Horses in the Book of Mormon

[Physics Guy]

If you've never seen an elephant you might call an elephant an ox; if you've never seen a hippopotamus you might call it a horse; and if you've never seen a deer you might call it a horse.

But Nephi would have seen deer back in Palestine. He would have called a deer a deer.

[strappinglad]

I'm going to suggest that neither Nephi nor Mormon nor Joseph knew what a curelom or cumom was from personal experience. Hence the transliteration both from the 24 plates and Nephi's plates. An alpaca could have been written as a goat or a sheep and may well have been listed as such in the BoM. It is posited that a giant sloth was one of the odd animals. OK , but at first glance I would call it bear-like. Why the first foreigners to see a hippopotamus called it a river ' horse ' I have no clue. An elephant being an " Ox of India " at least makes some sense because of how it was used to pull and push heavy items.

[clarkgoble]

1 hour ago, Physics Guy said:

The only reason I can see why a decent translation would ever write "horse" for deer would be if the plates' authors really did deliberately write a word that meant "horse" to them, even though they knew they were referring to deer.

Well that gets at the issue of what a decent translation would consist of. Certainly as a translation it doesn't meet many people's expectations. I'm more or less coming from the perspective that however the translation was done it was not done with my assumptions.

1 hour ago, Physics Guy said:

It would be a tricky judgement for a translator, whether to render what the word meant to the author (horse) or what the author meant by the word (deer). But I can see it as a defensible choice to go with the first option instead of the second. That was what I thought you were getting at with your idea that "horse" might mean "deer".

It's even more of a problem if the underlying glyphs are a shorthand that are more ambiguous - perhaps tied to mnemonic devices. Again I'm not saying that's necessarily the case, but I personally am extremely skeptical of the plates as hieratic like Egyptian. I think it's likely something even more compressed. How would such compression even deal with types of animals?

That gives a confusing issue. You have potentially the original reference, the intent/understanding of the author, the meaning of the Hebrew, the range of meanings of the glyph, the meaning of whatever indigenous language was in use, and then (by the time of Mormon) the misunderstandings related to all of those. The usual way to deal with that in a contemporary translation is to have footnotes. (Say with a text that is a translation from one language but that is presumed to have been composed in an other language) The Book of Mormon, if one takes it as a translation in some sense and not a fictional composition, deals with this via expansions in the text or just following the KJV for the nearest match or to indicate a conceptual reference.

You then have the problem of whether you refer/describe privileging appearance (what did it look most like) or function (how is it used). You and I might have the bias of privileging appearance given our rather visual culture. But is it really wrong if someone saw the greatest resemblance in function rather than appearance?

1 hour ago, Physics Guy said:

If the original authors meant to refer to deer, and were also using a word that simply meant "deer" to them (whatever it might once have meant to their forebears), why would God deliberately garble that into "horse"?

That presupposes God was doing the translation. It might have been done by the power of God, but not necessarily by God. Again to give an example I personally don't accept, imagine Moroni is alive, learned English in 17th century England, and is trying to convey from his knowledge what was on the plates while expanding it to relate it to contemporary 19th century concerns. He then projects that on whatever rock Joseph was using or on his visual cortex in some fashion. Yeah I don't take that seriously, but I think it indicates things aren't as clear as we might wish.

1 hour ago, Physics Guy said:

If you've never seen an elephant you might call an elephant an ox; if you've never seen a hippopotamus you might call it a horse; and if you've never seen a deer you might call it a horse.

But Nephi would have seen deer back in Palestine. He would have called a deer a deer.

In his Hebrew. But if we assume that reasonably early on the Nephites mix with native peoples then things might get complex. But yes, I think the tapir is a much better fit than deer unless the emphasis was functional and the people the Nephites merged with were using deer functionally as horses, much as my Sami ancestors did in northern Sweden and Norway. (Again that runs into materialist problems, as I understand it, with mesoamerica)

An other element no one has brought up yet are dietary restrictions. I confess I don't know what the pre-exilic kosher restrictions would be. Certainly in later periods though horses, pigs, and dogs are not kosher. Whereas sheep and cows are. The later requirements are to have split hooves and chew its cud. Tapir are not kosher. Deer are kosher. Peccaries surprisingly chew their cud and thus are kosher even though the pigs they resemble aren't. It's quite possible this kosher designation rather than appearance mattered more to the Nephites.

