INTERWEAVING TIME AND SPACE
DECIPHERING THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE BOOK OF MORMON
A Spatial Analysis
This book sequentially relates the historic events recorded in the Book of Mormon,
using maps of Mesoamerica, to portray the ancient American settings of those peoples.
The spatial organization of settlements, routes, and places of the Book of Mormon as presented in the chapters of this book are not as static or two dimensional as is suggested by the graphs. In reality, the geographical models of the system are quite dynamic and can be studied through their various phases of development.
The graphs used to portray the system are similar to a photograph of the night sky. One comprehends the placement and association of the stars in the photograph but gains little appreciation for or understanding of the complex operation and depth within the system. Mankind's usage of their space upon the earth's surface is extremely dynamic, incorporating many processes through time. This dynamic aspect of the Book of Mormon's peoples is addressed in this book as a means of furthering an understanding and appreciation of the text, and its spatial organization.
The text of the Book of Mormon provides an exotic tapestry richly portraying man's struggle with nature in a unique environment. The spatial models that Ihave extracted from this tapestry are actually an incomplete abstraction of 3,000 years of human experiences in a relatively small and isolated area. The incompleteness of the spatial models stem from three factors:
First, It is not a complete history of its peoples.
Second, the writers of those ancient records had only marginal interest in describing their locality. Their main purposes were to express their faith and to convey theological information to future readers.
Finally, the data provided in the text are processed through our modern understanding and insights, which although greatly serviceable, are by no means infallible. As J.William Fulbright once
remarked, 'There is an inevitable divergence, attributable to the imperfections of the human mind, between the world as it is and the world as men perceive it."
The approximate 3,000 years of human experience contained in the Book of Mormon can be interwoven into the topography of southern Mesoamerica through the use of six overlapping stages of cultural development. These stages begin with the Jaredite Period and include the Nephite Expansion in the Land Southward, the Nephite Wars, the Nephite expansion into the Greater Land Northward, the Intermediate Phase, and the Final War.
The simple Jaredite spatial model developed in chapter 7 rapidly expands through the Nephite development phase extending roughly from 590 to 87 B.C. The period of Nephite Lamanite wa rs extending from 87 to 60 B.C. was a phase ofNephite consolidation as detailed in the book of Alma. This phase provides the most detailed information available in the text on settlement planning, fortifications, and place associations. Nephite expansion through the west sea corridor and into the ancientJaredite home land extended between ca. 125-28 B.C. based on the fragmentary information provided in the text. The general model expands at a much slower rate in the following 385 years contained in the Intermediate Phase of Nephite history (60 B.C. to A.D.325). The final war of the Nephites extended through the period A.D. 325 to 385 and was ended with the destruction of the Nephite civilization in the lands of the earlier Jaredite people. This correlation between the two civilizations provides an im portant link between the Jaredite portions of the model and the Nephite settlements in the land southward.
THE ]AREDITE PERIOD (CA. 3000-? B.C.)
No information is available in the text concerning spatial organization of the Jaredite peoples before their arrival at Moron, the capital land. Hugh Nibley has indicated that this migration possibly crossed the north Pacific (Nibley 1952:176). The Model developed in this book places the Jaredite capital of Moron in closer proximity to the Gulf of
Mexico than to the Pacific shore. This proximity indicates
Mexico than to the Pacific shore. This proximity indicates