Another excellent review from Spencer Kraus & recent finds in Mesoamerica

I’ve been preoccupied with some family matters recently, so this blog has been quiet for a few weeks. Here are two new developments my readers may be interested in:

The erudite Spencer Kraus writes:

You…may be interested in a recent review I did of Jonathan Neville’s latest interview with Mormon Book Reviews. In Part One I respond mostly to assertions made by the host, and focus more on claims made by Neville in Parts Two and Three. Neville, for instance, tries to discredit the seer stone translation [of the Book of Mormon] because the four authors of the Gospels of the New Testament didn’t use a seer stone—which is a ridiculous assertion for more than one reason. Or he claims it is a lost cause to expect to find any writing whatsoever in Book of Mormon lands—even though the Book of Mormon describes at least a semi-literate Lamanite nation.

Here are the links to all three parts for any [who are] interested:

Part One: https://latterdaylightandtruth.blogspot.com/2021/10/misrepresentation-and-miscellaneous.html

Part Two (Regarding Jonathan Edwards and the Book of Mormon): https://latterdaylightandtruth.blogspot.com/2021/10/jonathan-edwardss-purported-influence.html

Part Three (regarding baseless attacks, general misrepresentations, etc.): https://latterdaylightandtruth.blogspot.com/2021/10/misrepresenting-mesoamerica-book-of.html

Spencer’s three-part series is solid, and I recommend it to those interested in all things Neville.

In other news, the venerable publication Science posted a news article on their website on October 25, 2021, about a large number of Mesoamerican monuments that have been revealed by laser mapping:

Scientists have uncovered nearly 500 Mesoamerican monuments in southern Mexico using an airborne laser mapping technology called lidar. Dating as far back as 3000 years ago, the structures—still buried beneath vegetation—include huge artificial plateaus that may have been used for ceremonial gatherings and other religious events.…

The analysis resulted in the discovery of 478 formal complexes—many new to science—the team reports today in [the journal] Nature Human Behaviour. Several of these monuments had the same layout as Aguada Fénix, including an even more ancient Olmec site in San Lorenzo. Researchers continue to argue over whether the Olmec, which predate the Maya, are more of a mother or sister culture to them. The researchers estimate these Olmec and Maya complexes were built between 1100 and 400 B.C.E., and would have been used for ceremonial gatherings.

These findings are right in the middle of where most educated, competent Book of Mormon geographers place the events of the Book of Mormon. While the structures discovered by the lidar survey are too old to be connected to the peoples of the Book of Mormon, they are examples of the complex, developed societies that were found in ancient Mesoamerica—a striking difference from the simple Hopewell cultures in the American Midwest that had no written languages, large cities, or other features described by the Nephite authors.

After reading John L. Stephens’s 1841 book, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan, Joseph Smith (with editorial assistance from John Taylor) wrote in 1842:

Mr. Stephens’ great developements of antiquities are made bare to the eyes of all the people by reading the history of the Nephites in the Book of Mormon. They lived about the narrow neck of land, which now embraces Central America, with all the cities that can be found.… Who could have dreamed that twelve years would have developed such incontrovertible testimony to the Book of Mormon? surely the Lord worketh and none can hinder.

These hundreds of new discoveries in Central America continue to show us how little we know of the ancient civilizations that inhabited that region. If twelve years (1830–1842) were enough for Joseph Smith to claim that “incontrovertible testimony” of the Book of Mormon had been found, how much more will its historicity be established as evidence continues to be uncoverered in Mesoamerica?

—Peter Pan