Plates Of Brass Vs. Scrolls

[CASteinman]

I actually didn't think I was addressing you but the other guy. But, OK.

You were addressing someone else.. but the instant I read your words... that joke came into mind so I responded.

In a sense.. I almost read "everyone in the Book of Mormon was using steel swords and that they made them all the time -- for no good reason"

Again.. Sorry!

[MormonMason]

You were addressing someone else.. but the instant I read your words... that joke came into mind so I responded.

In a sense.. I almost read "everyone in the Book of Mormon was using steel swords and that they made them all the time -- for no good reason"

Again.. Sorry!

De nada.

[bcuzbcuz]

False.

All three of those quotes comes from John E. Clark, "Craft Specialization and Olmec Civilization," in Craft Specialization and Social Evolution: In Memory of V. Gordon Childe, ed. Verne Gordon Childe and Barnard Wails (U Penn, 1996), pg. 191-192.

There are other examples, I believe, beyond San Lorenzo, but that is what I have handy. Now I am not saying that this removes any and all problems of metal working in the Book of Mormon. But people discussing this ought to have accurate information. Critics have for a very long time been insisting that there is not evidence of metal working before 900 AD, or that there are no iron objects, etc. Such statements are simply false. There is a variety of forms of evidence of metal objects, knowledge of metal-working, etc., including iron objects, from pre-900 AD times in Mesoamerica.

I didn't find any iron but your response is what is known as "quote mining". All three quotes are references to work that a certain "Guillén" did, which include drawings but include no actual references to Guillén's work nor from which book or research or article such quotes have been mined from. You have one author quoting another unknown author from an unknown work. That's called hearsay.

[MormonMason]

If I recall correctly, I believe that the reference is to Ann Cyphers Guillén, "San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan," in J. E. Clark (ed.), Los olmecas en Mesoamérica (Mexico City: Citibank, 1994), 43–67. She is not an unknown author and her work is not unknown. She was directly involved with excavations in the region.

The original work cited, of course, is written in Spanish. She has other writings and papers in the same year so if I am mistaken I am sure I could try to look those other works up.

[Robert F. Smith]

You know I don't believe in the veracity of the plates for other reasons, but permanence and beautification are just two reasons that come immediately to mind for why there might have been a special project to commit the Scriptures to a metal engraving. I doubt that it means that everyone who wanted to read the Scriptures had to get his servants to help him turn the "page". Is there any reason I don't understand why you need to think that engraving was the norm? Unless there is, If I believed like you, I would suppose that scrolls or something similar were common and that engraving was providential and unusual.

Sounds reasonable to me as well. At least hypothetically.

[Robert F. Smith]

I didn't find any iron but your response is what is known as "quote mining". All three quotes are references to work that a certain "Guillén" did, which include drawings but include no actual references to Guillén's work nor from which book or research or article such quotes have been mined from. You have one author quoting another unknown author from an unknown work. That's called hearsay.

The excavators of the major Olmec sites found tons of iron which had been worked, and probably taken from outcroppings in Oaxaca. Michael Coe described an Olmec magnetite pointer which he believed was used as a compass. Magnetite mirrors were also used by the Olmecs, probably in the same way. This is all long before the rise of the Maya and other high cultures in Mesoamerica.

I can cite sources if you actually want to go look at them. There is nothing new about any of this. It has all been known for years.

[bcuzbcuz]

The excavators of the major Olmec sites found tons of iron which had been worked, and probably taken from outcroppings in Oaxaca. Michael Coe described an Olmec magnetite pointer which he believed was used as a compass. Magnetite mirrors were also used by the Olmecs, probably in the same way. This is all long before the rise of the Maya and other high cultures in Mesoamerica.

I can cite sources if you actually want to go look at them. There is nothing new about any of this. It has all been known for years.

That which you find "nothing new" and "known for years" is a little hard to find. A helping hand would be appreciated. I can find works published by or co-published by Ann Cyphers Guillen, by Ann Cyphers Guillen Hirth and by Ann Cyphers, who all seem to be the same person, but can find nothing in her works that confirms your "tons of iron". No one else has written about these tons and everyone references back to her work.

I'm not looking for tons, just something current, verified and accurately dated to show that iron was used by the Olmec (or any other pre-Columbia group). A picture would be nice, and by that, I mean an actual picture, not a drawing, preferrably with something to reference size. Is the iron object penny sized or axe sized etc?

