Olmec-influenced City Found In Mexico

[thesometimesaint]

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[Not quite me]

You were the one throwing pots. All you are being asked to do is provide some evidence for your vivid imagination and time travel. Iron Age to "Judean pots" to Mesoamerica. Uh huh. You see...when you start pulling in biblical scholarship you really do need to know something besides Dever quotes. Go try this with Bokovy.

I love the rule about having to read a book to have an opinion on your unsupported leaps, though. That rule will come in useful when you ride your one book trick pony. There are a lot of books about Israel.

Have you read Kuhrt?

Wow, I missed this whole thing (spent the weekend in bed with the flu, darn it). I stand by my earlier statement: you seem to have missed the entire point here. Pots are just one piece of evidence regarding the advanced pyrotechnology that Nephi tells us he knew and taught his people. I think CI grasped that concept (and maybe Brant did, too). It doesn't take a vivid imagination to show that Mesoamericans had a rather crude pyrotechnology (open fires in pits) and thus, if they did encounter Nephites, they did not avail themselves of the technology.

I suppose there are a couple of ways to look at it. Either the Nephites arrived and encountered small villages, and Nephi assumed the leadership. Or they found a larger polilty, and Nephi again assumed the leadership (Sorensen suggests Kaminaljuyu). So, again, why did the people there not continue with this advanced technology? Brant earlier suggested that the reason Nephi could have been chosen as leader was that he knew advanced technologies that they needed (see beastie's quote of him earlier in the thread). And yet, there's no evidence of advanced pyrotechnology: no hard-fired pots, no metallurgy. so the very technology that enabled Nephi to assume leadership was quickly abandoned.

Either way, the question beastie asks is a good one. If the Nephites were accepted into an existing society and made their leaders, why did they abandon useful technology? beastie's quote of Dever suggests that this would indeed be unprecedented.

[Zakuska]

Plenty of artifacts have survived in ancient Mesoamerica, including animal bones. While wood is more prone to disintegrate, some has been found. Many metal artifacts have been found, just from the wrong time period. This argument that "the things that could point to Nephites couldn't survive in a rainforest environment" is based on a lack of adequate background information.

Where did the raw materials of latter artifacts come from? Perhaps they pounded their swords and pruning hooks into plowshares?

I'd be really impressed by some pre-flood metal artifacts right about now... (gen. 4:22)

[juliann]

Wow, I missed this whole thing (spent the weekend in bed with the flu, darn it). I stand by my earlier statement: you seem to have missed the entire point here. Pots are just one piece of evidence regarding the advanced pyrotechnology that Nephi tells us he knew and taught his people. I think CI grasped that concept (and maybe Brant did, too). It doesn't take a vivid imagination to show that Mesoamericans had a rather crude pyrotechnology (open fires in pits) and thus, if they did encounter Nephites, they did not avail themselves of the technology.

No, Beastie is evading necessary points as usual. That is why everyone who does have some expertise in this walks off in disgust. I don't know anymore than she does about Mesoamerica but I know a heck of a lot more about biblical research and she is making some pretty silly mistakes when she tries to combine the two. She has yet to establish some necessary foundational points and she won't answer necessary questions....but I do find her rabbit trails good entertainment, obviously. I can't help it...it is funny to see her get so excited about me babbling when that is all she does.

Either way, the question beastie asks is a good one. If the Nephites were accepted into an existing society and made their leaders, why did they abandon useful technology? beastie's quote of Dever suggests that this would indeed be unprecedented.

Sure its a good question. But you have to answer it. And Dever isn't going to do that for her. I think even he would be surprised that he has been drafted as a Mesoamerican expert. Little words like "in my experience" are meaningful. Well, to most people anyway. Beastie likes the dictionary game. I like the give-pontificating-self-appointed-one-book-experts-enough-rope game.

BTW...why did the Egyptians abandon useful technology? Better yet...why can't we, with a book or two, figure out what they did have when it is right in front of our face? History is a cycle of forgetting and rediscovery. And there is a book or two about that so anybody can be an expert.

[Not quite me]

No, Beastie is evading necessary points as usual. That is why everyone who does have some expertise in this walks off in disgust. I don't know anymore than she does about Mesoamerica but I know a heck of a lot more about biblical research and she is making some pretty silly mistakes when she tries to combine the two. She has yet to establish some necessary foundational points and she won't answer necessary questions....but I do find her rabbit trails good entertainment, obviously. I can't help it...it is funny to see her get so excited about me babbling when that is all she does.

