The Gadianton Robbers And Teotihuacan

[LeSellers]

Interesting that according to that dictionary, the word "concrete" can mean anything from gold to soap- aything that congeals or thickens such as even the concretion of blood!

Oh my, how words change over a short amount of time- amazing!

The construction and structure of "adobe" very much fits the exact definition of "concrete" as used in Joseph Smith's day!

Well, as I recall, Alma doesn't use the word "concrete, but "cement", which also had a few interesting connotations in the early XIX.

Cement 1. Any glutinous or other substance capable of uniting bodies in close cohesion, as mortar, glue, soder, &c. In building, cement denotes a stronger kind of mortar than that which is ordinarily used. 2. Bond of union; that which unites firmly, as persons in friendship, or men in society. 3. Powders or pastes, surrounding bodies in pots and crucibles, for chimical purposes.

Lehi

[Robert F. Smith]

From what I understand, people forgot how to make Roman cement during the Middle Ages. What was left in Smith's day were things like mortar and stucco. Adobe structures look like cement, and I don't think anybody in Smith's day had done chemical analyses to determine whether or not adobe contained calcium carbonate. They just had reports of these vast "cement-like" buildings in the Southwest. The hardness and durability of these structures might have seemed rather advanced, given 1829 Western technology, when viable construction cements had only been around for a couple of decades.

Having done archeology on old adobe structures in California (the Royal Presidio in Santa Barbara, for example), I can say with certainty that sun-dried brick (adobe) walls and bldgs are not hard and disappear like wet mud unless carefully kept up -- by white washing the outer surface regularly. Adobe, which is an ancient Egyptian word, does fine in very dry areas, such as Egypt or the American Southwest.

There is no reason to believe that the people who succeeded the Romans did not know cement construction using naturally available lime, nor that Joseph Smith and his contemporaries did not know all about such construction materials (you might want to look in the Encyclopaedia Britannica published before Joseph was born -- the first six eds from 1768 - 1824). Concrete has an entirely different formula and should not confuse us here.

[Robert F. Smith]

It's not in the 1828 Noah Webster's Dictionary of the English Language.

Lehi

That is because the word was introduced later via Spanish in the American Southwest. Adobe quickly melts in wet climates.