[Kevin Christensen]

Try Googling Olmec Iron and see what happens.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Bethel Park, PA

[nealr]

I didn't find any iron but your response is what is known as "quote mining". All three quotes are references to work that a certain "Guillén" did, which include drawings but include no actual references to Guillén's work nor from which book or research or article such quotes have been mined from. You have one author quoting another unknown author from an unknown work. That's called hearsay.

Goodness gracious, you are really something else. You didn't find any iron? Well tell me, how many archaeological digs in Mesoamerica have you been on? No actual reference? There is a perfectly good bibliography at the end of that paper, and it does in fact include actual reference to Guillen's work. (If you are using Google books, unfortunately the bulk of the bibliography is not included in the preview.) Guillen's unknown? Unknown to who? You? Come on! Get a grip. What I offered you was an academic paper, written by an archaeologists who has decades of experience in Mesoamerica, and who is widely published in the field. The paper was published in a non-LDS, scholarly venue. And you think he is just reporting hearsay? Oh yeah, because that is the kind of thing they do in academia all the time, let me tell ya. Sheesh.

That which you find "nothing new" and "known for years" is a little hard to find. A helping hand would be appreciated. I can find works published by or co-published by Ann Cyphers Guillen, by Ann Cyphers Guillen Hirth and by Ann Cyphers, who all seem to be the same person, but can find nothing in her works that confirms your "tons of iron". No one else has written about these tons and everyone references back to her work.

I'm not looking for tons, just something current, verified and accurately dated to show that iron was used by the Olmec (or any other pre-Columbia group). A picture would be nice, and by that, I mean an actual picture, not a drawing, preferrably with something to reference size. Is the iron object penny sized or axe sized etc?

Well, your research skills are not looking like your strong suit right now. First, you couldn't even figure out who Guillen is, when another poster had no trouble identifying the author and the very paper. And now you complain because you can't find the paper. Try using a library catalog instead of Google.

http://www.worldcat.org/title/olmecas-en-mesoamerica/oclc/33333872

Not everything is immediately and conveniently available online, and things of an academic nature are particularly scarce on the internet (at least, the freely accessible internet). Even your Googling skills, however, are not looking to good right now. By taking Kevin's advice and googling "olmec iron" I found a volume on google books that has two scholarly papers about Olmec iron mirrors, both of which include photographs.

http://books.google.com/books?id=ZMaNSreOS5wC&pg=PA117&lpg=PA117&dq=olmec+iron&source=bl&ots=grH9Qn61XB&sig=Whe6VGK0U3LWJc8RZckkg2PB42g&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-ARLUc68K-PliALJ64CADQ&ved=0CIEBEOgBMAw#v=onepage&q=olmec%20iron&f=false

I also found this picture:

And this paper, which has no pictures, but talks about iron articles from other Olmec sites (as do the two papers I already mentioned):

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/23074/0000648.pdf;jsessionid=19D3727CDC0808EF1ABA801CCE2D4463?sequence=1

As for the claim that "No one else has written about these tons and everyone references back to her work," well that is pretty standard fare in Mesoamerican studies. The site is excavated, and one of the lead archaeologists or a group of them writes reports on the findings, and very other expert relies on those reports in there analysis and commentary. And those reports are not usually going to be widely available to public.

But shouldn't a bunch of scholars referring back to her work and accepting her findings be a pretty good indication that these artifacts exists? No wonder you can't believe in the Book of Mormon, you can't even trust the experts in the field.

All of that said, I would like to remind you and everyone else, that I am not claiming that this resolves all the issues with metal in the Book of Mormon. What this may or may not mean for the Book of Mormon is an entirely different matter, but one that can only be discussed between people who are informed on the actual evidence. But you claimed that there are no iron objects (of any kind) of pre-Columbian origin. That fact is false, and you can call what I do "quoting mining" all you want, that won't change the facts. Iron objects have, in fact, been found in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. In fact, they have been found dating back to Book of Mormon times. Now you can come to terms with that fact or you can insist on an ever higher, impossible to meet, standard of evidence. I really don't care.

Note: Edited to add response to bcuzbcuz's second comment.