Sure its a good question. But you have to answer it. And Dever isn't going to do that for her. I think even he would be surprised that he has been drafted as a Mesoamerican expert. Little words like "in my experience" are meaningful. Well, to most people anyway. Beastie likes the dictionary game. I like the give-pontificating-self-appointed-one-book-experts-enough-rope game.

BTW...why did the Egyptians abandon useful technology? Better yet...why can't we, with a book or two, figure out what they did have when it is right in front of our face? History is a cycle of forgetting and rediscovery. And there is a book or two about that so anybody can be an expert.

I've never claimed to be an expert here, and I've tried really hard not to respond to the sneering. The problem again is that the cycle of forgetting and rediscovery works directly against the text of the Book of Mormon. Nephi says he taught the people certain skills, skills so valuable that the native inhabitants of the land adopted Nephi as their leader. And yet, there's no trace. Seems like an obvious problem to me.

[Zakuska]

Heres a perfect example of lost technology... 2000 year old clock like computer.

http://www.giant.net.au/users/rupert/kythera/kythera3.htm

The discovery channel show the other night on this was amazing!

[Not quite me]

Heres a perfect example of lost technology... 2000 year old clock like computer.

http://www.giant.net.au/users/rupert/kythera/kythera3.htm

The discovery channel show the other night on this was amazing!

Thanks for making my point, Zak. The only way we know it was lost is that there is evidence for it in the first place. If Nephi taught his people to work metals, and yet the technology was lost, where's the evidence for the lost technology in the first place?

[Zakuska]

Except metal swords and pots and kettles end up as other things as metal is recycled much more redily than a geared computers.

Isnt' there a story of burried weapons in the BOM?

[Not quite me]

Except metal swords and pots and kettles end up as other things as metal is recycled much more redily than a geared computers.

And once again we'd have some evidence of the recycling.

[Zakuska]

Such as? What type of evidence does recycling leave? Who was doing the recycling? the nephites or the people who came after them?

[Not quite me]

Such as? What type of evidence does recycling leave?

Oh, you know, some trace of smelted metal.

[juliann]

I've never claimed to be an expert here, and I've tried really hard not to respond to the sneering. The problem again is that the cycle of forgetting and rediscovery works directly against the text of the Book of Mormon. Nephi says he taught the people certain skills, skills so valuable that the native inhabitants of the land adopted Nephi as their leader. And yet, there's no trace. Seems like an obvious problem to me.

Yes, it is a problem. But not because it should be there because of those reasons. History is replete with example after example of lost technologies. That is what I mean by missing the point and failing to make a foundation for accusations. It just gets worse when other culture, geography and time periods are thrown in to reinforce a house of cards. It just gets messier with a lot more missing pieces to answer for..and after years of this nonsense you either go crazy or start having fun with it. The solution for those who want to play would be to get some basic training in methodology...an unthinkable solution, I know.

Meanwhile, I'm really looking forward to that comparison of the beginnings of Israel with a few dozen people on another continent in some unknown place. But let's start with the beginnings of Israel since so much is known about that! Then we can get to that "Judean pot" and solve the problem.

[Not quite me]

Yes, it is a problem. But not because it should be there because of those reasons. History is replete with example after example of lost technologies. That is what I mean by missing the point and failing to make a foundation for accusations. It just gets worse when other culture, geography and time periods are thrown in to reinforce a house of cards. It just gets messier with a lot more missing pieces to answer for..and after years of this nonsense you either go crazy or start having fun with it. The solution for those who want to play would be to get some basic training in methodology...an unthinkable solution, I know.

Meanwhile, I'm really looking forward to that comparison of the beginnings of Israel with a few dozen people on another continent in some unknown place. But let's start with the beginnings of Israel since so much is known about that! Then we can get to that "Judean pot" and solve the problem.

I guess I start with what the text says they knew how to do and what they taught their people to do. That ought to be a good starting place in determining what to look for, shouldn't it?

[Fortigurn]

Fortigurn:

SOMETHINGS survive in salt water. Most do not.

Metals have a tendency to do so. But of course, we're actually talking about things surviving in earth in Meso-America. No one is asking you to find Nephite artefacts in the sea.

Utility is highly subjective. I find electricity highly useful. Without the surrounding infrastructure, even electricity would be of no use to the ancients.

