How To Identify A Nephite City.

[ERayR]

A Roman centurion typically commanded 80 men.  That is, if they were at full strength.  Military units seem to rarely be at full strength.  Men on leave, sick, AWOL, lack of replacements, lack of funds for replacements etc.

 

If a "10,000" was a Nephite military unit (say a modern division or heavy brigade) I would guess that by the time the time of the last battle that none of the 10,000's would be operating at full strength.  Many could be half or below.  230,000 seems too high for the number of Nephite soldiers in the last battle.  I wouldn't be surprised if it was more like 100,000.

 

How many tons of food would an army of 100,000, or even 200,00, plus dependents need per day?

 

Where did the 80 man figure come from.  It has been my understanding the title of centurion designated the commander of 100.

[ksfisher]

Where did the 80 man figure come from.  It has been my understanding the title of centurion designated the commander of 100.

http://www.unrv.com/military/legion.php

http://www.josephus.org/FlJosephus2/romanArmy.htm

http://www.caerleon.net/history/army/page3.html

It started out as 100, but for the majority of imperial times 80 is a better number (full strength).

[ERayR]

http://www.unrv.com/military/legion.php

http://www.josephus.org/FlJosephus2/romanArmy.htm

http://www.caerleon.net/history/army/page3.html

It started out as 100, but for the majority of imperial times 80 is a better number (full strength).

 

Thanks.

[Robert F. Smith]

The Romans lost 70,000+ at Cannae.  The battle lasted from dawn until it was too dark to continue fighting.  I could imagine the final Nephite battle lasting over several days, with the Nephites holding their position for the first couple before finally being overrun on the last.

In 490 BC, about 10,000 Greeks under Miltiades faced a Persian army of around 26,000 under Darius I at Marathon.  The Persians were defeated with few Greek losses (Persians lost around 6,400 that day).

 

Just about this time of year at Thermopylae in 480 BC, about 1400 Greeks (including King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans) faced around 100,000 Persians under Xerxes I (estimates vary from 70,000 to 300,000 Persians).  Even though the Persians annihilated the Greeks at that narrow pass (losing 20,000 in three days), the Greek navy destroyed the Persian navy, causing Xerxes to withdraw from Europe.

[Robert F. Smith]

Thanks. I'll look this one up when my Mormon codex arrives.

He mentions it there too, but he mentioned it also decades ago in his Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, with a lot of other suggested locations.

[cursor]

He mentions it there too, but he mentioned it also decades ago in his Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, with a lot of other suggested locations.

 

That would within pages 335-353 of his 1985 book.

[Gervin]

bump

 

 

 

• I hope the later chapters have a correspondence for Veracruz (the location).  
• I wonder how long it takes to kill 230,00 persons in hand-to-hand engagement and how many must be on your side to inflict such a slaughter.
• The bolded phrase is vague - but better defined somewhere in the book, perhaps?

 

 

[cursor]

In response to your bump ...  

At the tail end of that last offered quote, John L Sorenson said:

In chapters 21 through 26, the culture history reviewed in this chapter will be considered in greater detail, and correspondences will be pointed out in the light of Mesoamerican archaeology.

 

Those chapters include 185 pages | 83,465 words, spread across six chapters. The titles of those chapters are:

21. Archaeology and History before 600 BC

22. Archaeology and History: Southern Mesoamerica between 600 and 1 BC, Part 1

23. Archaeology and History: 600 to 1 BC, Part 2

24. Archaeology and History: AD 1 to 200

25. Archaeology and History: ad 200 to 400

26. Conclusions

 

Be sure and pre-order your copy now ... or wait for the volume to me on bookshelves within two weeks. 

[cursor]

But to your point. If around half a million people died in one battle (assuming Lamanites had a similar number of fatalities) in 400CE, on the same location as a couple of million died in 600 or 700BCE, would it be reasonable to find evidence for that in your Dad's model? I know he's pinpointed a viable Zarahemla. Does the Book of Mormon contain enough internal geographic markers to pinpoint Cumorah? If so, would a dig there unearth evidence of a battle on those scales or would the humid climate had already claimed all of the evidence? I've pre-ordered his book, so perhaps I'll be able to read more there.

 

John Sorenson has indentified the Hill Cumorah with Cerro el Vigia, a mountain in the Tuxtlas range along the gulf coast, although that is merely a good suggestion.

 

cursor asked: 

With such a huge death toll, would there not be some signiicant pool of archaeological evidence to be found at Cerro el Vigia that might cooborate the destructive event?

 

John L. Sorenson replied:

I would think so, but there are no excavations at or near the Cerro and the area is of little interest to the current crop of archaeologists.

 

Cerro El Vigia has been discussed on this forum in quite a few threads. Consider this Google search phrase:

site:http://www.mormondialogue.org/ vigia