Edited March 21, 2013 by nealr

[Robert F. Smith]

That which you find "nothing new" and "known for years" is a little hard to find. A helping hand would be appreciated. I can find works published by or co-published by Ann Cyphers Guillen, by Ann Cyphers Guillen Hirth and by Ann Cyphers, who all seem to be the same person, but can find nothing in her works that confirms your "tons of iron". No one else has written about these tons and everyone references back to her work.

I'm not looking for tons, just something current, verified and accurately dated to show that iron was used by the Olmec (or any other pre-Columbia group). A picture would be nice, and by that, I mean an actual picture, not a drawing, preferrably with something to reference size. Is the iron object penny sized or axe sized etc?

Ann Cyphers is an expert archeologist and Mesoamericanist. I heard her lecture at UCLA in 1996, and asked her some questions afterward about various matters. She showed a number of slides of her Olmec excavation, including many of the iron materials. I will insert here a small section of a paper I wrote on the Olmec at around that time:

Based on his own excavations, Michael Coe has suggested that the Olmec may have had "the world's first known compass" (Coe, Snow, and Benson 1986:100)! Did the Olmec use the magnetic compass for site layout and building orientation? Robert Fuson long ago suggested as much for the orientation of Maya sites and buildings, based on Coe's discovery of that magnetite "pointer" at the Early Formative Olmec site of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán (Fuson 1969:508-510, Coe in Sharer & Grove 1989:79; Lowe 1989:44 [fig 4.6 item n],53-54; Coe & Diehl 1980:244-245 figs 251, 255). Coe told Fuson that this pointer was

a flattened, oblong piece that is perfectly squared on all faces, and with a longitudinal groove extending along one surface. The object was made with such great care that it appears to be machined (Fuson 1969:508).

Coe succesfully tested the pointer on a cork mat in a plastic bowl of water, and also suggested that the Olmec may have suspended magnetite mirrors on string for the same purpose. Fuson notes that the pointer could as easily have been floated on liquid mercury – available and extensively used in ancient Mesoamerica (Fuson 1969:508-510; cf. Baity 1973:443; Carlson 1981:117-147).

Surface outcroppings of magnetite (lodestone) and other workable iron ores (ilmenite and hematite) were readily available in Oaxaca (Flannery 1976:40,58-60,317-325), where San Jose Mogoté seems to have been the primary center for the processing of such ores into elite exchange objects such as small mirrors and drilled beads (Flannery 1976:40,59-60,109,288,317-325,357,363, Flannery & Schoenwetter 1970:148-149, Blanton, et al. 1993:60-61,166, Flannery & Marcus 1983:55). Magnetite is also available in Morelos, Honduras, and Guatemala (Grove 1987:376-380; Fuson 1969:510).

Flannery reports that multi-drilled "beads" of ilmenite show up in Chiapas and Vera Cruz (Flannery 1969:323). Perhaps he is referring to the type of cubes described elsewhere by Lee (Lee 1989:214) and Lowe (Lowe 1989:44-45 fig 4.6 items k l m). They were made with central and lateral perforations. What is truly astonishing, however, is the quantity of such items at San Lorenzo! Ann Cyphers has reported several tons of them there. She describes them as the top part of bow or pump drills, and says that they were discarded whenever the hole went through the top making the "tools" no longer useful. She has found several large caches of these ilmenite objects, and states that they average 54,000 items per metric ton (Cyphers 1996), i.e., each item would then average 2/3 of an ounce, although there may be something wrong with the figure she has given here (the same given in her lecture at the National Gallery of Art on Sept 20, 1996).

Lee lists a number of such iron cubes drilled in Chiapas, and similar to those found in San Lorenzo and Tres Zapotes. In addition to fire drill components, Lee and Lowe add several other possible functions: tiny hammers, fishnet weights, or atlatl weights (Lee 1989:214; Lowe 1989:53).

Coe has suggested the geomantic value of magnetite mirrors (which could be worn as pectorals), but he goes much further in mentioning that such mirrors could be concave with (Coe 1994:74) reflecting surfaces polished to optical specifications. What were they used for? Experiments have shown that they can not only start fires, but also throw images on flat surfaces like a camera lucida. They were pierced for suspension, and Coe tried to imagine the hocus-pocus which some mighty Olmec priest was able to perform with one of these!!

