So There's No Archaeological Evidence For The Book Of Mormon?

[Calm]

I've tracked down the "long, thin arms" reference.Roughly translated, this reads:"Torquemada says that in a dance given by the Toltecs, the devil appeared before them in the form of a giant, and embracing them with its disproportionate arms, it began suffocating them in the midst of the party: after that, they saw beneath it the appearance of a child, with a rotten face, and it brought them pestilence; and that, finally, being persuaded by this same devil they abandoned the land of Tula."Essentially, then, Roper and Brown--and apparently Adrienne Mayor--are conflating two different stories involving giants:1. A Tlaxcaltecan legend about outsmarting "giant" chichimecas (refers to any number of nomadic, hunter-gather tribes).2. A Toltec legend about the devil appearing during a dance and bringing pestilence to the land.I can see how combining the story of breaking off tree branches and the mention of disproportionate arms might suggest something vaguely elephantine. But these stories are not related, neither is remotely suggestive of elephants, and there is no reason to conflate the stories, except to make them more suggestive of elephants.To put it mildly, I am completely unimpressed with this FairMormon article.

Since you have gone to all this work, it would be very nice for you to submitt it, so it can be added to the editors' things to do list. Less likely to get misplaced than me sending a link through regular email.

[jkwilliams]

Ah but:

 

1) Gomphotherium are cousins to the Elephant the're on the same family tree.

2) Even Exagerations have a seed of truth.

3) Herds of wild horses how many years after Columbus?

Here's the thing: Ingram was going from pub to pub around England for 13 years, his tales becoming taller with each telling. By the time Walsingham recorded the tales, they were quite tall. Are there seeds of truth in the story of an animal with no head but eyes and mouth in its torso? How about red sheep? How about women in the continental US having so much gold, pearls, and rubies, and wearing gold plates from head to toe?

There's lots more in the account, such as fruit that looked just like apples but inside were filled with a black poisonous liquid, the palm trees whose sap caused drunkenness, the huge cities every 5 to 8 miles, and so on.

But if you want to take this unreliable story at face value, you still have something that is described as exactly like a horse with two tusks. How is that anything like an elephant?

I think it says something that, as shoddy as their research is, Brown and Roper don't use Ingram as a source.

[jkwilliams]

Since you have gone to all this work, it would be very nice for you to submitt it, so it can be added to the editors' things to do list. Less likely to get misplaced than me sending a link through regular email.

I'm thinking about writing it up for my blog, and if I do, I'll send it along to FairMormon.

This is honestly just very frustrating for me. I know some of the people involved in FairMormon. I consider them friends and have a lot of respect for them, but this article is just very sloppy and misleading. I enjoy reading challenging apologetics, but this isn't it.

[jkwilliams]

I've finally located the original story of the dancing giant in Torquemada.

http://www.historicas.unam.mx/publicaciones/publicadigital/monarquia/volumen/01/02Libro%20Primero/miv1029.pdf

It's too long to quote entirely, but here's my summary (I'll quote some of it):

The story is about the destruction of the Toltecs, who had been persecuted and oppressed by a certain king. Believing the persecution resulted from their "having angered their gods," all the Toltec priests, princes, and lords gathered together in Teotihuacan to have a "fiesta" to please and placate the angry gods.

In the middle of the fiesta, a demon appeared in the form of a "great giant" (described as appearing in a "sudden vision") and began to dance with them. They were afraid of the giant because it was "too large and deformed, with long and thin arms." Believing the giant had been sent by the gods, they turned their faces to him. As he danced with them, "he began to embrace them in his arms, and as many as he caught between his arms (like another Hercules did to Antaeus) he took their lives, sending all of them surely to death."

"Another day, the demon appeared again among them in the form of another giant with long and tapered hands and fingers." This time, he pierced/skewered them with his long, tapered fingers and hands, thus killing them.

"At the end of the festivities, the same demon appeared to them on a tall hill ... in the figure and form of a very beautiful and white child seated on a rock and with all of his head rotten/decayed, and many people died from the stench that came from [the head], as if wounded by a mortal and venomous poison." The Toltecs tried to capture the child and drag him to a great lagoon to drown him, but he was too strong for them. While they were trying to capture the child, the demon appeared again and told them they must leave the land if they wanted to save themselves from death, ruin, and calamities.

