Jonathan Neville cements his ignorance of ancient America

One of the evidences for placing the Book of Mormon in a Mesoamerican context cited by proponents of that theory is its mention of cement as a building material:

And there being but little timber upon the face of the land, nevertheless the people who went forth became exceedingly expert in the working of cement; therefore they did build houses of cement, in the which they did dwell. . . . And the people who were in the land northward did dwell in tents, and in houses of cement, and they did suffer whatsoever tree should spring up upon the face of the land that it should grow up, that in time they might have timber to build their houses, yea, their cities, and their temples, and their synagogues, and their sanctuaries, and all manner of their buildings. . . . And thus they did enable the people in the land northward that they might build many cities, both of wood and of cement.

(Helaman 3:7, 9, 11, emphasis added)

Cement was actually once considered an anachronism in the Book of Mormon but has since been shown by archaeologists to have been a building material used by the ancient Maya. (Book of Mormon Central has a KnoWhy that provides a useful overview on this topic.)

Jonathan Neville, predictably, is not impressed with this argument, as he makes clear in his March 29, 2019, post “The M2C hoax - part 6 - cement.” He writes:

Naturally, the Mayans built with stone and cement. In a jungle, wood structures don’t last long. Which explains how we know the Nephites did not live in a jungle. The Nephites built with wood and cement, not stone and cement.

In fact, the ancient and modern Maya in fact did (and still do) use wood as a building material. Here are just a few citations from the same Mesoamerican archaeologists Neville praises in his post:

From representations in the arts we can see that the wooden, thatched-roof houses of the Maya have changed very little in the past two millennia. Maya families in the country-side continue to live in houses with a skeleton framework of lashed and notched tree trunks and limbs supporting steeply pitched roofs covered with many layers of palm thatch to shed the heavy tropical rains.

(Michael Edwin Kampen, The Religion of the Maya [Leiden: Brill, 1981], 8.)

Above all, the trees provided construction materials, including the frames for Maya houses, lintels for palaces and temples, and the thatches for their roofs.… The hardest woods of the rain forest, especially the rock-hard sapodilla wood and beautiful mahogany and cedars, were used for carving works of art that are sometimes still preserved in tombs or other buried contexts. Elaborately carved sapodilla lintels with long hieroglyphic texts have been found in outstanding condition in the doorways of temples, giving us histories and insights into Maya temple rituals and concepts.

(Arthur Demarest, Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004], 144.)

It wasn’t just simple countryside homes that used timber as a building material either:

The largest cities served as the capitals of independent kingdoms, containing the most elaborate temples, palaces, markets, causeways, reservoirs, and plazas. Lowland cities were mostly constructed of masonry; highland cities favored adobe and timber. In all Maya cities, hundreds to thousands of houses of the common people were constructed of adobe or pole and thatch.

(Robert Sharer, "Who Were the Maya?" Expedition 54, no. 1 [2012]: 15.)

Neville is correct that wood and other organic structures do not easily survive in a jungle environment. But he is wrong in claiming that the ancient Maya did not use wood. Although the archaeological evidence for such is scarce, it has in fact been identified.

Of course, a simple Google search would have revealed this to Neville. Or he could have read the godfather of “M2C*,” John Sorenson, in his discussion in his magnum opus:

After disembarking from their ship, the Lehite colonists found themselves in a tropical area (very likely Pacific coastal Guatemala) that was heavily forested (1 Nephi 18:25). Later areas they inhabited also included forested territories (e.g. Alma 2:37). This would account for the occasions when, throughout the land southward, parties found themselves lost or able to hunt or hide in the wilderness (Enos 1:3; Mosiah 8:8; 20:8; 21:25; 22:16; 23:30). No doubt trees of these forests provided timber as prime building material.

(John L. Sorenson, Mormon’s Codex: An Ancient American Book [Provo, UT: Neal A. Maxwell Institute, 2013], 321–22.) 

This reading is very plausible given what we know about ancient Mesoamerica. In fact, the mention of Book of Mormon peoples “work[ing] in all manner of wood” (2 Nephi 5:15; cf. Jarom 1:8; Mosiah 11:8) in various contexts fits nicely in ancient Mesoamerica, since ancient woodworking is attested in that region in both surviving artifacts and iconographic representations.

So much for Neville’s claim that woodworking in the Book of Mormon precludes a Mesoamerican setting. But what about cement? Neville claims:

The only known Nephite cement was the cement Moroni used when we built the stone box for the plates, as described by Joseph and Oliver.