Edited March 22, 2013 by Robert F. Smith

[MormonMason]

Cyphers 1994 (reference above), p. 61, speaks of "more than eight tons of perforated iron ore cubes" that were unearthed at San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan. If you cannot reference or read her paper directly, you can read about that reference here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=_bjLIFFJjeoC&lpg=PA9&ots=1VWsqDGT0m&dq=%22Ann%20Cyphers%22%201999&pg=PA18#v=onepage&q=tons%20cubes%20iron&f=false

[bcuzbcuz]

You didn't find any iron? Well tell me, how many archaeological digs in Mesoamerica have you been on? No actual reference? There is a perfectly good bibliography at the end of that paper, and it does in fact include actual reference to Guillen's work. (If you are using Google books, unfortunately the bulk of the bibliography is not included in the preview.) Guillen's unknown? Unknown to who? You? Come on! Get a grip. What I offered you was an academic paper, written by an archaeologists who has decades of experience in Mesoamerica, and who is widely published in the field. The paper was published in a non-LDS, scholarly venue. And you think he is just reporting hearsay? Oh yeah, because that is the kind of thing they do in academia all the time, let me tell ya. Sheesh.

Never claimed to be on any archaeological digs in MesoAmerica. I've only been on Roman and Egyptian digs in and around the Mediterranean. And yes, I only did a cursory check on Google because the original article gave no references. The pages stated from article, mention the quotes from Guillen but contained no footnotes of her work, nor listing in the bibliography of her work. Guillen has no Wiki reference and no other articles listed in her name.

Have you been on any digs in Mesamerica?

Not everything is immediately and conveniently available online, and things of an academic nature are particularly scarce on the internet (at least, the freely accessible internet). Even your Googling skills, however, are not looking to good right now. By taking Kevin's advice and googling "olmec iron" I found a volume on google books that has two scholarly papers about Olmec iron mirrors, both of which include photographs.

The Olmec iron is from iron pyrite without any references to whether the material was reworked or smelted. All the iron I have seen from Roman times would be classified as smelted and was used from everything from swords, shoe buckles and boot nails. Pyrite is extremely brittle and would crack if hammered. Granted I did not make any such classification clear in my post. But pyrite is a long way from weapons grade iron. Having pyrite in no way entails that further uses existed.

[Questing Beast]

"Goalposts", right. I only address the assertion that iron working was widespread. I don't care about artifacts like mirrors and cubes, whatever those are. Weapons, "heaps of earth" removed to get at the ore, etc., that is what is lacking entirely for the BoM period.

Aside, on weapons technology: the macuahuitl is no "sword", it is an edged club. Straining to make the BoM text fit Aztec or Mayan artifacts is an old tactic of FARMS, et al. BoM scholarship. I've read all about that long ago. Nephite technology was using iron and steel for at least two hundred years (Jarom 1:8 )....

Edited March 22, 2013 by Questing Beast

[nealr]

Never claimed to be on any archaeological digs in MesoAmerica. I've only been on Roman and Egyptian digs in and around the Mediterranean. And yes, I only did a cursory check on Google because the original article gave no references. The pages stated from article, mention the quotes from Guillen but contained no footnotes of her work, nor listing in the bibliography of her work. Guillen has no Wiki reference and no other articles listed in her name.

Have you been on any digs in Mesamerica?

But the original article does give references in a MLA or APA type format, e.g. (Guillien, 1994), and it does have a bibliography, as I already pointed out. Most of the bibliography is not in the Google preview.

And no, I have not been on any digs in Mesoamerica. And I, like you, have not found any iron there. Not to shocking, now is it? But I have read about people who have dug in Mesoamerica and did find worked iron objects. Therefore, the fact that you or I have not found such objects is irrelevant, because professionals who have done the work have.

The Olmec iron is from iron pyrite without any references to whether the material was reworked or smelted. All the iron I have seen from Roman times would be classified as smelted and was used from everything from swords, shoe buckles and boot nails. Pyrite is extremely brittle and would crack if hammered. Granted I did not make any such classification clear in my post. But pyrite is a long way from weapons grade iron. Having pyrite in no way entails that further uses existed.

I really grow tired of repeating myself. I never claimed it was "weapons grade" or that it entails further use. As I already said, I don't claim this solves all metallurgic problems for the Book of Mormon. Any possible implications this may or may not have for the Book of Mormon is an entirely separate issue, and one I am not really qualified to comment on. My point has been, from the beginning, that your statement - which one often bandied about by critics - was that there was no iron objects in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. That statement is false. To have a serious conversation about metals in the Book of Mormon, one must be informed about what we do and don't know about metals and metal working in ancient Mesoamerica.

