward toward the Mediterranean, their journey would have taken them into settled and cultivated lands, including the high civilization of Egypt. Directly to the east were the cultures of the Indus Valley, already in contact with the Sumerian cities. The only direction they could travel and thus fulfill this commandment of the Lord was to the north and east, across the unknown distances of Asia. The Lord continued to lead them, speaking to them from the cloud and giving directions for their route (Ether 1:27). Such supernatural direction would not have been necessary had they been traveling the well-marked trade routes. Obviously they were in uninhabited territory and, consequently, the Lord “did go before them.”

     The need to build boats or barges to cross many waters in the heart of Asia might surprise some, silence the land today is mostly desert. But in the third millennium B.C. many lakes still existed in the plains of Asia, remnants left by the recession of the last glaciation. . . . How many seasons passed, with the suns of summer and snows of winter, as this group pioneered a trail across Asia? The brother of Jared states, “for this many years we have been int he wilderness” (Ether 1:64). . . .

     It is obvious from the account that the whole colony was ready to take up permanent residence after the crossing the “sea in the wilderness,” apparently a larger body of water than usual, but the Lord would not permit it, since this was not their promised land.

     It has been suggested that other colonies may have followed this one into the unknown areas of Asia, and archaeology would appear to support this supposition. The earliest evidence of high culture yet found in China is in the flood plain of the yellow river–the fabulous Shang Dynasty of 1700-1300 B.C. At this early period, the knowledge of writing and the working of bronze are evidence of earlier contact with faraway Sumer. Did the Jaredites open the way which later became the ancient silk road from China to the Near East? See Map #2.

[1977      Map #2: Jaredite Crossing. Verneil W. Simmons, Peoples, Places and Prophecies: A Study of the Book of Mormon. Independence, MO: Zarahemla Research Foundation, Inc., 1977. Reprinted in 1981, p. 29]

     [pp. 30-33] Leaving to our imagination the trials, tribulations, and weariness of those who pushed on, the record simply states that the Lord brought them to the great sea which divides the lands. We can understand how they must have felt when they reached the Pacific Ocean. . . .

     The Lord warned that the crossing would be a rough one, for the winds would cause heavy seas and floods of rain. For this reason they could not carry fire, and windows were not practical. the wind was to blow continuously throughout the voyage, always toward the promised land. This lends some credence to a legend recorded by the historian Josephus that the great tower was destroyed by mighty winds when the world was experiencing a period of violent weather. (NOTE 8) It might have been a season of violent weather, but the statement that the wind blew always toward the promised land could be a simple explanation of a prevailing wind, traveling the same direction as the ocean current. . . . The wind always blowing toward the promised land probably indicates that it was a prevailing wind, following a natural pattern, not something the Lord contrived especially for the occasion. This is important because modern knowledge of ocean currents gives some help in tracing the direction of their travels. . . .

     [pp. 32-33] If they traversed Asia, arriving in the river delta of the Yellow River of China, then they would have been putting off from the eastern edge of the Shantung Peninsula, or possibly they could have left from the Korean Peninsula. There is a tall mountain, sacred to the modern Chinese’s, on the Shantung Peninsula and there was such a high peak at the point of their departure-the one they had called Shelem for its great height. In Korea a famous mountain stands very near the east coast and is five thousand feet high. It has the intriguing name of Diamond Mountain. . . .

     The one natural bridge across the Pacific is the warm Japan current, a true ocean river which flows from Asia across the North pacific to the American continent accompanied by prevailing winds paralleling the currents. There are documented cases of drifting junks which have crossed the Pacific on the Japan current taking from nine to fifteen months. Objects from China and Japan such as fishing floats still ride that current and float ashore on California or Mexican coasts in the estimated time of one year. (NOTE 11) If the colonists launched their ships off the north china coast, the currents inevitably would have deposited them on the western shore of the North American continent. (The Atlantic can be crossed in a matter of weeks, rather than 344 days, and the tightly closed boats of the Jaredites would not have been at all comfortable in the latitude of the Atlantic currents.) Thus a Pacific crossing is indicated. [See Map #3]

     Where they set foot upon the “promised land” is important, because it is the clue to which ocean they crossed. . . .