What has this to do with anything?

[charity]

I have it on good authority (my husband taught physical science for over 30 years) that all you need for metals to degrade in soil is water and oxygen. I think we can all see how those two things would be found in abundance in meso-America.

But all this has nothing to do with the topic of the thread. Oh well.

[Fortigurn]

I have it on good authority (my husband taught physical science for over 30 years) that all you need for metals to degrade in soil is water and oxygen.

Well yes, but this doesn't mean that everywhere water and oxygen are present in soil that metals will disintegrate to nothing (leaving not even trace elements). Nor does it mean that every place you have soil, you have conditions in which metals will disintegrate to such an extent.

It has been shown here very clearly that it is possible for metals to survive for thousands of years in wet soil, or even in salt water. It has not yet been shown that this is impossible in Meso-America.

[juliann]

I guess I start with what the text says they knew how to do and what they taught their people to do. That ought to be a good starting place in determining what to look for, shouldn't it?

To a point. But the countermos won't play on a level playing ground...they have to demand that the text not be treated as an ancient text. If critical tools are used they can't go to their default position that it is false anyway so anything that might look right is coincidence. Ancient texts aren't history books and they aren't job manuals. They exaggerate and they relate what they want to in the way that resonates with the culture they are in. What is happening here is the usual demand that the text be read in the most woodenly literal way possible...through a modern lens. So we have this position when the accuser is given enough time to commit to a position:

[beastie] There is no difference between the Canaanites and Israelites because the Israelites were Canaanites. If the Israelites, on the other hand, were actually from Egypt, then there would be notable differences.

Groups that migrate to areas quite different than their homeland still manage to retain enough traditions from their homeland that archaeologists can detect their presence. Both the Old World and Mesoamerica made pottery. Are you suggesting that the native materials would be so different that it would be impossible for the Nephites to continue making pots in their own tradition?

We previously had this:

[beastie] I know that this is the new mantra: what would a nephite pot look like? It would actually look like a Judean 600 BC pot. Other archaeologists actually seem to think that you can locate artifacts that signal to us that newcomers moved into an area (and no, they don't have to take over the entire area to be noticeable).

It is strange enough to be appealing to Judean pots, but Dever is also quoted for some bizarre reason (he is well known as being on one side on an ongoing battle):

[Dever] I would argue that such direct, long-term continuities between earlier Canannite pottery and later Iron I Israelite pottery, readily documented now, cannot be the result of coincidence. Nor can they be explained by continuing to regard the early Israelites as foreigners, newcomers to Canaan from Transjordan and ultimately from Egypt. To defend the latter view, one would have to argue that (1) these intruders brought with them no pottery traditions whatsoever, and (2) that upon arriving they immediately adopted the local pottery repertoire and replicated it exactly. That would be astounding, and also unprecedented in my experience.

The first problem here is the timeline (a long standing issue with Beastie). She has jumped from region to region in a span of many hundreds of years and is apparently unaware of it. But if those are the rules let's play. We can start with the Levant and a time span of 1200-900 because that is how far back you have to go to talk aobut "early Caanites". I'm not going to dig out Dever's book, although it is always fun to let Beastie run with a book for awhile...because it is obvious that Dever is making an argument for Israelites not being "foreigners" and not giving a discourse on pottery. The pottery is irrelevant and secondary...the issue is that Dever is running against the current. I can produce a lot more quotes about the beginnings of the Israelites not being known than Beastie can dig up from her book. In fact, if we get to use this broad of a net, it actually looks like a pretty good rendition of what could have happened with the Nephites.

Whatever the virtues or faults of the different schools of thought, the historian is still left with the task of trying to explain a definitely discernible change in Palestine between c. 1200 and c. 1000.

----------

The situation, looked at critically, is that there is no clear date in the Old Testament for the entry into Canann; the date that is given has to be forcibly manipulated to fit 'the facts'.

Amelie Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East: c 3000-330 BC, Vol II (London: Routledge, 1995), 425, 26

Further, after giving an example of the 'Ai, Kuhrt concludes that it gives us

"a taste of the kind of problems raised by every single bit of information concerning the Israelite settlement. There are no explanations, rationalisations or archaeological discoveries that provide clear answers acceptable to all. In these circumstances three fundamentally differnt hypotheses about the settlement have been formulated."