This claim is so bizarre and so flagrantly erroneous that I have a hard time understanding how Neville could possibly write it with a straight face. As seen above, the citation in Helaman 3 is explicit that “Nephite cement” included “houses of cement” and “cities, both of wood and of cement.” This is exactly what we encounter in ancient Mesoamerica, as discussed in the Book of Mormon Central KnoWhy.

But this doesn’t stop Neville from attempting to poison the well against those he pejoratively calls “Mesomaniacs” with this line:

Unless by now the Mesomaniacs have talked themselves into disbelieving what Joseph and Oliver said about the box, even they have to admit that Moroni used Nephite cement in New York.… [Cement in Mesoamerica is] another illusory correspondence, designing to support the rejection of what Joseph and Oliver taught about Cumorah in New York.

Perhaps Neville is unaware of (or is deliberately ignoring) the fact that what he considers the censorious “M2C” journal Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship has actually published an article arguing for the authenticity of Joseph Smith’s description of the cement box that contained the plates. From the paper’s abstract:

The story of Joseph Smith retrieving gold plates from a stone box on a hillside in upstate New York and translating them into the foundational text of the Restoration is well known among Latter-day Saints. While countless retellings have examined these events in considerable detail, very few have explored the geological aspects involved in this story. In particular, none have discussed in detail the geological materials that would have been required by the Nephite prophet Moroni ca. AD 421 to construct a sealed container able to protect the gold plates from the elements and from premature discovery for some fourteen centuries. This paper reports the outcomes from a field investigation into what resources would have been available to Moroni in the Palmyra area. It was conducted by the authors in New York state in October 2017.

Neville is so wrapped up in his anti-“M2C” derangement—I’ll even call it prejudice—that he can’t or won’t even acknowledge when “M2C intellectuals” actually agree with him! Moroni’s construction of a cement box in upstate New York is actually geologically plausible.

But this raises the question of where Moroni learned this technological ability. To answer that, Neville claims the following:

You can see archaeological reconstructions of ancient wood and cement structures at museums in Ohio.… [T]here is abundant evidence of the North American Indians using cement. Some of the mounds were covered with cement, to the point that they were difficult for farmers to tear down. People used jackhammers to break up the cement. Even today, at Cahokia, archaeologists have recreated a portion of the ancient wall around the city to show what it looked like anciently. It consists of tall timbers, covered with cement.

As is his wont, Neville provides precisely zero citations to archaeological field reports or scientific journals to back up this claim. But he does mention one site that we can investigate: Cahokia. In fact, the “cement” Neville talks about isn’t actually cement (limestone mortar)—it’s hardened clay. Even worse for him, the walls weren’t constructed until “A.D. 1100 and then rebuilt three times over a period of 200 years.” So not only is the evidence Neville used not contemporary to Book of Mormon times, it isn’t even “cement” as he claims.

Contrast this with the genuine, verified limestone cement of Mesoamerica that was known to be used during Book of Mormon times (again, as discussed in the Book of Mormon Central KnoWhy). The best scholarship from actual credential archaeologists reveals the following:

Lime cement came into use as building material in central Mexico as well as in southern Mesoamerica in the centuries just before and after the time of Christ. Archaeology has revealed the degree of sophistication those artisans achieved. Margain commented on "the abundance of flat surfaces made of concrete" in central Mexico. At El Tajín in Veracruze, roofs were formed of slabs of concrete that covered up to 246 square feet (23 sq m). The cement was poured into prepared wooden forms. Sometime the builders filled the space for a planned room with stones and mud, smoothed the surface on top, and then poured a concrete mix thereon. Once the roof dried, they removed the fill beneath. The first century-BC appearance of cement in the Book of Mormon agrees strikingly with the archaeology of central Mexico.

(Sorenson, Mormon’s Codex, 322.)

In practically every single detail on this subject, Neville is wrong. He is wrong about ancient Mayan building materials. He is wrong about what “M2C intellectuals” actually believe. He is wrong about the “evidence” he uses for the Heartland hoax. And yet Neville wants us to trust him when he claims, “In my opinion, these cement references in the text exclude Mesoamerica as a potential location described by the text.”

Neville is free to hold his opinions, but why on earth should anyone take his ignorant and prejudiced opinions seriously?

—Captain Hook

* “M2C” is Jonathan Neville’s acronym for the theory that the Book of Mormon took place in Mesoamerica and that the hill Cumorah in the Book of Mormon is not the same hill in New York where Joseph Smith received the plates of Mormon.