[1977      Map #3: Book of Mormon Crossings. Verneil W. Simmons, Peoples, Places and Prophecies: A Study of the Book of Mormon. Independence, MO: Zarahemla Research Foundation, Inc., 1977. Reprinted in 1981, p. 36]

     [pp. 34-35] The land “of their first inheritance” was named Moron (Ether 3:54-55). It became the seat of the kingdom and here their kings were “anointed” (Ether 3:33). . . .

     Moroni describes the land of Moron, the site of the first capital, as being near the land of Desolation. The city called Desolation was built at the “narrow neck,” the isthmus of land which connected the earlier Jaredite territories with the land south later occupied by the Nephite colony. So Moron, being near the land of Desolation, was near the “narrow neck,” but to the north of it. We know it was near a seacoast, but which seacoast–east or west? Fortunately, we have an excellent idea from a careful reading of the text.

     Omer, grandson of Kib, received a warning from the Lord to leave his capital city, Moron, to escape death at the hands of a wicked son. The description of his flight is the best clue we have for locating the land of Moron.

     “And the Lord warned Omer in a dream that he should depart out of the land; wherefore Omer departed out of the land with his family, and traveled many days, and came over and passed by the hill Shim and came over by the place where the Nephites were destroyed and from thence eastward, and came to the place which was called Ablom, by the seashore, and there he pitched his tent.-Ether 4:3-4”

     Any attempt to identify a landing place for the Jaredite colony must take into account this description. Moroni carefully identified the stages of this journey with places known to himself, personally. Omer’s party traveled for “many days” and then “cam over’ something. This expression, “came over,” is used twice in the description and one wonders if it could refer to mountain ranges. But there is no question about the next point–“And passed by the hill Shim.” Shim was the hill where Mormon was sent by Ammaron to claim the sacred records of the Nephite nation (Mormon 1:1-4). It was very close to the “narrow neck” for upon the fall of the city Desolation and other fortified cities of the frontier, Mormon had gone to the hill and removed all the sacred things, later depositing them in the hill Cumorah (Mormon 2:25). So Moroni knew exactly where Shim was. . . .

     The next point to be identified, after another “came over,” is the place where the Nephites were destroyed (the last battlefield of the Jaredites, also) in the land of Desolation. From this point the party traveled eastward to a place called Ablom (Jaredite word) on the seashore (eastern coast). To reverse the route, Omer would leave a place on the east seashore, pass the place that would eventually be the battleground of Cumorah, then the hill Shim (in the vicinity of the narrow neck), and finally arrive at the Jaredite capital city of Moron, where the Jaredites first settled. This is exactly what Omer did a few years later when the kingdom was restored to him. The evidence points to the journey beginning on the western seashore, or the Pacific coast.

     Any suggestion that the Jaredite voyage ended on the eastern seacoast does not fit Moroni’s description. It is most unlikely that Omer began his journey on the east coast, traveling first to the area of the “narrow neck” to hill Shim, then northward to Cumorah, and then back east to the coastline again. Why wouldn’t he simply follow the east coastline from Moron to Ablom?

     One more reference is helpful in this matter. In the final years of the Jaredites’ history, King Coriantumr came to battle against Lib, having usurped the kingdom, sat upon the throne. The battle was so fierce that Lib was forced to retreat to the “seashore,” obviously the one nearest the capital city. There he succeeded in routing Coriantumr and pursued him to the wilderness of Akish, then to the plains of Agosh, ever eastward until they reached the borders of the seashore again, this time the eastern seashore (Ether 6:44-62). Moroni leaves us with little doubt that the location of Moron, capital of the Jaredites, was on the western sea, north of the narrow isthmus. Cumorah was near the eastern seacoast and in the land called Desolation by the Nephites. The location of Moron confirms the suggestion that the Jaredite route was across the pacific with a western seaboard landing in the area called Mesoamerica today. (See map #6: Internal map of Book of Mormon Geography, p. 110)

[1977      Map #6: Internal Map of Book of Mormon Geography. Verneil W. Simmons, Peoples, Places and Prophecies: A Study of the Book of Mormon. Independence, MO: Zarahemla Research Foundation, Inc., 1977. Reprinted in 1981, p. 110]

1977^      Cecil George Le Poidevin, Zion, Land of Promise: An Atlas Study of Book of Mormon Geography. N.P., 1977.