Edited October 2, 2015 by jkwilliams

[omni]

I've finally located the original story of the dancing giant in Torquemada.

http://www.historicas.unam.mx/publicaciones/publicadigital/monarquia/volumen/01/02Libro%20Primero/miv1029.pdf

It's too long to quote entirely, but here's my summary (I'll quote some of it):

The story is about the destruction of the Toltecs, who had been persecuted and oppressed by a certain king. Believing the persecution resulted from their "having angered their gods," all the Toltec priests, princes, and lords gathered together in Teotihuacan to have a "fiesta" to please and placate the angry gods.

In the middle of the fiesta, a demon appeared in the form of a "great giant" (described as appearing in a "sudden vision") and began to dance with them. They were afraid of the giant because it was "too large and deformed, with long and thin arms." Believing the giant had been sent by the gods, they turned their faces to him. As he danced with them, "he began to embrace them in his arms, and as many as he caught between his arms (like another Hercules did to Antaeus) he took their lives, sending all of them surely to death."

"Another day, the demon appeared again among them in the form of another giant with long and tapered hands and fingers." This time, he pierced/skewered them with his long, tapered fingers and hands, thus killing them.

"At the end of the festivities, the same demon appeared to them on a tall hill ... in the figure and form of a very beautiful and white child seated on a rock and with all of his head rotten/decayed, and many people died from the stench that came from [the head], as if wounded by a mortal and venomous poison." The Toltecs tried to capture the child and drag him to a great lagoon to drown him, but he was too strong for them. While they were trying to capture the child, the demon appeared again and told them they must leave the land if they wanted to save themselves from death, ruin, and calamities.

Thanks for your research John. Honestly, I'm at a loss for how these stories were being used as evidence of elephants in the Americas.

[jkwilliams]

Thanks for your research John. Honestly, I'm at a loss for how these stories were being used as evidence of elephants in the Americas.

So am I.

[Robert F. Smith]

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

It's difficult to say how Ingram got from Mexico to Nova Scotia in 11 months. That timetable is plausible, except Ingram says it took 8 months for him to get from Tampico, Mexico, to Northern Florida, which means he traveled the length of the east coast of North America from Northern Florida to Nova Scotia, in 3 months. That isn't particularly plausible.

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

I find nothing implausible about David Ingram taking 3 months to travel up the east coast, even if he did embroider his account later.  Perhaps you have some specific reason why 3 months is implausible.

 

Of course the journey could take longer.  Compare the 8-year journey of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, a member of the Captain Narvaez Expedition, across southern North America beginning in 1528 (he was a shipwrecked royal treasurer from Seville, Spain; see de Vaca’s own account, Castaways, ed. Enrique Pupo-Walker; trans. F. M. Lopez-Morillas [berkeley: UC Press, 1993]).

 

Going the other way, we have René Robert La Salle, who made the trip by canoe from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico in 1682 and colonized the Louisiana coast – later followed by the Acadians (“Cajuns”) from Acadia/ Nova Scotia/ New Brunswick.

[jkwilliams]

I find nothing implausible about David Ingram taking 3 months to travel up the east coast, even if he did embroider his account later. Perhaps you have some specific reason why 3 months is implausible.

Of course the journey could take longer. Compare the 8-year journey of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, a member of the Captain Narvaez Expedition, across southern North America beginning in 1528 (he was a shipwrecked royal treasurer from Seville, Spain; see de Vaca’s own account, Castaways, ed. Enrique Pupo-Walker; trans. F. M. Lopez-Morillas [berkeley: UC Press, 1993]).

Going the other way, we have René Robert La Salle, who made the trip by canoe from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico in 1682 and colonized the Louisiana coast – later followed by the Acadians (“Cajuns”) from Acadia/ Nova Scotia/ New Brunswick.

I will have to look it up, but he says he spent a lot of time in each city he visited, and the time doesn't add up.

[Robert F. Smith]

No... They're really not coming around:

"They lived from the Pliocene epoch (from around 5 million years ago) into the Holocene at about 4,500 years ago[1][2] in Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America."

Actually they are coming around to ever more recent times:

“Mammoths Hung On Longer? Late-Surviving Megafauna Exposed by Ancient DNA in Frozen Soil,” ScienceDaily, Dec 15, 2009, online at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091214151946.htm  , from which the following excerpt:

 

the duration of human/megafaunal overlap was probably even greater than suggested by our sedaDNA results, raising questions about the mode and tempo of extinction.