Edited August 10, 2018 by clarkgoble

[Rajah Manchou]

7 hours ago, katherine the great said:

I didn't see any horses in those pictures nor would I expect to. Horses aren't adapted to jungle life. However, if ancient people had never seen a deer and saw a group of female deer from a distance, I suppose its possible they could have mistaken them for small, large eared horses.

The question is not whether there were any horses in the jungles of the Indies, we just don't know when they arrive. Crawford describes native horses/ponies throughout the Malay Archipelago: "There are many different breeds, each island having one peculiar to it". Bowls and figurines depicting sheep, goats and horses have been found in Ban Don Ta Phet. Bowls dating to the 4th century BC also depicting horses have been found in Khao Sam Kaeo, on the Malay Peninsula (source). A ring depicting a horse was found in Prohear, Cambodia (source). The earliest Chinese histories dating to the Book of Mormon time period discuss horse trading, and describe horses in Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma and the Malay Peninsula.

In Myanmar, men riding horses are depicted in a culture that was recording their histories on gold plates, the same century Moroni was sealing up the Golden Plates. (source)

[clarkgoble]

8 minutes ago, Rajah Manchou said:

The question is not whether there were any horses in the jungles of the Indies...

Just to be clear, my original comment was regarding 1 Nephi 18 where they emphasize beasts in the forests. Horses, as I understand it, prefer plains and open areas not forests. It's of course not impossible but just a small oddity I noticed. 

[Rajah Manchou]

4 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Just to be clear, my original comment was regarding 1 Nephi 18 where they emphasize beasts in the forests. Horses, as I understand it, prefer plains and open areas not forests. It's of course not impossible but just a small oddity I noticed. 

The list in 1 Nephi is puzzling. The detail is enough to distinguish between an *** and a horse. 
Semantic shift, or names getting lost in translation, don't easily explain Nephi distinguishing between a goat and a wild goat.

[clarkgoble]

5 minutes ago, Rajah Manchou said:

The list in 1 Nephi is puzzling. The detail is enough to distinguish between an *** and a horse. 
Semantic shift, or names getting lost in translation, don't easily explain Nephi distinguishing between a goat and a wild goat.

Again I'm no Hebrew speaker. But looking at the Strongs numbers for Deuteronomy 14:5 wild goat refers to an ibex. If we're going by behavior and appearance that'd probably map up with rams in the Americas. As with all these it's pretty speculative. The word for goat which was sacrificed is completely different and refers to a normal goat. So we're not dealing with a single word and modifier as in English.

I know almost nothing about Asian mammals so I can't comment there as to goats, ibex or other animals.

[Rajah Manchou]

23 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Again I'm no Hebrew speaker. But looking at the Strongs numbers for Deuteronomy 14:5 wild goat refers to an ibex. If we're going by behavior and appearance that'd probably map up with rams in the Americas.

There were wild goats in the forests of Asia and the Indies in the 6th century BC. Why would we need to map wild goats up with rams?

[clarkgoble]

1 hour ago, Rajah Manchou said:

There were wild goats in the forests of Asia and the Indies in the 6th century BC. Why would we need to map wild goats up with rams?

It would seem to me that even if you use a South Asia setting you have to deal with the Hebrew of the original speaker and then however that was translated into English. Wild goats for Nephi would be ibex as I mentioned. So what do you mean by wild goat?

[Rajah Manchou]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

It would seem to me that even if you use a South Asia setting you have to deal with the Hebrew of the original speaker and then however that was translated into English. Wild goats for Nephi would be ibex as I mentioned. So what do you mean by wild goat?

I’m making a broader case for the Book of Mormon being a 16th/17th century adaptation/translation of Hebrew literature about the land just beyond the Sabbath River, where the Sons of Moses and lost tribes lived. There are medieval texts that place this mythical land in a real world setting in the Malay Archipelago.

 

Literature describing the land beyond the Sambation lists sheep, goats, and oxen. Wild goats are also described in the Keddah annals, which were influenced by Persian and Arabic literature. These texts refer to the serow, a type of goat/antelope that resembles the ibex.

[Physics Guy]

On 8/11/2018 at 12:54 AM, clarkgoble said:

[T]hings aren't as clear as we might wish.

