Grains In Mosiah 9:9

[Robert F. Smith]

I've conceeded over and over and over that wheat and barley grow there. Please let me know how many times you'd like me to repeat it, and I gladly will.

If that is the case, then why do you continue to harp on supposed "geography" as primary? As I quote below from your post # 173, replying to Kemara:

You seem to concede that there is a statistical correlation between geographical locations and whether people before the 20th Century were successful in cultivating barley and wheat. There are many known reasons why growing wheat and barley in the tropics is challenging. Any of those reasons or all of them could be the proximate cause of the historical failure. I’m claiming that regardless of what the underlying cause is, it is correlated with geographical location. Thus, geographical location can serve as a proxy for the unspecified, underlying cause.

I don’t know the details about how difficult it is to grow these crops grow in New Zealand compared to how difficult it is to grow wheat and barley grow in Mesoamerica. And I don’t know how extensive the search for physical evidence of these crops have been in New Zealand, compared to the search for physical evidence of wheat and barley is in Mesoamerica. You provide a decent example for how a major crop can leave only a small archeological trace, but I’m not sure how robustly this example applies to Mesoamerica.

If you grow the wheat and barley in the Guatemalan altiplano it is not difficult or challenging at all.

"Little barley" seems like a strange crop that they'd mess around with in Mesoamerica, where so many superior food sources are readily available. Its use was displaced in the Eastern Agricultural Complex by maize, so it's hard to see why its use would be exported to Mesoamerica.

What's your theory regarding the Arizona/Mesoamerican connection? Little Barley is from the eastern section of the U.S. I know you aren't claiming that Zeniff stopped by the eastern U.S. on his way to Guatemla, picked up some little barley seed, grew it successfully in the highlands of Guatemala for 200 years, and then exported it to Arizona when connections with the Hohokam began.

Archeologists all agree that the trade and contact between the Hohokam of Arizona (including the Sonoran Desert) and Mesoamerica was strong and constituted culture transfer. It is hard to imagine, but it is clear that around a million Hohokam once lived in a well-irrigated plain in and around modern Phoenix, Arizona. When 19th century Mormons arrived in the area, the ancient Hohokam irrigation canals were still visible and were refurbished and reused by the Mormons -- fed from the local Gila and Salt Rivers. It is believed that the modern Papago Indians of Arizona are the descendants of this once powerful culture.

There was never any such intensive trade with Eastern North America, and that area is not part of Book of Mormon history. Indeed, the Hohokam are late and also not part of Book of Mormon history. For all I know, Lehi's clan brought some seeds with them and grew some Old World crops for a time. It is certainly worth discussing, as you and Kemara suggest, whether any of those Old World crops continued to be used indefinitely, and if not, why not?

Edited August 29, 2011 by Robert F. Smith