     Note. This book consists of 132 pages including 67 maps. Starting on page 13 he writes:

     From a valley, some distance north of the land of the Tower of Babel, the Jaredites commenced their journey toward their promised land. The record of Ether does not state which direction they travelled, either westward or eastward. We cannot tell whether they went westward via inland waters to the Atlantic Ocean; or, whether they travelled eastward over inland waters, which may have existed at that time, over large parts of the ancient continent of Asia, and from thence, on across the great Pacific Ocean. Our maps will illustrate the proposition of a westward journey via the Atlantic.

     Note* The map on page 18 shows the Jaredites moving northward toward the Black Sea, then moving westward and southward into the Mediterranean before continuing on westward across the Atlantic Ocean, landing on the eastern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula. On the map it is written that the “Jaredites may have drifted before the North East Trade Winds.”

[1977      Map: The Book of Ether, Chapters 1 to 6. Date: About B.C. 2500-2000. Cecil George Le Poidevin, Zion, Land of Promise: An Atlas Study of Book of Mormon Geography. N.P., 1977, p. 18]

1978^      Paul R. Cheesman, The World of the Book of Mormon, Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Company, 1978, p. 24.

     Although Cheesman doesn’t propose any theory of his own on Book of Mormon geography, he reviews and categorizes other theories and then provides cultural evidences. On none of the maps illustrating the various theories does he indicate any proposed Jaredite route or landing site. However, on page 24 he writes:

     On April 10, 1870, Elder [Orson] Pratt said, regarding the Jaredite route: “One nation, or rather the colony which founded it, came from the Tower of Babel soon after the days of the Flood. They colonized what we call North America, landing on the western coast, a little south of the Gulf of California, in the south-western part of this north wing of our continent. They flourished some sixteen hundred years.” (JD 13:129)

     On page 26 Cheesman adds:

     In a speech on December 27, 1868, Elder Pratt stated: “They [the Jaredites] landed to the south of this, just below the Gulf of California, on our western coast. . . . “

1979      David A. Palmer, “The World and Times of the Jaredites,” in A Symposium on the Book of Mormon, 98, SLC: Church Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1979.

     Uses parallel columns to compare archaeological finds and descriptions from the Book of Ether on construction of cities, the development of cities in the narrow neck of land, mining, metalwork, and civil war.

Source: N. Keith Young, in Donald W. Parry, Jeanette W. Miller, Sandra A. Thorne, A Comprehensive Annotated Book of Mormon Bibliography. Provo, UT: Research Press, 1996, p. 352.

1979^      Raymond C. Treat, “Transoceanic Contact: Another Example of Convergence,” in The Zarahemla Record, No. 4, Spring 1979, pp. 1-2. Reprinted in Recent Book of Mormon Developments: Articles from The Zarahemla Record. Independence, MO: Zarahemla Research Foundation, 1984,

     . . . the Jaredites crossed the Pacific Ocean circa 2500-2350 B.C. (see Peoples, Places and Prophecies by Verveil Simmons, pp. 28-33) . . .

     Gordon and Marguerite Ekholm (1974) of the American Museum of Natural History, see evidence of transpacific contact in the scroll-wing motif found in both Shang civilization of China (1700-1100 B.C.) and the Olmec civilization of Mesoamerica (1200-600 B.C.). Betty Meggers (1975), of the Smithsonian Institution, also sees the scroll-wing motif along with several other traits as evidence of contact. . . .