Ancient documents are often confusing, no doubt. And yeah, perhaps the Book of Mormon is more confusing than most because it effectively went through many stages of translation, involving a Hebrew dialect that evolved in America, "Reformed Egyptian" glyphs that were always an ad hoc writing system for Hebrew speakers, multiple editors human and angelic, and final transmission through a seer stone after a stop in 16th century England.

Still, though. In the final text we have many mentions of horses, but in the beginning, on the precolumbian American ground, there were no horses. So at some point somebody introduced the term "horse" in reference to animals that weren't actually horses. "I know it's not a horse but 'horse' is the closest word I can find" just isn't a plausible explanation for anyone putting "horse" into the text, because everyone who might have been involved with the text at any point had other words that would have been closer than "horse".

At whatever stage it happened, writing "horse" can only have been a mistake. Perhaps some late-Nephite scribes who had never seen a horse mistakenly applied words they only knew from the Torah to their familiar tapirs or deer. Or something.

Horses have been important in every human society that has had them, though, from ancient Israel through to 19th century New England. So messing up whether or not the Nephites had horses is a big mistake. And yet whatever miraculous power sufficed to bring the words of the Nephites across the centuries to Joseph Smith somehow could not or would not correct that important mistake?

Okay, who am I to say otherwise? The alternative theory that Smith made it all up, and just didn't realize that horses were extinct in the Americas before Columbus, does seem more natural on this point, however.

Edited August 12, 2018 by Physics Guy

[Sunday21]

On 8/3/2018 at 12:14 PM, jkwilliams said:

. The highways of Central America were designed for human foot traffic and are unsuitable for horses or oxen or llamas. 

Could you please explain? These paths had? Stairs? 

Thank you 😊 

[Guest]

On August 6, 2018 at 9:54 PM, mrmarklin said:

As it is in modern times as well. In Napoleonic times distances were referred to as a “days march”. Cavalry has always been an auxiliary force, depending on infantry for protection. 

Historically, it was used for reconnaissance, and shock value in a charge in conjunction with infantry. Dragoons are another matter, but that’s still exceptional. 

Yet, we do know and hear of "the Calvary". But, it was just a point, not an attempt to reject or disavow  the BoM.  

[Glenn101]

On 8/3/2018 at 12:14 PM, jkwilliams said:

On 8/3/2018 at 12:08 PM, clarkgoble said:

 

Even if someone dated horse remains to the right period, you still have the significant problem that Mesoamerican material culture reflects a lack of the presence of any beasts of burden. The highways of Central America were designed for human foot traffic and are unsuitable for horses or oxen or llamas. 

That does not square with the information available. Paved roads going down to bedrock have been known about for decades. Surveying areas with LIDAR has revealed an intricate network of roads in the Maya lands. Roads that were up to 240 KM long and 40 meters wide. (The quote was from jkwilliams, not Clark Goble.

Glenn

Edited August 12, 2018 by Glenn101
can't even spell my own name correctly

[RevTestament]

On 8/10/2018 at 3:19 PM, Physics Guy said:

If you've never seen an elephant you might call an elephant an ox; if you've never seen a hippopotamus you might call it a horse; and if you've never seen a deer you might call it a horse.

But Nephi would have seen deer back in Palestine. He would have called a deer a deer.

Perhaps you may wish to look at some of the Egyptian art of Semites taking their domesticated flocks with them into Egypt. The horns on these animals reveal them as something other than sheep, yet I'm sure the Jews called them goats and sheep.

[RevTestament]

4 hours ago, Physics Guy said:

Ancient documents are often confusing, no doubt. And yeah, perhaps the Book of Mormon is more confusing than most because it effectively went through many stages of translation, involving a Hebrew dialect that evolved in America, "Reformed Egyptian" glyphs that were always an ad hoc writing system for Hebrew speakers, multiple editors human and angelic, and final transmission through a seer stone after a stop in 16th century England.

Still, though. In the final text we have many mentions of horses, but in the beginning, on the precolumbian American ground, there were no horses. So at some point somebody introduced the term "horse" in reference to animals that weren't actually horses. "I know it's not a horse but 'horse' is the closest word I can find" just isn't a plausible explanation for anyone putting "horse" into the text, because everyone who might have been involved with the text at any point had other words that would have been closer than "horse".

At whatever stage it happened, writing "horse" can only have been a mistake. Perhaps some late-Nephite scribes who had never seen a horse mistakenly applied words they only knew from the Torah to their familiar tapirs or deer. Or something.