[Robert F. Smith]

"Goalposts", right. I only address the assertion that iron working was widespread. I don't care about artifacts like mirrors and cubes, whatever those are. Weapons, "heaps of earth" removed to get at the ore, etc., that is what is lacking entirely for the BoM period.

Aside, on weapons technology: the macuahuitl is no "sword", it is an edged club. Straining to make the BoM text fit Aztec or Mayan artifacts is an old tactic of FARMS, et al. BoM scholarship. I've read all about that long ago. Nephite technology was using iron and steel for at least two hundred years (Jarom 1:8 )....

The macuahuitl discussion was gone over thoroughly on this board in the past, in which it was shown that the Conquistadores themselves (the Spanish conquerors of Mesoamerica) called the macuahuitl a "sword." They said this because it was most certainly not a club, but it was lined with extremely sharp obsidian flakes. How sharp? Sharper than surgical steel. A warrior could lop off the head of a horse with a macuahuitl. Moving the goal posts or conveniently forgetting the facts is a common tactic of polemicists and non-scholars and should not be tolerated.

Perhaps you didn't read that old thread, Beast. But if you had you would know that steel technology had been around for centuries before Lehi & Nephi left the ancient Near East. There is no reason that they could not have brought the technology with them, and the text even discusses Nephi's familiarity with the technology as the clan traveled in Arabia (including the crucial use of bellows -- undoubtedly to form a bloom of iron in a furnace). You would have realized that iron technology was not common in later Book of Mormon usage, and you'd have realized that lost technologies are quite common (as was steel technology among the Vikings, for example). Instead of inventing ;your facts, you could have allowed the evidence to speak for itself.

Edited March 22, 2013 by Robert F. Smith

[volgadon]

Aside, on weapons technology: the macuahuitl is no "sword", it is an edged club. Straining to make the BoM text fit Aztec or Mayan artifacts is an old tactic of FARMS, et al. BoM scholarship. I've read all about that long ago. Nephite technology was using iron and steel for at least two hundred years (Jarom 1:8 )....

To quote Mark Knopfler, baloney again. Macuahuitls are indeed swords, and it is more than LDS who make that claim.

[nealr]

"Goalposts", right. I only address the assertion that iron working was widespread. I don't care about artifacts like mirrors and cubes, whatever those are. Weapons, "heaps of earth" removed to get at the ore, etc., that is what is lacking entirely for the BoM period.

Aside, on weapons technology: the macuahuitl is no "sword", it is an edged club. Straining to make the BoM text fit Aztec or Mayan artifacts is an old tactic of FARMS, et al. BoM scholarship. I've read all about that long ago. Nephite technology was using iron and steel for at least two hundred years (Jarom 1:8 )....

Oh, boy. This suggests some confusion, that I'll admit most apologists have not been useful in clearing up. Let me try and explain.

Of course the macuahuitl is not a sword. For that matter, it is not an edged club either. It is a macuahuitl. It, along with many other Mesoamerican weapons, is a weapon of its own kind. The question is not what it "is", the question is what would it be called by someone who does not have a term for it in their vocabulary. Or how one might describe it to someone not familiar with it. This is where issues of translation and loan-shifting come in. It is a well known phenomenon, and there is no question that if the Book of Mormon is authentic, then it will manifest those same issues (inspired or not). To insist, a priori, that the Book of Mormon does not or can not manifest the characteristics of real translations of real ancient documents, is to assume out of the gate that it is not a real translation of a real ancient document. Such a beginning assumption can only end in question begging.

So, what of the macahuitl? Well, the fact is that people who didn't know what else to call it (i.e., the Spanish conquistadors) did call it a sword. They witnessed it being used the way they would use a sword. Others, such as yourself, prefer to call it a club, but that does not invalid the choice of other observers to call it a sword. If Nephi, in choosing a loan-shift, or Joseph Smith, when translating, chose to call it a sword (for lack of a better word), rather than a club, it only reflects a matter of preference of their part; and your comment only manifests a different preference, which holds no bearing on theirs.

Hence, as far as I am concerned, arguing about whether it is a sword or a club is a pointless debate. It is neither, but is often called or described as both by different people, depending on personal preference.

[Robert F. Smith]

Of course the macuahuitl is not a sword. For that matter, it is not an edged club either. It is a macuahuitl.