     Since the scroll-wing has no real basis in nature, we cannot argue that the design was independently invented by more than one culture as a result of copying nature. Also, because the Old World distribution is limited to areas with demonstrated Chinese influence, we are led to believe there was only one culture that originated this design, the Shang civilization, which began about 500 years before and slightly overlapped the Olmec civilization (seen by Book of Mormon scholars as representing part of the Jaredite culture). Their conclusion then is since the scroll-wing was an important motif in both Shang and Olmec there was historical contact between these cultures or that these cultures developed from the same mother culture.

     Current Book of Mormon scholarship holds that the Jaredites were the mother culture for both Shang and Olmec. The archaeological evidence from the Middle East and Asia and the brief account in the Book of Ether support the theory that the Jaredites left the Sumerian area of Mesopotamia (2500-2350 B.C. and traveled across Asia before undertaking their ocean voyage (See Nibley, 1952, and Simmons, 1977, for an excellent discussion of this theory). They could well have become ancestors to the Shang civilization physically as well as culturally. The Jaredite had their ups and downs after settling in what is believed to be Mesoamerica.

1980      Ralph F. Lesh (Map), Ancient Mesoamerica: A Preliminary Study of Book of Mormon Geography, Independence: Zarahemla Research Foundation, 1980.

     Note* This is a Map, about 24″ x 30″. The ideas related to the development of the map are discussed in an article entitled “Development of the Map” which is included in the publication Recent Book of Mormon Developments: Articles from The Zarahemla Record, Raymond C. Treat ed, Independence, MO: Zarahemla Research Foundation, 1984, pp. 81-82.

     The map has the Jaredites landing on the southeastern coast of Mexico, not far from Acapulco, which implies a Pacific crossing.

[1980      Map: Ancient Mesoamerica: A Preliminary Study of Book of Mormon Geography. Ralph R. Lesh. Independence: Zarahemla Research Foundation, 1980.]

1980      Roy E. Weldon and F. Edward Butterworth , Book of Mormon Claims and Evidences, vol. 3, Independence, MO: Buckeye, 1980, pp. 196-202. (RLDS)

       They review a number of theories and evidences regarding the route of the Jaredites to the New World. Under the title, “The Jaredite Route and Landing,” the following are some of the people they review:

     Ora Pate Stewart      

     Ora Pate Stewart in Treasures Unearthed, page 64, says the Jaredites went northward from Babylon and eventually landed on the west coast of America.      

     Josiah Hickman      

     Josiah E. Hickman, The Romance of the Book of Mormon, page 42, writes: “The Babylonian or Jaredite fleet landed somewhere on the west coast of what is now Central America, Mexico or the southern part of California.”

1. W. A. Bailey      

     J.W.A. Bailey prepared a table comparing Bancroft’s Native Races and the Book of Mormon on the Jaredites.

Native Races      

Vol. 5:191Landing Places – We are told that the first settlers (Quinames) came from toward Florida, followed the coast and landed at the port of Panuco.

Vol. 5:195-196They (Olmecs) landed on the east coast as far as the land of Papuha, “Muddy Water”, or in the region of Laguna de Terminos, but Veytia names Panuco as their landing place. They had two ancient cities called Xicalance on the gulf coast. (both are correct) Book of Mormon, pages 540:5-14, 548: 3-10, 562:129, pages 387-388.

Vol. 5:189Countless years ago, the first settlers (Olmecs) arrived in New Spain, coming in ships by sea, they approached a northern port; and because they disembarked there, it was called Panuco – from this port they began to follow the coast until they reached Guatemala.

     Walter M. Stout      (See the 1950 notation)

     Hugh Nibley      (See the 1952, 1956 notations)

1. Edward Butterworth:

     The initial Jaredite migration shall be shown to have originated in Asia and, passing through the Torres Straits, finally entered the Pacific Ocean via Australia. . . . With is approach, the Book of Mormon is raised to a scientific level creating a logical link between the two present schools of thought in regards to the origin of the Polynesians.” (F. Edward Butterworth, Sons of the Sea)

Note* When was Sons of the Sea published? (See the 1974 notation)

     Inez Kinney      

     Inez Kinney wrote: “Votan is the traditional name of the Indians that corresponds to the Brother of Jared in the Book of Mormon. The tradition is briefly as follows:

     Votan, a descendant of Noah helped to build the Tower of Babel. He with his chiefs and followers came from Babylon at the time of the confusion of tongues. They crossed the great waters and, sailing through Laguna de Termines and up the Usumacinta River, and on one of its tributaries laid the foundation of the city of Palenque, which became the metropolis of a mighty empire.

