More History You Thought You Knew

[selek1]

Granted, it's a humor site (with some language- fair warning), but still.

Remember the certitude with which the "experts" tell us that the Book of Mormon is simply impossible because there was no regular contact of any kind between the Old and New worlds?

Remember the certitude with which we are regularly informed that there is no possible or plausible archeological evidence for the Book of Mormon?

Statements of faith. Each and every one.

http://www.cracked.com/article_19769_5-baffling-discoveries-that-prove-history-books-are-wrong.html?wa_user1=1&wa_user2=History&wa_user3=article&wa_user4=feature_module

[kolipoki09]

Granted, it's a humor site (with some language- fair warning), but still.

Remember the certitude with which the "experts" tell us that the Book of Mormon is simply impossible because there was no regular contact of any kind between the Old and New worlds?

Remember the certitude with which we are regularly informed that there is no possible or plausible archeological evidence for the Book of Mormon?

Statements of faith. Each and every one.

http://www.cracked.c...=feature_module

I'm a fan of Cracked. The Los Lunas Decalogue Stone is probably the least understood of the five examples listed of pre-Columbian contact. It's still pretty hotly disputed as being real or not. The History Channel had a documentary (

) that featured it, among other things. If I remember correctly, there was a thread or two talking about it when it came out, primarily because it mentioned the BoM and Lehi.

Interesting stuff Selek. Thanks for pointing it out.

[Log]

I wish they'd also thrown in the fact that Egyptian and Hebrew are components of Uto-Aztecan.

[Stargazer]

Neat! Thanks for posting it!

[ERayR]

Thanks for pointing out the site. I find that it is very easy to know all the answers both scientifically and religiously until someone begins to point out those nagging little anomalies.

[Calm]

How credible is the site considered? I was checking out other of its lists and compared one claim to wiki and wiki didn't even mention the possibility that something was artificially made while that was the only suggestion of creation that cracked posted (the Baigong Pipes).

Edited April 21, 2012 by calmoriah

[ERMD]

I remember reading a "Cracked" magazine when I was a kid--kind of along the same line as "Mad".

[cinepro]

If you like that Cracked article, you'll love this magazine:

Ancient American Magazine

After reading a few of those articles, I don't know how anyone could doubt the Book of Mormon.

[selek1]

How credible is the site considered? I was checking out other of its lists and compared one claim to wiki and wiki didn't even mention the possibility that something was artificially made while that was the only suggestion of creation that cracked posted (the Baigong Pipes).

Cracked is- as previously noted- primarily a satire/humor website, and so should be taken with the same grain of salt accorded any internet source.

That having been said, the particular column/author in question tends to be reasonably accurate in posting authentic "Believe it or not" type information.

Of course, the real point of the article (and the thread) is to puncture the vanity of the dogmatists who insist that everything MUST be precisely they way they imagine them to be.

[epiginosko]

I think this provides decent evidence of pre-Columbian contact, so long as the credibility of man who discovered it doesn't implicate tampering with the artifact (which, in fact, Frank Hibben was accused of though never proven). Given that the language was a combination of Hebrew and Greek, does this help advance the case for a Book of Mormon connection? Or does it simply provide evidence for pre-Columbian travel from the Near East?

[Log]

Given that the language was a combination of Hebrew and Greek, does this help advance the case for a Book of Mormon connection? Or does it simply provide evidence for pre-Columbian travel from the Near East?

#1 is a special case of #2.

[selek1]

Given that the language was a combination of Hebrew and Greek, does this help advance the case for a Book of Mormon connection? Or does it simply provide evidence for pre-Columbian travel from the Near East?

Speaking as a (comparatively) uneducated layman, I suspect it would be the latter, rather than the former.

The find is (in my opinion) simply too singular and isolated to suggest a larger conclusion.

In point of fact, any one of the anomalies mentioned in the article proves nothing by itself- but as a whole, they tend to put paid to the arguments advanced "that the Book of Mormon narrative is impossible because we know X".

Those making such pronouncements run into two unavoidabke problems:

1) What they

don't

know.