...........................

Hence, as far as I am concerned, arguing about whether it is a sword or a club is a pointless debate. It is neither, but is often called or described as both by different people, depending on personal preference.

A club, as any crime scene specialist will tell you, produces blunt force trauma. The macuahuitl does no such thing. Therefore, in modern terms, it cannot be described as a club. It cuts, and cuts extremely well. That is its purpose and design. The conquistadores at least understood that.

[Questing Beast]

The macuahuitl discussion was gone over thoroughly on this board in the past, in which it was shown that the Conquistadores themselves (the Spanish conquerors of Mesoamerica) called the macuahuitl a "sword." They said this because it was most certainly not a club, but it was lined with extremely sharp obsidian flakes. How sharp? Sharper than surgical steel. A warrior could lop off the head of a horse with a macuahuitl. Moving the goal posts or conveniently forgetting the facts is a common tactic of polemicists and non-scholars and should not be tolerated.

Perhaps you didn't read that old thread, Beast. But if you had you would know that steel technology had been around for centuries before Lehi & Nephi left the ancient Near East. There is no reason that they could not have brought the technology with them, and the text even discusses Nephi's familiarity with the technology as the clan traveled in Arabia (including the crucial use of bellows -- undoubtedly to form a bloom of iron in a furnace). You would have realized that iron technology was not common in later Book of Mormon usage, and you'd have realized that lost technologies are quite common (as was steel technology among the Vikings, for example). Instead of inventing ;your facts, you could have allowed the evidence to speak for itself.

What Spaniards said about Mesoamerican weapons has nothing to do with Joseph Smith's knowledge. The text clearly describes "swords" exactly the same way throughout Jaredite and Nephite "history". "Lost technology" is a maguffin of apologists. Because no evidence exists for metal swords, "swords" nevertheless require explaining, so voila! we have macuahuitls which work like a cutting sword. You know what? a sharpened steel mace cuts like the end of a sword too, but nobody would conflate it into a "sword" because of the damage type it can inflict. The macuhuitl is more like an obsidian ax; there is no point of balance like a sword, no guard for the hand, no use AS a sword, but it sure behaves like an ax. But this is just arguing semantics.

What is utterly lacking is any evidence for "heaps of earth" from the period, which is required in order to believe in Jaredite, and at the very least, the first two centuries of Nephite history, as metal-working technologies as asserted in the text....

[Robert F. Smith]

Never claimed to be on any archaeological digs in MesoAmerica. I've only been on Roman and Egyptian digs in and around the Mediterranean. And yes, I only did a cursory check on Google because the original article gave no references. The pages stated from article, mention the quotes from Guillen but contained no footnotes of her work, nor listing in the bibliography of her work. Guillen has no Wiki reference and no other articles listed in her name.

A simple Google search shows that Ann Cyphers and Ken Hirth (at Penn State) were recently awarded a UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) grant for research at San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan (a major Olmec site), http://blogs.la.psu....an-lorenzo.html .

You can also see Prof. Cyphers lecturing on the material culture of Chalcatzingo in Spanish on YouTube at

.

There are hundreds more references to her on Google.

The Olmec iron is from iron pyrite without any references to whether the material was reworked or smelted. All the iron I have seen from Roman times would be classified as smelted and was used from everything from swords, shoe buckles and boot nails. Pyrite is extremely brittle and would crack if hammered. Granted I did not make any such classification clear in my post. But pyrite is a long way from weapons grade iron. Having pyrite in no way entails that further uses existed.

The Olmec did not work with iron pyrite (a sulfide of iron known as "fools gold"), but rather with iron oxides such as ilmenite, magnetite, and hematite available in surface outcroppings in Chiapas and Oaxaca. Did you even bother to read the short excerpt I provided on the Olmec use of iron? If you need a full citation on any items, please let me know.

Edited March 22, 2013 by Robert F. Smith

[MormonMason]

"Goalposts", right. I only address the assertion that iron working was widespread. I don't care about artifacts like mirrors and cubes, whatever those are. Weapons, "heaps of earth" removed to get at the ore, etc., that is what is lacking entirely for the BoM period.

Aside, on weapons technology: the macuahuitl is no "sword", it is an edged club. Straining to make the BoM text fit Aztec or Mayan artifacts is an old tactic of FARMS, et al. BoM scholarship. I've read all about that long ago. Nephite technology was using iron and steel for at least two hundred years (Jarom 1:8 )....