     This event is laid at 1000 B.C. They were overthrown by internal wars during the century before or after our Christian Era. The Book of Mormon indicates their extermination at about 150-121 B.C.

     Laguna de Terminos is the southern end of the Gulf of Mexico. This is the landing place of the Jaredites. (See Bancroft, Native Races, Volumes 3, 4, and 5 for further reference)

     Norman Pierce      (See the 1954 notation)

     The trade winds combined with the great Canaries drift would carry a floating object over this five or six thousand mile course [to America from Spain] at the tested rate of eighteen miles per day.”

     If the Jaredite barges floated at the rate of eighteen miles per day, they would have travelled 5,792 miles in 344 days, sufficient distance to have crossed from Spain or France to Mexico.

     Hyatt Verrill:      

1. Hyatt Verrill in discussing the Oceanic (Pacific) origin theory says:

     Concerning the crossing of the Atlantic by the Jaredites in eight vessels, or barges, the Nephite record says: “And it came to pass that the wind did never cease to blow toward the promised land while they were upon the waters: and thus they were driven forth before the wind. (Ether 3:10, page 727)

     Hyatt Verrill writes concerning the possibilities of European vessels being driven across the Atlantic and wrecked upon the American coast and their sailors marrying among the Indians:

     The Caribs are, perhaps survivors of Atlantis, or possibly the result of an admixture of Indians and shipwrecked European navigators whose vessels were driven across the Atlantic and wrecked on the Atilles. It is well known to historians that when Columbus touched at Guadalupe on his second voyage he was greatly disturbed to find the remains of a European built vessel wrecked upon the beach.” (The American Indian, page 413)

Note* Where is this documented? When was The American Indian published?

1. Hyatt Verrill in discussing the Oceanic (Pacific) origin theory, says:

     In fact, with the prevailing winds and currents of the Pacific, about the only course that could have been followed under such conditions would have been toward America. (Old Civilizations of the New World, page 12)

     J.A. and J.N. Washburn      (See the 1928, 1937 & 1939 notations)

1. A. Stebbins: (See the 1901 notation)

Weldon and Butterworth quote Flavius Josephus on the idea that people from the Tower of Babel crossed the sea on ships:

     If it is true as the Book of Mormon claims that a colony of people from the Tower of Babel crossed the sea in ships to America, it would not be unreasonable to expect that this fact might have been known among the other people of those ancient times. To verify that fact we call on one of the greatest historians of those times for words concerning this thought; we present that famous ancient writer, Flavius Josephus:

     After what manner the posterity of Noah sent out colonies, and inhabited the whole earth.

     After this they were dispersed abroad, on account of their languages and went out by colonies everywhere. And each colony took possession of that land which they did light upon, and unto which God led them; so that the whole continent was filled with them, both the inland and the maritime countries. There were some also who passed over the sea in ships, and inhabited the islands. (From page 40, Works of Flavius Josephus, translated by Professor William Shiston, Cambridge University)

     Weldon and Butterworth also include an undocumented comment from Norma Anne Holik that implies a different land route for the Jaredites before the division of the earth in the days of Peleg. They write:

     In making a study of Biblical chronology, Normal Anne Holik has raised another question which affects the route and time of the Jaredite migration. Since the usually accepted ate of the leaving of the Tower of Babel is around 2200 B.C. this places the date within the time period often assigned to be in the lifetime of Peleg. The Bible tells us that during this lifetime the earth was divided into continents. We do not know whether the division occurred early or late in his lifetime. The question comes to mind that if the Jaredites left Babel before the division of the earth, that ta whole new theory of route and time must be explored. If they left Babel after the division of the earth, then the theories which have been advanced by most students may apply. The Book of Mormon descriptions of their journey could fit either set of theories and thus do not help to answer this question.