 

“DNA Shows That Last Woolly Mammoths Had North American Roots,” ScienceDaily, Sep 5, 2008, online at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080904145058.htm , 

 

“In a surprising reversal of conventional wisdom, a DNA-based study has revealed that the last of the woolly mammoths—which lived between 40,000 and 4,000 years ago—had roots that were exclusively North American,” i.e., as late as 2,000 B.C. 

[Robert F. Smith]

I will have to look it up, but he says he spent a lot of time in each city he visited, and the time doesn't add up.

But do you give credence to his talk about those cities?  If he kept on moving, he could certainly have made it in 3 months.

[jkwilliams]

But do you give credence to his talk about those cities? If he kept on moving, he could certainly have made it in 3 months.

I am just saying the story as told doesn't add up.

[Robert F. Smith]

Forward toward an isolated island in the Bering Sea.

Not necessarily, in fact scholars recently said: 

 

“to confidently rule out the possibility that small numbers of mammoths persisted into the Holocene in northwestern North America, macrofossil surveys would need to be intensified significantly, . . [and] “sedaDNA evidence for mammoth and horse persisting into the Holocene in interior Alaska is incompatible with such rapid extinction and indicates that late-surviving mammoths in the New World were not confined to islands in the Bering Sea.”  “Mammoths Hung On Longer? Late-Surviving Megafauna Exposed by Ancient DNA in Frozen Soil,” ScienceDaily, Dec 15, 2009, online at  http://www.scienceda...91214151946.htm  .

[Zakuska]

But do you give credence to his talk about those cities?  If he kept on moving, he could certainly have made it in 3 months.

 

In 1999 British writer Richard Nathan retraced Ingram's journey in reverse, walking from Nova Scotia to Tampico in just 9 months

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ingram_(explorer)

[jkwilliams]

In 1999 British writer Richard Nathan retraced Ingram's journey in reverse, walking from Nova Scotia to Tampico in just 9 months

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ingram_(explorer)

Yes, without all the stops in the cities. Of course, the timeline is the least problematic part of Ingram's story.

[Robert F. Smith]

Yes, without all the stops in the cities. Of course, the timeline is the least problematic part of Ingram's story.

"Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive."  So maybe Ingram spiced it up (at the behest of his publisher?) to enhance sales . . .

[Zakuska]

RFS:

From your earlier link:

 

The team also developed a statistical model to show that mammoth and horse populations would have dwindled to a few hundred individuals by 8,000 years ago

"At this point, mammoths and horses were barely holding on. We may actually be working with the DNA of some of the last members of these species in North America," says permafrost expert Froese, associate professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta. "The Yukon Flats includes large shifting river bars with an abundance of high quality forage where large mammals can and could make a living. There may have been a handful of similar sites in Alaska, hosting small remnant populations," says Froese.

 

JKWilliams-

 

Ingrams "Red Sheep" isn't problematic at all.

 

http://freethumbs.dreamstime.com/1506/big/free_15063556.jpg

Edited October 3, 2015 by Zakuska

[Zakuska]

From the Journals of Lewis and Clarke...

 

 

 

Mammoths

Even as Thompson's travels intertwined with those of the American captains, the influence of Thompson Jefferson continued to hover over them all, interlacing the disciplines of human and natural history, bold exploration and careful observation, science and storytelling. Jefferson had placed fossil-finding, with a particular eye for mammoth remains, high on his Corps of Discovery instruction list. Meriwether Lewis even stopped on his way down the Ohio River to collect fossils from a famous sinkhole called Big Bone Lick, which he tried to send back to Jefferson. New country and the rigors of their journey might have blunted the captains' enthusiasm, but William Clark did pick at his famous fossil rib along the Yellowstone during the latter stages of their return journey. A few years before the Corps embarked, David Thompson had been told to search for fossils in the Prairies, and he also wondered about a large bone he saw on the Peace River. Neither explorer was able to incorporate such relics into their larger world view in the way that Jefferson did, but a series of incidents in the northern Rockies forced Thompson to confront what they might mean.

During Thompson's first fall and winter at his Kootanae House post at Lake Windermere, British Columbia, he became acquainted with an elder he called "the Old Chief." In Thompson's field journal entry for September 28th, 1807, the surveyor wrote that

The Old Chief & others related that in the Woods of the Mountains there is a very large Animal, of abt the height of 3 fms [fathoms] & great bulk that never lies down, but in sleeping always leans against a large Tree to support his weight; they believe, they say, that he has no joints in the mid of his Legs, but they are not sure as they never killed any of them, &  by this acct they are rarely or never seen.