The Spaniards called the Macuahuitl a sword in their writings. Mining in Mesoamerica to obtain iron and other ores existed in Olmec times. That is well within the Book of Mormon timeframe. How do you think the Olmecs got all those tons of iron ore? simply finding it on the surface? They dug it up. References to Olmec mining and mines exist in the relevant literature.

As to using iron and steel among the Book of Mormon peoples, the Book of Mormon stops all mention of the substances after Jarom 1:8. The subject does not come up again until the Book of Ether, which is an abridgement of a much earlier writing. But, again, you are assuming that the Nephites made iron-based weapons in large quantities, all the time. There is nothing in the Book of Mormon to suggest such.

When terms like "many" are used, consider the timeframe of the remarks. There could only have been a few hundred Nephites, at best, during the time of Jarom. Not all of them would have been armed with such weapons. Such weapons also would not have lasted long in Mesoamerica after the technology was abandoned. Furthermore, in ancient times there was no such full metal industry. It was a secret passed down from father to son in limited numbers of families. If in a war an entire family skilled in iron working gets wiped out the entire technology can be lost among a people until someone else "figures it out" at a later time. Even in the Bible there was a time when Israelites had no one who could work iron and they had to obtain such weapons from other cultures at times when they did not have their own metallurgists who could work iron.

And, even in the Middle East, for the longest time no one in modern times really believed that steel and other iron alloys were used at an early time in the Middle East because no one had ever found the slag piles for such. That was, in fact, a major point of attack on the Book of Mormon for its claiming weapons of steel and iron existed in the Middle East during the time of the Book of Mormon, when there was zero archaeological evidence for such. There were words in the Hebrew and Egyptian vocabularies for such but that was all that there was in the way of evidence only a few decades ago. There was no archaeological evidence for such iron-based weapons until much later. Now there is such evidence but it took a long time to find it.

Evidence of metals in ancient vocabularies is evidence of metallurgy even if evidences of the metals themselves are not found, contra protestations to the contrary. The examples from the Middle East have confirmed that such indeed can be the case anywhere. And, how would terms for metals make their ways into ancient vocabularies if the metals themselves did not exist? People just do not seem to think things through when it comes to attacking the Book of Mormon.

ETA: The Olmec people did not just mine metal ores by the way. They also mined for minerals such as obsidian and jade and cinnabar to make mercury. Following is a reference to Olmec pit mining with pits as deep as ten meters, remnants of "spoil heaps" rising more than 10 meters in height, and operations extending over hundreds of hectares.

http://books.google.com/books?id=vY8Cb3Vc7LMC&lpg=PA471&dq=Olmec%20mining%20heaps&pg=PA471#v=onepage&q=Olmec%20mining%20heaps&f=false

Edited March 22, 2013 by MormonMason

[Robert F. Smith]

What Spaniards said about Mesoamerican weapons has nothing to do with Joseph Smith's knowledge. The text clearly describes "swords" exactly the same way throughout Jaredite and Nephite "history". "Lost technology" is a maguffin of apologists. Because no evidence exists for metal swords, "swords" nevertheless require explaining, so voila! we have macuahuitls which work like a cutting sword. You know what? a sharpened steel mace cuts like the end of a sword too, but nobody would conflate it into a "sword" because of the damage type it can inflict. The macuhuitl is more like an obsidian ax; there is no point of balance like a sword, no guard for the hand, no use AS a sword, but it sure behaves like an ax. But this is just arguing semantics.

So anything in history described as a "sword" must always be metal, even it it is not described as metal, thus making the Conquistadores and Joseph Smith liars? According to professional anthropologists, such facile conclusions are just plain dumb because they don't comport with the real world..

The same applies to a simplistic wave of the hand when the concept of lost technologies is introduced, as though facts of that kind just get in the way of driving a polemic point home.

This is more than just semantics. It has to do with impatience with the facts which don't fit polemic preconceptions. Anthropologists deal with the real world, not with some imaginary construct which serves polemic intentions, and that real world is filled with facts which do not fit some key a priori notions. That can be frustrating, but the constant practice of cooperative scholarship can help us leave that quagmire behind.

