Obviously, once it's firmly established that the timeline doesn't match and there is no evidence of a connection then ldsliving will say " We only said it MAY, the evidence is still out there waiting to be found. "
3. One had blood sacrifices and one had blood oaths.
4. And if that is not enough, they both existed in the Western Hemisphere!
Coincidence? I think not! And, everybody knows that Reformed Egyptian is just another way to say Hieroglyphics. Like, really. Ask any archeologist. They will tell you.
LDSliving republished this article from a blog, "Book of Mormon Central.
The author quotes the BOM claims to show the abundance of herds, flocks and fatlings, while also mentioning that Hansen has found some animal pens. How many pens are found is omitted, while glorifying the discovery of extensive agricultural paddocks. I submit that Hansen's mention of some animal pens hardly amounts to proof of the Book of Mormon claims of humongous numbers of sheep, goats, cattle, horses, pigs, chickens etc. etc.. Hansen doesn't even mention any animal remains, so exactly what kind of animals the Maya raised is somewhat "mysterious" until we have ID's. This article is hyping an unknown as a proof. I note the illustration the author uses for this portion shows BOM wheat farmers in harvest, but carefully omits any representation of any livestock...it's all human hand labor. Why not show all the animals? :) While you are at it, why not show us all the wheat grain, storehouses, mills, bakeries, etc. and everything that goes along with a massive North American wheat culture? And horse culture? And metallurgical culture? And Hebrew culture? And, and...
The finds at El Mirador are fairly typical of human civilization. None of the elements mentioned by Hansen or by this apologist are unique to MesoAmerica. And nothing uniquely Book of Mormon has been found, either. Mormons are showing tremendous intellectual weakness and a great lack of ethics to deceive and falsify history in this way.
My gut feeling is that the LDS church is going to be disappointed...yet again. "Sophisticated economies"? They hope to find coins. After all, the B of M says they used them. "Road networks"? they are desperate to find a wheel, maybe even the remains of an ancient chariot. Something to keep the members in, with tithing dollars rolling. Maybe the Ex-members will return and pay their back tithing!