2

Thompson recorded many tribal tales during his time in the fur business, and he didn't put any particular stock in the truth of the Old Chief's tale—"this is no doubt some Animal of their Nurses Fables, as they cannot say they ever saw the least remains of a dead one"—but the size, the bulk, the tree-leaning, and even the odd idea of kneeless legs all contain whiffs of mammoth lore. In fact, an early English Bestiary that Thompson might have seen at the Gray Coat School described African elephants as jointless beasts that leaned against trees to sleep.3

In January, 1811, during his first crossing of Athabasca Pass, Thompson's party came across a long line of outsized tracks in the snow, which he dutifully measured at eight by fourteen inches. His mixed-blood hunters insisted these were mammoth tracks, but Thompson decided they more likely belonged to an old grizzly bear that had worn its claws off.

When Thompson recrossed the pass that fall, he recalled the tracks and listened to his men.

October 6 The Mountain close to the Campmt [encampment] where I observed is said to have a large Lake on its top where there are several of those large unknown Animals. They are said to live on Roots, Moss, &c &c. but nothing as yet appears of their being carnivorous.

4

Although these journal entries have been cited in cryptozoology articles as early evidence of a sasquatch, David Thompson and his men were thinking only of elephants. When Thompson wrote his autobiographical Travels thirty years later, he fleshed out both the winter and fall incidents with his own conjectures. Familiar with recent Siberian findings of whole mammoth remains, he wondered if so grand an animal might really live in the Rockies. He emphasized that the men who had told him about the beast were trusted veterans of mountain crossings who believed what they were saying. He described large bones that had been found in the eastern United States, and connected the veneration of such bones with the Osage Indians, as if he was familiar with Lewis and Clark's attempt to collect such artifacts from Kentucky.

 

http://www.lewis-clark.org/article/2860

Edited October 3, 2015 by Zakuska

[Zakuska]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110621131334.htm

Believed to be genuine, this rare specimen provides evidence that people living in the Americas during the last Ice Age created artistic images of the animals they hunted. The engraving is at least 13,000 years old as this is the date for the last appearance of these animals in eastern North America, and more recent Pre-Columbian people would not have seen a mammoth or mastodon to draw.

Thats a big assumption. We've already established 8000 years above.

Here is a new find of a wooley mammoth in michigan just the other day:

http://madworldnews.com/farmer-muddy-hole/

Edited October 3, 2015 by Zakuska

[jkwilliams]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110621131334.htm

Thats a big assumption. We've already established 8000 years above.

Here is a new find of a wooley mammoth in michigan just the other day:

http://madworldnews.com/farmer-muddy-hole/

Not surprising. The problem, as noted, is that mammoths disappeared in the eastern United States about 10,000-15,000 years ago. The only mammoths close to the Jaredite timeline are dwarf mammoths in isolated islands of Alaska and Siberia.

[omni]

How do any of these Woolley mammoth finds have anything to do with the BoM? These finds are thousands of miles from where most LDS scholars believe the Jaredites (Olmecs) lived. Unless of course you're a Heartlander...

[jkwilliams]

How do any of these Woolley mammoth finds have anything to do with the BoM? These finds are thousands of miles from where most LDS scholars believe the Jaredites (Olmecs) lived. Unless of course you're a Heartlander...

It seems that anything in the western hemisphere is fair game.

[jkwilliams]

RFS:

From your earlier link:

 

 

JKWilliams-

 

Ingrams "Red Sheep" isn't problematic at all.

 

http://freethumbs.dreamstime.com/1506/big/free_15063556.jpg

Are you suggesting there were alpacas and vicunas in the continental United States in the 16th century? Really?

[Robert F. Smith]

Not surprising. The problem, as noted, is that mammoths disappeared in the eastern United States about 10,000-15,000 years ago. The only mammoths close to the Jaredite timeline are dwarf mammoths in isolated islands of Alaska and Siberia.

As I have already noted, the scientists contradict you:

 

“to confidently rule out the possibility that small numbers of mammoths persisted into the Holocene in northwestern North America, macrofossil surveys would need to be intensified significantly, . . [and] “sedaDNA evidence for mammoth and horse persisting into the Holocene in interior Alaska is incompatible with such rapid extinction and indicates that late-surviving mammoths in the New World were not confined to islands in the Bering Sea.”  “Mammoths Hung On Longer? Late-Surviving Megafauna Exposed by Ancient DNA in Frozen Soil,” ScienceDaily, Dec 15, 2009, online at  http://www.scienceda...91214151946.htm  .  Emphasis mine.