What is utterly lacking is any evidence for "heaps of earth" from the period, which is required in order to believe in Jaredite, and at the very least, the first two centuries of Nephite history, as metal-working technologies as asserted in the text....

Moving goalposts again. First there is no iron. Then, when that is shown to be utterly false, we are asked to provide automatic "heaps of earth" in a region very poorly excavated. Get serious, Beast!

[Questing Beast]

I never said "no iron". I've known about the Olmec mirrors and "cubes" for quite a while. Yes, the "heaps of earth" are lacking, for now. But should they be produced and shown to be iron slag heaps, we can move on to the long, long list of other BoM assertions without foundation. I'm just picking on this one here.

"Polemics". A favorite word, I see. How about instead, a previous religious world view found to be unsupportable with evidence? I have read the BoM well over two dozen times, cover to cover, and innumerable times in part. This was not, I assure you, trying to disprove it. Since I have stopped trying to make it fit the real world of evidence "on the ground", I haven't read it again.

The core "rub" against literal religious history is my complaint with secular history, all history: none of it is reliable. Coupled to my religious (cosmic scale) world view, I just don't see "God" doing "his work" one way, not the Mormon, Jewish, Muslim, Catholic or "pagan" way: now, ALL of them, and none of them at all, yes, that I can accept. But not a singular dogmatic approach/gate into "the kingdom". If that is polemical, all I can reply with is that the word "polemics" is subjective to the weakness of observer bias and circular logic, which of course is the most fundamental kind of false logic. Are any immune? I doubt it....

Edited March 22, 2013 by Questing Beast

[CASteinman]

I never said "no iron". I've known about the Olmec mirrors and "cubes" for quite a while. Yes, the "heaps of earth" are lacking, for now. But should they be produced and shown to be iron slag heaps, we can move on to the long, long list of other BoM assertions without foundation. I'm just picking on this one here.

This expresses things very well. It is the reason I do not believe in developing apologetics to answer people with your views. Your list of objections is eternally long and you will never be satisfied that way. Apologists are spitting in the wind to face this sort of thing -- it has no purpose.

And sometimes I think apologists lose track of that and get off course.

Edited March 23, 2013 by CASteinman

[MormonMason]

Yes, the "heaps of earth" are lacking, for now.

No, they aren't. Heaps of earth go along with mining. The Olmecs mined in the years BCE and afterward. Heaps of earth have been found that are more than 10 meters high (keeping mind that these were found thousands of years after being cast upward onto the ground and many years of washing down, erosion, etc.).

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that heaps of earth are supposed to be slag heaps. I have seen late Mesoamerican (post Book of Mormon) copper slags. I have yet to see any of them as actual "heaps." Why expect heaps of slags in older times? Can you give us a good reason to expect massive hills of slags? Even the Book of Mormon does not mention anything that would require such a thing to be the case.

Here is what the Book of Mormon says about the "mighty heaps of earth" and how they resulted:

And they did work in all manner of ore, and they did make gold, and silver, and iron, and brass, and all manner of metals; and they did dig it out of the earth; wherefore, they did cast up mighty heaps of earth to get ore, of gold, and of silver, and of iron, and of copper. And they did work all manner of fine work.

(Ether 10:23; bold emphasis mine).

It was to dig up ore that caused the "mighty heaps of earth" to be raised, not pouring out of slags into heaps. We need to break down the false assumptions before attempting to weigh the contents of the text against the archaeological data. It is known that the Olmec were mining and casting up heaps of earth more than 10 meters in height during Book of Mormon times covering the Book of Ether in the Book of Mormon. And, the Olmec were doing this to obtain ore.

What they got out of the varying kinds of ore is another question but it is an established fact that the Olmec were digging up "mighty heaps of earth" to obtain ore. I see zero reason why this cannot be applied to Book of Mormon peoples as well, if indeed they also were in the region.

It is like the "Book of Mormon people could not be using scimitars because they weren't invented until Arab times" argument. In point of fact, Middle Egyptian had a word for scimitar. When critics are faced with that fact, they then respond, "Well...but these weren't Nephite scimitars!" Always moving the goalposts are they...

Fact is, when ancient languages have in their vocabularies varying metals--even if there is zero archaeological evidence for metallurgy--these should be taken as evidence and at face value. Words for metals don't get into language vocabularies without the underlying culture having some contact with the real thing. It's time to cut the crap, Questing.

Edited March 22, 2013 by MormonMason