Horses have been important in every human society that has had them, though, from ancient Israel through to 19th century New England. So messing up whether or not the Nephites had horses is a big mistake. And yet whatever miraculous power sufficed to bring the words of the Nephites across the centuries to Joseph Smith somehow could not or would not correct that important mistake?

Okay, who am I to say otherwise? The alternative theory that Smith made it all up, and just didn't realize that horses were extinct in the Americas before Columbus, does seem more natural on this point, however.

Claiming horses were extinct because the Spanish didn't see them, and they fell out of the fossil record ignores some evidence otherwise. Did the Spanish bring the appaloosa(a far eastern horse) to the Americas? How about the S. American curly? How about the wild horses of British Columbia which bear no genetic affinity to Spanish mustangs, but rather to artic Siberian horses? Horses are very adaptable, and there really is no reason to believe they went extinct when millions of buffalo were roaming around. I believe they were hunted but so were the buffalo. Essentially no large mammals survived in Mesoamerica, I believe simply because it was densely populated by men, and the large game animals were hunted into extinction there. Nevertheless, horse bones in the upper levels of caves strongly suggest that horse did survive even there to BoM times. 

[Glenn101]

12 minutes ago, RevTestament said:

Claiming horses were extinct because the Spanish didn't see them, and they fell out of the fossil record ignores some evidence otherwise. Did the Spanish bring the appaloosa(a far eastern horse) to the Americas? How about the S. American curly? How about the wild horses of British Columbia which bear no genetic affinity to Spanish mustangs, but rather to artic Siberian horses? Horses are very adaptable, and there really is no reason to believe they went extinct when millions of buffalo were roaming around. I believe they were hunted but so were the buffalo. Essentially no large mammals survived in Mesoamerica, I believe simply because it was densely populated by men, and the large game animals were hunted into extinction there. Nevertheless, horse bones in the upper levels of caves strongly suggest that horse did survive even there to BoM times. 

I have come across something which causes one to go hmmm.

I was doing a bit of Google research on the subject of roads in mesoAmerica when I stumbled on the linked article. What jumped out at me was this:

Quote

There’s another bit of architecture that the new radar system picked up that has archaeologists sitting back in awe: a complex of corrals, pastures, stables, and slaughterhouses. Researchers with the Mirador Basin Project now believe that the Mayans were processing meat at an industrial level, not unlike we do today. They would have used their massive superhighways to transport meat, cattle, and other various asundry goods between different areas of El Mirador.

I am waiting on further developments as the archaeologists dig into this mystery. Just waht animals were kept in the corrals and slaughtered? Interesting, at least to me.

Glenn

[Physics Guy]

32 minutes ago, RevTestament said:

The horns on these animals reveal them as something other than sheep, yet I'm sure the Jews called them goats and sheep.

Not sure what you're trying to tell me. I do realize that different peoples may use animal names to refer to somewhat different breeds or species. I don't even have any trouble with people calling new animals by old names that aren't really right, because they don't have any better names for the new creatures. The Mayans may well have called horses "deer" at first.

I don't doubt that ancient Jews called those ancient horned sheep things "sheep" or "goats". What I don't believe is that they would ever have called sheep-like creatures "dogs" or "chickens"—or, indeed, "horses"—even if the Jews in question had never seen sheep quite like these. And in the same way I don't believe that any ancient Israelites encountering tapirs would have called them "horses". They'd have called them "deer".

If there really were horses in the Americas in what is supposed to be the Book of Mormon's time frame, then of course that would demolish the critical objection to horses as an anachronism. I'm just addressing the particular Mormon apologetic theory which accepts that there were no pre-Columbian horses but argues that "horse" in the Book of Mormon doesn't really mean horse.

[RevTestament]

1 hour ago, Physics Guy said:

Not sure what you're trying to tell me. I do realize that different peoples may use animal names to refer to somewhat different breeds or species. I don't even have any trouble with people calling new animals by old names that aren't really right, because they don't have any better names for the new creatures. The Mayans may well have called horses "deer" at first.

I don't doubt that ancient Jews called those ancient horned sheep things "sheep" or "goats". What I don't believe is that they would ever have called sheep-like creatures "dogs" or "chickens"—or, indeed, "horses"—even if the Jews in question had never seen sheep quite like these. And in the same way I don't believe that any ancient Israelites encountering tapirs would have called them "horses". They'd have called them "deer".

