Fair-skinned Ancient Peruvians - stirring the LGT/HGT pot

[hagoth7]

16 minutes ago, RevTestament said:

And no doubt...

None. :0)

16 minutes ago, RevTestament said:

You may have noticed that in the land of Zarahemla, just about every time the Lamanites advance they are crossing the Sidon. The Nephites cross it too. It probably wasn't more than 5 ft deep. Armies wearing armor are simply not crossing the Niagra without drowning or using boats. Where it has no rapids, it is 1 km+ wide.

Early Germans crossed rivers much deeper than 5 feet.

For germanic infantry, that's where a floating wooden shield helped a wee bit. Flip it upside down, toss a non-floating thing or two in it, and push it in front of you. (A similar method was used in early Anglo-Saxon times to arbitrate/settle differences.)

And germanic cavalry had trained their horses to cross deep waters, apparently without having to dismount.

 

As Joseph, son of Joseph(ites) would figuratively say, "Deep water is what I am wont to swim in."

 

How long...rolling waters...?

Edited July 4, 2017 by hagoth7

[Robert F. Smith]

32 minutes ago, Bob Crockett said:

............................................your prior discussion was not supportable.   .................................................

I cited my sources, which you promptly ignored in favor of irrelevant nonsense.

32 minutes ago, Bob Crockett said:

...................... Given that the 120-mile span of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec is filled with unnavigable rivers and malarial swamps, ...................................  Michael R. Ash has supposed that the Book of Mormon meant something other than the width of an isthmus, but rather the width between two geographical mounts or political borders within the isthmus.   Thus, Ash seeks to salvage the Sorenson model to changing an isthmus to something that is not an isthmus which happens to be within an isthmus.  Ash's argument could simply be made without the need for an isthmus. This speculation heaped upon speculation, when the Book of Mormon does not attempt to say that the narrow neck divided two seas, demonstrates the futility of discussion about Book of Mormon geography.

The sources I cited were not derived from or related to Sorenson.  Instead of replying to the hard evidence, you substitute another anti-Sorenson diatribe.  Instead of reading the BofM text and relying on that for your basic info, you attack strawmen.  More nihilism.

32 minutes ago, Bob Crockett said:

According to the account in Don Jose Garay, Survey of the Isthmus of Tehuatepec (Ackerman & Co, London 1944), the government of Mexico commissioned a survey of the Isthmus.  Garay's nine-month survey is contained in this book.   Many parts of the northern part of the isthmus are impenetrable swamp and jungle.  One cannot simply oar a boat through the Everglades.   Although Garay discusses the prospect of navigation, he notes that the rivers are not navigable as they approach the hills and are difficult or impossible to ford at places.   The study also recounts Cortes' unhappy experience in the area as he tried to use the isthmus as a means to access lower California.  You have previously argued in the past that the traverse can be done when waters are high and rivers are fast-moving.  I have never seen any treatises confirming this supposition.

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

And, as I have pointed out, it appears to me that this narrow neck of land theory is the basic foundation for Dr. Sorenson's suppositions.

Garay is helpful, but there is no substitute for the views of the Conquistadores themselves -- which I cited and you ignored.  In any case, instead of taking an archeological approach and asking what the area of was like in ancient times (there and elsewhere), you prefer an anti-Sorenson rant.

[Bob Crockett]

Please cite to a conquistador reference.  Cortez crossed it.  I recall it took more than a week.  When we had this discussion before.  I wasn't convinced.

Edmund Otis Hovey, The Isthmus of Tehuantepec and the Tehuantepec National Railway (Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, Vol. 39, No. 2 (1907), pp. 78-91) points out that it took longer to get freight across the isthmus than through the Panama Canal.  Because of conditions, it took 45 years to build the 125 mile railway.  This article at http://www.common-place-archives.org/vol-11/no-04/call/ discusses the stagecoach line across the isthmus which preceded the railway.  It took seven days by stage coach to make the crossing.  One man died in the stage coach crossing.   The correspondent who made the crossing said that the region "must ever be a stumbling block in the way to the perfect success of the [trans-isthmus] route."

 

Edited July 4, 2017 by Bob Crockett

[hagoth7]

Gonna add a link to this thread from 2016. Relevant.

 

[Robert F. Smith]

6 hours ago, Bob Crockett said:

Please cite to a conquistador reference.  Cortez crossed it.  I recall it took more than a week.  When we had this discussion before.  I wasn't convinced.

Edmund Otis Hovey, The Isthmus of Tehuantepec and the Tehuantepec National Railway (Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, Vol. 39, No. 2 (1907), pp. 78-91) points out that it took longer to get freight across the isthmus than through the Panama Canal.  Because of conditions, it took 45 years to build the 125 mile railway.  This article at http://www.common-place-archives.org/vol-11/no-04/call/ discusses the stagecoach line across the isthmus which preceded the railway.  It took seven days by stage coach to make the crossing.  One man died in the stage coach crossing.   The correspondent who made the crossing said that the region "must ever be a stumbling block in the way to the perfect success of the [trans-isthmus] route."

Go back and take a look at the arguments I made so long ago, but which you ignored then.  You say you were not convinced by what the Conquistadores themselves claimed.  Apriori rejection doesn't become you, Bob.