2) What they "know" that isn't so.

Most ancient American and Meso-American history as we understand it (and in the larger scheme all archaeology and paleontology as we know them) is a consensus opinion- a best guess at deciphering the surviving clues.

As the consensus is a "best guess" we are forced to take the good with the bad and reevaluate our assumptions as new evidence is discovered.

For a certain segment of the population, however, that best guess is taken as incontrovertible doctrine and an article of faith- and any who disagree or question must be purged immediately.

Such people have- despite their vehement protests to the contrary- abandoned science in favor of dogmatism.

[epiginosko]

#1 is a special case of #2.

Can you elaborate?

[Anijen]

IMO the Los Lunas Stone is not genuine, and here is why I subscribe to that point of view;

1. The earliest we have heard of the stone is 1933. One can not say earlier because it is based on Frank Hibbens statement that an anonomous person told him about it and he knew about it earlier.

2. Although it is written in Paleo Hebrew some say the punctuation is modern (ask Bokovoy or Maclelan for their expertise).

3. The cutting into the stone appears to br crisp and does not show aging from rain, ice, and snow for an extended period of time. Contrast with older engraved stones for a comparison.

4. Hibben was involved in a couple of incidents with fabricated data. These other incidents are troubling enough for me to throw doubt on the Los Lunas stone.

5. Kenneth Feder states that you can not get to Albuquerque by boat. If they traveled there over land (obviously) there is no trail of them that was left behind anywhere (there is always an archaeology trail).

6. Lastly it was a great desire for Hibben to prove an Old World/New World connection with traveling Israelite's. This was a goal of some ((Cyrus Gordon is an example, but not all) archaeologist in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

[mfbukowski]

Just on its face, if the site/"discovery" had any credibility do you think that the BYU guys would be all over this and we would have heard about it years ago?

Somehow I think just maybe....

[Xander]

Of course, the real point of the article (and the thread) is to puncture the vanity of the dogmatists who insist that everything MUST be precisely they way they imagine them to be.

Don't be so hard on yourself.

Drive by insults =thread ban

[blackstrap]

I was more interested in the findings of cocaine and tobacco in Egyptian mummies.Substances that,until now,were regarded as exclusively New World.

Edited April 22, 2012 by blackstrap

[kolipoki09]

If you like that Cracked article, you'll love this magazine:

Ancient American Magazine

After reading a few of those articles, I don't know how anyone could doubt the Book of Mormon.

Words cannot describe how awesome you are sometimes, Cinepro.

[rameumptom]

Cyrus Gordon believed Los Lunas is authentic. He was pretty good as an archaeologist, with the belief that one must follow the evidence to the truth.

Edited April 23, 2012 by rameumptom

[Anijen]

Cyrus Gordon believed Los Lunas is authentic. He was pretty good as an archaeologist, with the belief that one must follow the evidence to the truth.

He was well educated however, IMO he let his belief of pre-columbian Israelites bias much of his archaeological theories. He believed the Minoans (pre-Greek) were Jewish. He also believed the Bat Creek Stone to be authentic as well. IOW anything that pointed to Jewish settlement before Columbus he signed off on. Every paper I have read on either the Los Lunas or Bat Creek Stone have cited Cyrus Gorden and expects those in academia just to fall in line. It is an appeal to authority e.g. If Cyrus Gordon says so, it must be true. The problem is most archaeologist do not subscribe to Gordon's views.

We as LDS sometimes too are very quick to accept such a notion without using some critical thinking skills first.

Just thinking out loud

Anijen

[Tepui]

Well it's obvious the Book of Mormon occurred entirely within Mesoamerica. This is because the ancient Mayan idea of beauty was a flattened head - especially among Maya royalty.

This correlates perfectly with the known images of Ammon, son of King Mosiah, a member of Mesoamerican Royalty. Who would have known the late Arnold Friberg was so accurate in his artistic rendering?

Since the Egyptians also flattened (children's) heads, then it's obvious Lehi did the same. After all, as Log noted, " Egyptian and Hebrew are components of Uto-Aztecan."