If there really were horses in the Americas in what is supposed to be the Book of Mormon's time frame, then of course that would demolish the critical objection to horses as an anachronism. I'm just addressing the particular Mormon apologetic theory which accepts that there were no pre-Columbian horses but argues that "horse" in the Book of Mormon doesn't really mean horse.

I'm not a Mesoamerican modelist. However, I do agree with you that at the time of Nephi, horse were settled as horse in the Hebrew language - indeed from their days in Egypt. There does exist solid DNA evidence that horse were in Alaska thousands of years beyond the presently assumed date of their extinction. It is found in frozen dung from as late as 8000-6000 BC. But where are the fossilized remains? It seems fossils became much more rare after the last ice age, and humans became more numerous.  Now when Nephi came to the Americas(my belief) and saw a moose, what would he call it? Female moose do look somewhat horse-like to me.

If the Greeks can call a hippopotamus a water horse (that is what the name means in Greek) I can certainly see the moose as a horse. I don't see that as too anachronistic. Nevertheless, I believe horse were still here - they were just hunted, so were in lesser numbers. Nevertheless, early Canadian explorers reported wild horse in the millions - much like the buffalo. While it is mathematically possible for the Spanish horse to breed to that number in 250 years, their genetic makeup doesn't seem to support the same heritage as the wild Canadian horse. Here is a genetic study of wild Canadian horse which found that they are much more related to the Siberian Yakut horse than the Spanish horse.  http://www.lrgaf.org/articles/Wild Horse DNA Report 2015.pdf

Edited August 12, 2018 by RevTestament
repair link

[Physics Guy]

I don't know anything about horse DNA. As far as I'm concerned there may well be some chance that archaeologists change their minds and tell us that there were a few surviving pre-Columbian horses somewhere. I'm afraid, though, that I tend to presume that the academic professionals, who currently say No to that, probably know what they're doing. They could be wrong, but I'm going to figure it's more likely that a revisionist argument is based on misinterpreted evidence, even if I myself can't say what's wrong with it.

I googled a bit about hippopotamus and found a discussion about this point from right here on this board in 2011. Somebody brought up the "river horse" as a real example of the kind of loan-shifting that could also have called deer or tapirs "horses".

One Kevin Graham then disputed this argument by pointing out that the "river" in "river horse" makes clear that this is not an actual horse but a new kind of animal. Perhaps Nephites might have referred to tapirs as "forest horses", he seemed to be saying, but not just as plain "horses".

But then someone named Joseph Antley dug up what he said was the oldest Greek reference to hippos that he could find—a 1st century BCE text by Diodoros of Sicily. That brief but recognizable description just calls the creatures plain "horses". Or rather, it says that they are called horses (it does not say by whom). So, Antley concludes, the Nephites might have called tapirs "horses" just as whoever it was in Diodoros's text called hippos "horses". If you can call a hippo a horse, it would seem, you can call practically anything a horse.

I admit that this point has some weight. It had more weight for me, though, until I tracked down an online translation of Diodoros's whole paragraph about hippos, and found that he goes on to mention that hippos have "the ears, tail, and voice of a horse". I'm not sure the equine form of hippo ears and tail are really enough to outweigh the otherwise very un-horselike shape of a hippo, but Diodoros seems to have been saying that to the human ear the sound made by hippos seemed quite horse-like. That makes "horse" for hippo significantly less crazy, I think. We today may see more pictures of hippos—or even of horses—than live ones, but when people actually lived around these animals, the sounds they made were important features. 

The other point that still remains of course is that hippos are weird creatures that don't look or behave much like anything else. So even if "horse" was only a good match aurally, there's not a lot of competition from other animal comparisons that would fit hippos better. For Mesoamerican deer, in contrast, Hebrew or Egyptian "deer" would clearly have been closer than "horse".

How horselike are tapirs? Do they whinnie? Is there really no other word that a Hebrew could have used that would have fit tapirs a lot more closely than "horse"?

Anyway, that whole old thread seems to have threshed this stuff through fairly well. Even if my little point about Hebrew already having a word for deer didn't come up in it, a lot of other good points did, on both sides. 