Sources such as Garay, Hovey, and even your own personal experiences in the region are certainly helpful, and I have nothing to say against them at all, but you revel in presentism -- ignoring (1) what the BofM text itself says, (2) what the archeology tells us, and (3) what the Conquistadores themselves said.  All  three sources must be accounted for simultaneously, in context.  You argue the "futility of discussion about Book of Mormon geography," thus playing the nihilistic card at the outset.  No argument of any kind can overcome that empty, apriori claim.

However, I do thank you for those helpful sources -- they go into the hopper with everything else.

[hagoth7]

3 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

...However...

Robert,

If you don't mind me asking, do you have a photographic memory?

[Robert F. Smith]

13 minutes ago, hagoth7 said:

Robert,

If you don't mind me asking, do you have a photographic memory?

Not at all.  That is why I keep careful records.

[Bob Crockett]

20 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Go back and take a look at the arguments I made so long ago, but which you ignored then.  

I looked back at our 2014 discussion.  I didn't ignore anything. 

It was Cortes who built the road across the Isthmus.  Generally takes a month to cross. 

I was rather shocked by what I read in the 2014 discussion.  Why the bad feelings?  Do you consider it a personal attack on Dr. Sorenson to question his research and conclusions?  I don't.  I think he is a formidable Book of Mormon scholar.

Please, I am not into "falsification" or "conspiracy theories" and such.  The simple fact remains that I am unaware of any person crossing the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in a day and half.  Not in any engineering journal.  Not in any travel guide,   Not in any Spanish history.   Dr. Sorenson bases his conclusion on the day-and-a-half for a Nephite, and thus it is the Isthmus of Tehuantepc, not on any thing having to do with real world conditions in the Isthmus.  Instead, he cites a totally inapt reference to Aztecs on Aztec highways covering 500 miles in six days.  Or is it six Aztecs in five days.  And, as far as i can tell, Sorenson's geography theories rest mightily upon this premise of Tehuantepec and the day-and-a-half scenario.  I've asked for, and never received from you or Kevin C., any kind of literature suggesting the Isthmus can be cross in a day and a half.  Instead, Kevin told me in 2014 that he didn't want to answer me because he didn't want me to control the "narrative," whatever that meant.  And you won't provide me cites.  Somebody else busted my chops in 2014 for saying it was 120 miles, and then 140 miles (the difference is tidal marsh) when, indeed, it should make zero difference.  (It reminds me of the earliest accounts of Utah lake; pioneers and explorers largely unable to get to the lake due to marsh margins).

Really, it is not likely the "narrow neck of land" is the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and, as such, Dr. Sorenson's theories pinning the local to that location are unsupportable. 

I can certainly see the attractiveness of the MesoAmerican theory.   Jack Welch asked me:  Where else are you going to find cement?  I think Meldrum's theory abominable.  But the rationality just seems lacking.  Way too much grasping for straws. 

Edited July 5, 2017 by Bob Crockett

[Robert F. Smith]

9 hours ago, Bob Crockett said:

I looked back at our 2014 discussion.  I didn't ignore anything. 

It was Cortes who built the road across the Isthmus.  Generally takes a month to cross. 

I was rather shocked by what I read in the 2014 discussion.  Why the bad feelings?  ........................................................

I can certainly see the attractiveness of the MesoAmerican theory.   ..............................  Way too much grasping for straws. 

You are so stuck on your anti-Sorenson-mania that you have again ignored my citations and discussion from those years.  I have suggested that you rest your analysis on three things: (1) the actual text of the BofM, (2), the archeology of the area, and (3) the Spanish ethnography.  You need to put those three in context simultaneously.  I don't mind your additional data from whatever reliable sources you want to consider as well, but pointedly ignoring those three primary issues is what has led you down your garden path into a quagmire (which, like the estuaries of old Utah Lake, can be a good thing -- but not in the midst of rational argument).  You need to get away from your Sorenson hobby horse and deal with the substantive issues.  Of course, if you deny that that is even possible, then there can be no rational discussion.

[Bob Crockett]

Oh well.  Dr. Sorenson's two books on Book of Mormon geography have severe problems and people should not confuse them with a defense of the faith.  If you want to understand Book of Mormon geography, read the Book of Mormon.

Further, I'm not sure it is fair to call me a hobby horse enthusiast when, instead, my criticism is of MesoAmerican hobby-horse baloney.  

Edited July 6, 2017 by Bob Crockett

[Robert F. Smith]

On 7/6/2017 at 6:57 AM, Bob Crockett said:

Oh well.  Dr. Sorenson's two books on Book of Mormon geography have severe problems and people should not confuse them with a defense of the faith.  If you want to understand Book of Mormon geography, read the Book of Mormon.

Further, I'm not sure it is fair to call me a hobby horse enthusiast when, instead, my criticism is of MesoAmerican hobby-horse baloney.  

Maybe your anti-Sorenson fixation is a permanent malaise.  Maybe it makes you happy.  However, if you get a chance, you might like to listen to this non-Mormon podcast: Peter Enns, “Why Defending the Bible Does More Harm Than Good (The Bible Tells Me So),” The Flipside #010, podcast online at

. You might just find further excuses for avoiding useless apologetics.  Just trying to help, Bob. 

[Bob Crockett]

Some of us have particular views about anthropology and Mormonism.  Yours are wrong and not based on science.