Book of Mormon Evidence

This letter from the Smithsonian's Department of Anthropology is in
response to your inquiry regarding the Book of Mormon.

The Smithsonian considers the Book of Mormon a religious document
and not a scientific guide. The Smithsonian Institution has never used it in archaeological research and has found no archaeological evidence to support
its claims.

One of the main lines of evidence supporting the scientific finding that
contacts with Old World civilizations, if indeed they occurred at all, were
of very little significance for the development of American Indian
civilizations, is the fact that none of the principal Old World domesticated
food plants or animals (except the dog) occurred in the New World in
pre-Columbian times. American Indians had no wheat, barley, oats, millet,
rice, cattle, pigs, chickens, horses, donkeys, camels before 1492. (Camels
and horses were in the Americas, along with the bison, mammoth, and
mastodon, but all these animals became extinct around 10,000 B.C. at the
time when the early big game hunters spread across the Americas.)

Iron, steel, glass, and silk were not used in the New World before 1492
(except for occasional use of unsmelted meteoric iron). Native copper was
worked in various locations in pre-Columbian times, but true metallurgy was
limited to southern Mexico and the Andean region, where its occurrence in
late prehistoric times involved gold, silver, copper, and their alloys, but
not iron.

You might wish to consult the following publications:

Coe, Michael D. Mexico. 4th rev. ed. Thames & Hudson, 1994. (A
well-written, authoritative summary of Mexican archeology.)

Coe, Michael D. The Maya. 5th rev. ed. Thames & Hudson, 1993. (A
general summary of the archeology of the Maya.)

Coe, Michael D. and Richard A. Diehl. In the Land of the Olmecs. 2
vols. Univ. of Texas Press, 1980.

Fagan, Brian. Ancient North America: The Archaeology of a Continent.
2nd ed. Thames & Hudson, 1995.

________. Kingdoms of Gold, Kingdoms of Jade: The Americas Before
Columbus. Thames & Hudson, 1991.

Freidel, David, Linda Schele, and Joy Parker. Maya Cosmos. William Morrow
& Co., 1993.

Hammond, Norman. Ancient Maya Civilization. Rutgers Univ. Press, 1982.

Hunter, Milton R. and Thomas S. Ferguson. Ancient America and the
Book of Mormon. Kolob Book Co., 1950. (The Mormon point of view is
presented.)

Jennings, Jesse D. Prehistory of North America. 2nd ed. McGraw Hill, 1989.

Jennings, Jesse, editor. Vol. 1. Ancient North Americans. Vol. 2.
Ancient South Americans. W. H. Freeman, 1983.

Lamberg-Karlovsky, C. C. and Jeremy A. Sabloff. Ancient
Civilizations; The Near East and Mesoamerica. 2nd ed. Waveland Press, 1995.
(Chapter 4 discusses the first Mesoamerican civilization and its origin.
Very readable.)

Larson, Stan. Quest for the Gold Plates: Thomas Stuart Ferguson's
Archaeological Search for The Book of Mormon. Freethinker Press, 1996.

Marcus, Joyce. Mesoamerican Writing Systems: Propaganda, Myth, and
History in Four Ancient Civilizations. Princeton University Press, 1992.

Papers of the New World Archaeological Foundation. Brigham Young
University, 1952-. (Published results of archeological investigations in
Mesoamerica by the Foundation, supported by the Mormon Church.)

Riley, Carroll L. et al., editors. Man Across the Sea: Problems of
Pre-Columbian Contacts. Univ. of Texas Press, 197l. (A collection of
articles, mostly by well-qualified specialists, concerning transoceanic
contacts.)

Sabloff, Jeremy A. Cities of Ancient Mexico: Reconstructing a Lost
World. Thames & Hudson, 1990.

Schele, Linda, and David Freidel. A Forest of Kings: The Untold
Story of the Ancient Maya. William Morrow & Co., 1992.

Wauchope, Robert. Lost Tribes and Sunken Continents. Univ. of
Chicago Press, 1974. (Chapter 4 covers Mormon theories, setting them in the
context of other nonscientific schemes. Author is a well-qualified
specialist on Mexican archeology.)

Williams, Stephen. Fantastic Archaeology: The Wild Side of North
American Prehistory. Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. (See the chapter
"Archaeology and Religion: Where Angels Fear to Tread.")

gg

i have seen the same kind of so called evidence used by yong earth creation scientists.people who dont know any better will buy this garbage.a surface research of mormonism will reveal how absurd it is.