Edited August 12, 2018 by Physics Guy

[jkwilliams]

On 8/12/2018 at 9:34 AM, Glenn101 said:

That does not square with the information available. Paved roads going down to bedrock have been known about for decades. Surveying areas with LIDAR has revealed an intricate network of roads in the Maya lands. Roads that were up to 240 KM long and 40 meters wide. (The quote was from jkwilliams, not Clark Goble.

Glenn

Justine Shaw, in White Roads of the Yucatan: Changing Social Landscapes of the Yucatec Maya (University of Arizona Press, 2008), classifies the sacbeob (literally "white paths") of the Maya into "local intrasite" (less than 1 km in length within a particular city or temple complex), "core-outlier intrasite" (1-5 km in length linking a site to an outlying resource), and "intersite" (more than 5 km in length linking two or more sites). Note that 78% of all currently mapped sacbeob are "local intrasite." A local intrasite sacbe within a city complex may be up to that width (40 m) to accommodate a concentrated population, but the intersite sacbeob are pretty well-defined and are too narrow for horses and other beasts of burden. For example, one study of LIDAR in 2014 shows an average width of 9 meters (29 feet) for intersite causeways, and that is averaging the widest points of each sacbe--an unrealistic measurement that represents an absolute maximum. (Using the average width for each surveyed sacbe yields a width of 7.9 meters [26 feet], and using the narrowest for each yields 6.98 meters [23 feet].) Two of the intersite sacbeob are a uniform 4.5 meters wide (14.8 feet), which again is far too narrow for horses or other beasts of burden. Keep in mind that in colonial America, the narrowest turnpikes (which would be equivalent to intersite sacbeob) were more than 30 feet wide, and the narrowest were allowed only where rough terrain made wider roads infeasible:

Quote

In recognition of the hardship that the mountainous terrain imposed on those trying to maintain roads, an amendment of 1789 to this act permitted seven of these western counties to maintain what were called "expedient" roads only; that is, roads cleared and smoothed to a width of thirty feet. ("A Brief History of Roads in Virginia 1607-1840," Virginia Department of Transportation, 2003) 

So, even granting the absolute possible maximum width of these intersite causeways, these roads would have been impractical for horses or other beasts of burden pulling wagons or carrying freight. Of course, you might argue that horses were used only on local intrasite sacbeob, but then that doesn't make a lot of sense, as beasts of burden are most useful for transporting freight over distances of more than one kilometer. Indeed, Dr. Richard Hansen, whom you cite above, makes the following observation about El Mirador (emphasis mine) in his remarks at the Library of Congress in 2014:

Quote

The largest building at the site is called Danta, meaning tapir. Tapir is the largest animal in the Maya forest and we have this structure in -- dominated in the eastern side of El Mirador. This was published by the way in Smithsonian Magazine of May of 2011. You can find this -- there's a cover story, the Smithsonian, of 2011. And you can see the size and scale of this building which is 600 meters, 600 yards at a base, by 330 yards wide and 72 yards high, making it about 2.8 million cubic meters of fill, of construction fill, which is 200,000 square -- cubic meters of fill larger than the largest pyramids of Egypt. So they -- and keep in mind, this was done without wheels, without carts, without beasts of burden. This was genuine, human labor, blood, sweat and tears which makes it one of the most fascinating stories in the world as far as the human saga that took place here. (The Origins & Collapse of the Preclassic Maya in the Mirador Basin, Guatemala: Cultural & Natural Dynamics in the Cradle of the Maya Civilization, Library of Congress Webcast, 2 April 2014).

In short, the article you cited doesn't tell us much about the use of beasts of burdens or the suitability of Mayan roads for such beasts. 

ETA a fun fact: Richard Hansen is one of the elect (he served his mission in Bolivia).

Edited August 13, 2018 by jkwilliams

[clarkgoble]

On 8/12/2018 at 5:24 AM, Physics Guy said:

Still, though. In the final text we have many mentions of horses, but in the beginning, on the precolumbian American ground, there were no horses. So at some point somebody introduced the term "horse" in reference to animals that weren't actually horses. "I know it's not a horse but 'horse' is the closest word I can find" just isn't a plausible explanation for anyone putting "horse" into the text, because everyone who might have been involved with the text at any point had other words that would have been closer than "horse".

Again this makes quite a few presuppositions regarding how the translation went. Given the translation is a "black box" where we don't even have the original text I think it's wise to be careful. We don't know, for instance, if the translation was some quasi-computational approach utilizing Joseph's memories or if some other figure like Mormon or Moroni were involved in the translation. While for a long time I'd favored something like the former akin to how the old Google Translate worked (the new version is much better) I think Stanford Carmack's work on grammar makes that less likely. Although Joseph's mind in some way likely was still involved. But we really don't know.