 

Mind you, these conclusions are based on actual finds, from which we can extrapolate that a great deal more evidence is needed from sedimentary DNA from other areas to determine whether this is a more widespread phenomenon.  One could well imagine, for example, that elephants existed well into the Jaredite era and region (where there was plenty of forage) before finally becoming extinct.  The archeological finds are certainly not the last extant megafauna, but only lucky finds.

[Robert F. Smith]

How do any of these Woolley mammoth finds have anything to do with the BoM? These finds are thousands of miles from where most LDS scholars believe the Jaredites (Olmecs) lived. Unless of course you're a Heartlander...

Bones of extinct animals (including mammoth) appear in the lowest layers of Loltun Cave in Yucatan (Robert T. Hatt, "Faunal and Archaeological Researches in Yucatan Caves," Cranbrook Institute of Science, Bulletin 33, 1953. See Peter J. Schmidt, "La entrada del hombre a la peninsula de Yucatan," in Origines del Hombre Americano, comp. Alba Gonzalez Jacome [Mexico: Secretaria de Educacion Publica, 1988], 250).

 

The real question is, How late did such megafauna exist in Mesoamerica before extinction?  We don't know the answer yet.

 

Some scholars automatically disallow radiocarbon dates which do not fit their preconceptions, e.g., equus bones in the Schulze Cave in Texas are dated too late by radiocarbon, so are frankly disallowed.  See Richard S. Toomey III, “Vertebrate Paleontology of Texas Caves” in W. Elliott & G. Veni, eds., The Caves and Karst of Texas (Huntsville, Alabama: National Speological Society, 1994), 51-68, online at http://www.texasturtles.org/Vertebrate_Paleontology_of_Texas_Caves.pdf ,

 

Horse bones were found elsewhere in Yucatan in three caves (Actun Sayab, Actun Lara, and Chektalen), Henry C. Mercer, The Hill-Caves of Yucatan: A Search for Evidence of Man's Antiquity in the Caverns of Central America (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1896), 172; cf. Harry E. D. Pollock and Clayton E. Ray, "Notes on Vertebrate Animal Remains from Mayapan," Current Reports 41 (August 1957): 638 (this publication is from the Department of Archaeology at the Carnegie Institution of Washington). See also Clayton E. Ray, "Pre-Columbian Horses from Yucatan," Journal of Mammalogy 38 (1957): 278. 

 

Thus, the interest in Steven E. Jones, “Were There Horses in the Americas Before Columbus?” Ancient American, 16 #95 (June 2012), 2-3, online at http://www.bluetoad.com/publication/index.php?i=115319&m=&l=&p=2&pre=&ver=swf  ,

–no equus samples from Mesoamerica from 14,700 BC - 1,650 AD.

–equus in Pratt Cave (near El Paso), Texas, from ca. 6,020 - 5,890 BC.

–equus in Wolf Spider Cave, Colorado, from 1,260 - 1,400 AD

–equus in Horsethief Cave, Wyoming, ca. 1,100 BC

–equus bone in Wyoming, ca. 1,426 - 1,481 AD

–equus bones in Canada, from 900 BC (Sask, Ridell I-8581), and 1,100 AD (Ontario, Hemlock Park Farm)

 

The DNA of these samples needs to be tested to determine whether they are in any way related to horses brought over by the Spanish.

 

 

Edited October 4, 2015 by Robert F. Smith

[Robert F. Smith]

Not surprising. The problem, as noted, is that mammoths disappeared in the eastern United States about 10,000-15,000 years ago. The only mammoths close to the Jaredite timeline are dwarf mammoths in isolated islands of Alaska and Siberia.

Of course, there is the published journal of an 18th century French explorer, Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur (1735-1813), who describes the Indian legends and his personal observation of numerous mammoth bones, mainly in salt marshes and not badly deteriorated (cf. Omni 22, Mosiah 8:8-12, 21:26-27, Alma 16:9-11) – Crevecoeur, Journey Into Northern Pennsylvania and the State of New York, trans. C. S. Bostelmann (1964), II, chapt. 1, nn. 4 & 5.  Cf. Claudine Cohen, The Fate of the Mammoths: Fossils, Myth, and History, trans. W. Rodarmor (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2002).