The prevailing view? That Palestine was gradually settled by semi-nomadic groups searching for pasture and land. When they became settled farmers gathered in a tribal league then they began to expand into the cities. In other words, if you actually read a history of the ANE instead of prooftext one book, it is filled with stories much the same....there was not a definable or sudden settlement that could be used as a starting point.

Just as a point of interest (since Beastie's rules allow us to use anything we can find in any place or time) the Chaldeans reminded me of some of the BOM statements. They are noticeable from their host Babylonians because of their wealth (and again, when they came into Chaldea is "totally obscure".) The Chaldeans were able to trade with Aramaeans (another incoming rich group) who gave them livestock. In turn, they sat on a trade route and were able to trade luxury items, gold, ivory, exotic woods, etc. Notice that both groups benefitted.

[Fortigurn]

Thanks for making my point, Zak. The only way we know it was lost is that there is evidence for it in the first place. If Nephi taught his people to work metals, and yet the technology was lost, where's the evidence for the lost technology in the first place?

Backing vocals for NQM.

[juliann]

Backing vocals for NQM.

Sing this. Most of what we have for early Bible history is textual. That is the evidence. If you are not going to allow the text to be used it is very clear that the intent is not to dialogue about Mormonism.

[Fortigurn]

Sing this. Most of what we have for early Bible history is textual. That is the evidence.

I agree.

If you are not going to allow the text to be used it is very clear that the intent is not to dialogue about Mormonism.

I have never said we cannot allow the text to be used as evidence. That is not the point here. The point is whether or not the textual evidence reflects reality. The only way to settle that is to go outside the text. There are plenty of things about the Bible which I take on faith because there is no evidence for them other than textual evidence. But there is a huge amount of extra-textual evidence for the accounts in the Biblical text, so my faith is at least grounded in reality.

This is not the case with regard to the Book of Mormon.

[Zakuska]

There are plenty of things about the iliad which I take on faith because there is no evidence for them other than textual evidence. But there is a huge amount of extra-textual evidence for the accounts in the iliad text, so my faith is at least grounded in reality.

I guess that makes Zues God.

[Mighty Curelom]

There are plenty of things about the Bible which I take on faith because there is no evidence for them other than textual evidence. But there is a huge amount of extra-textual evidence for the accounts in the Biblical text, so my faith is at least grounded in reality.

This is not the case with regard to the Book of Mormon.

By the "huge amount of extra-textual evidence," I assume you're refering to the generally accepted existence of certain Biblical elements--the city of Jerusalem, for example. But that doesn't ground your faith in reality. Harry Potter lives in Britain, which we know exists, but the existence of the UK doesn't justify belief that Harry Potter is a real person with real magical powers. Faith in the Book of Mormon may not be justified for a number of reasons--the lack of so-called extra-textual evidence being one of them--but faith in the bible is just as unjustified. The fact that Jerusalem exists doesn't justify the belief that a man walked on water and rose from the dead.

[Fortigurn]

I guess that makes Zues God.

Where did that come from? I don't take anything in the Illiad on faith. The only things I believe in the Illiad are those which have been proven archaeologically. The existence of the city of Troy is the only part of the Illiad I am assured is true.

[Fortigurn]

By the "huge amount of extra-textual evidence," I assume you're refering to the generally accepted existence of certain Biblical elements--the city of Jerusalem, for example.

Yes, the generally accepted existence of a wide range of Biblical elements, and the confirmation of a large amount of the Bible's historical record.

But that doesn't ground your faith in reality.

Yes it does. It means that I can see that there is a lot of evidence for the historical truth of the Bible's historical record. This gives me a rational basis for trusting the book.

Harry Potter lives in Britain, which we know exists, but the existence of the UK doesn't justify belief that Harry Potter is a real person with real magical powers.

Fortunately I am not making any such argument. I am not arguing, for example, that the existence of Jerusalem justifies belief that Jesus performed miracles. I am arguing that the overwhelming evidence for the accuracy of the Biblical account give me a rational reason for believing that Jesus performed miracles.

[Zakuska]

Where did that come from? I don't take anything in the Illiad on faith. The only things I believe in the Illiad are those which have been proven archaeologically. The existence of the city of Troy is the only part of the Illiad I am assured is true.

Why? Sure there are things that can be proven by Archeology from the Iliad and the BIble. But what makes one superior over the other in the parts that must be taken on faith?