I raise this just to note that the situation for the believer is even more complicated than you suggested. We have first some unknown writing system. This appears, from the descriptions to be extremely compressed. Likely some sort of combination of shorthand, mnemonic, and ideogram. So right off from the start, if we're not dealing with merely Hebrew written with hieratic then we have a problem. We likely have something more akin to ancient Chinese than Hebrew as such. That means the glyphs likely refer in very ambiguous ways to animals unless it was designed more for economic rather than religious reasons. That makes a difference since a religious shorthand will emphasize religious distinctions and differences (things like kosher/not-kosher) while an economic focused script will focus on differences in sale/price. Thus economic differences would distinguish in more detail animals that have prices/costs worth differentiating.

Finally the question is what interpretation for the script counts - the meanings in Mormon's time or the meanings in Nephi's time. That is not a subtle point at all. After all Nephi might not be using a glyph for horse at all. It might be something that fits the mesoamerican fauna much better in comparison to Egyptian/Arabic fauna. After all the connection to "horse" might not be Nephi's at all, but Moroni's. (Hypothetically - we're just looking at the range of possibilities here) So in this thread people have emphasized Nephi knowing how to identify animals and knowing what a horse or deer were. But again that's a presupposition that Nephi's understanding is what matters. Why assume Nephi rather than Moroni or an other figure seeing animals in the 19th century and applying their mesoamerican experience to American creatures? 

I raise all this not to dismiss your critiques, but just to point out that if you buy into the reality of Nephites, that things are much more complicated than they appear at first glance. Especially if the translation doesn't involve an expert who knows simultaneously the ANE, ancient mesoamerican (assuming things took place there), and early 19th century America. Most critiques pretty well presuppose an expert in all three of those. As soon as you throw out that presupposition then things become very, very complicated.

On 8/12/2018 at 5:24 AM, Physics Guy said:

Horses have been important in every human society that has had them, though, from ancient Israel through to 19th century New England. So messing up whether or not the Nephites had horses is a big mistake. And yet whatever miraculous power sufficed to bring the words of the Nephites across the centuries to Joseph Smith somehow could not or would not correct that important mistake?

Okay, who am I to say otherwise? The alternative theory that Smith made it all up, and just didn't realize that horses were extinct in the Americas before Columbus, does seem more natural on this point, however.

Again this presupposes that miraculous power involves a very knowledgeable figure doing the work. If there's one thing we can be sure of it is that whomever did the translation just wasn't that knowledgeable of the matters that seem important to us today. Partially because we tend to attribute miracle with traditional Catholic/Protestant conceptions of God, this is completely understandable. However if we look at the religious history claimed in the Bible and Book of Mormon (not to mention our own history) then the miraculous is almost always found within the mundane and ignorant. It's hard to imagine the translation would be any different. So finding that it actually fits in with our religious history rather than some idealized method is actually a nice bit of coherence.

Now this doesn't deny in the least that to an outsider, who expects the miraculous to be closer to "perfection" in some way rather than following say Moroni's worries about flaws and limits in Ether 12, it's easy to just dismiss the text as something Joseph made up. Clearly that's the rational position to take if one does not have a compelling reason to think there are real Nephites.

[clarkgoble]

1 hour ago, jkwilliams said:

In short, the article you cited doesn't tell us much about the use of beasts of burdens or the suitability of Mayan roads for such beasts. 

Or the suitability of animals to be beasts of burden. While the Sami and others in northern Europe/Asia utilized deer - that did take domestication. So far as I'm aware (and JK can correct me as I'm anything but an expert here) there's no indication of deer domestication. That despite some drawings of their being ridden. Largely even when harvested they were left to themselves in a wilderness region and not penned up. We know they were traded, but I've not found anything going through the details of that. Presumably such trade would require live stock or smoked jerkey as otherwise the meat would quickly spoil. How they managed to transport them from location to location isn't quite clear to me, but presumably is more akin to how a shepherd would herd sheep. Yet sheep are domesticated and thus more open to direction by humans after thousands of years of breeding out troublesome sheep.

In any case, I'd note that the Book of Mormon doesn't mention that I can see beasts of burden. Outside of the ambiguous "chariots" listed near "horses" it's just not mentioned. This is actually somewhat surprising if a 19th century conception lay behind the Book of Mormon. After all in early American use, animals were constantly used for everything from transport, to tiling the earth, etc. That was don't find that is itself interesting (IMO).

22 hours ago, RevTestament said:

I'm not a Mesoamerican modelist. However, I do agree with you that at the time of Nephi, horse were settled as horse in the Hebrew language - indeed from their days in Egypt.

The question then becomes if Hebrew quickly becomes a dead language known only by priests who read the brass plates, what does "horse" being settled matter? Take say Mosiah writing almost 500 years later. How on earth does he understand the Hebrew word "horse" in say Isaiah?  (Let alone whatever the glyphs on the gold plates are)

While it's fair to critique Nephi's passing mention in 1 Ne 18 it's far from clear to me that's what matters rather than later use. If, as I think most agree, the translation isn't strict in terms of fidelity to underlying words (or is at least at best inconsistently so) we shouldn't assume much about 1 Ne 18:25

23 hours ago, RevTestament said:

Essentially no large mammals survived in Mesoamerica, I believe simply because it was densely populated by men, and the large game animals were hunted into extinction there. Nevertheless, horse bones in the upper levels of caves strongly suggest that horse did survive even there to BoM times. 

I'd be very careful there. I don't think the evidence, as thus far presented, represents strong evidence. Getting back to the beginning of this thread, Jones stuff is pretty problematic IMO both due to where he published it and the lack of details. (And in some cases referring to dead researchers who never published their work) The one find in mesoamerica that might be dated as post-columbian is more intriguing. But again we'd need more detail and perhaps reanalysis to ensure no contamination before it really amounts to much.

Don't get me wrong, I think if there were pockets of surviving pre-Columbian horses that'd be interesting. There's still no evidence they were widespread nor domesticated. But it might explain the limited references in the Book of Mormon. So I leave it open as a possibility. But until there's harder evidence it's just a weak possibility.

 

Edited August 13, 2018 by clarkgoble

[jkwilliams]

1 minute ago, clarkgoble said:

Or the suitability of animals to be beasts of burden. While the Sami and others in northern Europe/Asia utilized deer - that did take domestication. So far as I'm aware (and JK can correct me as I'm anything but an expert here) there's no indication of deer domestication. That despite some drawings of their being ridden. Largely even when harvested they were left to themselves in a wilderness region and not penned up. We know they were traded, but I've not found anything going through the details of that. Presumably such trade would require live stock or smoked jerkey as otherwise the meat would quickly spoil. How they managed to transport them from location to location isn't quite clear to me, but presumably is more akin to how a shepherd would herd sheep. Yet sheep are domesticated and thus more open to direction by humans after thousands of years of breeding out troublesome sheep.

You are correct. I was simply responding to the assertion that the sacbeob of the Maya would have been suitable for horses. I think people get excited when they read about "Mayan highways" that were 40 meters in width, though the reality of the archaeological record is different.

My understanding (based on my undergrad study and subsequent reading) is that deer were not domesticated, but rather the Maya practiced what we might call "herd management" in that they knew where they were roughly in the forest, enough so that they could kill or capture enough of them to meet their needs. There is some evidence they were sometimes caught and held in pens temporarily for ritual or other uses, but I have seen nothing suggesting they were domesticated. 

As for beasts of burden, the assertion is being made that Mesoamericans used beasts of burden, when there is no such evidence. The assumption seems to be that, if they had horses (and some people are arguing these were actual equine animals, not deer), they would have taken advantage of their capability for riding and for transporting goods as beasts of burden. It's the same assumption that says the Nephites would have taken advantage of their knowledge of smelting (though, obviously, that's less of an assumption, as the text says they did). 

[PacMan]

And then there's the Curly horse. 

Darwin documented curly horses in South America in the early 1800s, and Native Americans considered them both sacred mounts and battle mounts.  Furthermore, pioneers recorded seeing them in the Western US.  In fact, a Native American 1801 drawing by High Dog, a Lakota Indian, depicts Sioux stealing Curly horses from Crow Indians.

No one knows where they came from.  Speculation is that some group of unspecified Russians brought them to South America.  But that's unfounded speculation.

Game.  Set.  Match.

Edited August 13, 2018 by PacMan