Ugh! Now I'm seeing FB shares of this crap. I can't say anything because I don't want to offend the person, so I just keep scrolling. I had not heard of this group before. They are looking for money to scan for evidence of a non-existent place. What a scam. On their FB page, the gushing comments are nauseating, but there are some nay-Sayers too, so there's that. I like this comment: "wouldn't it be easier if ya'll just used another hat with a rock inside ???"


https://zarahemla.site/?fbclid=IwAR19eoIHG1QpTAFl-qCElJcJas9lsQZVIRZ0ITWIE91ChLyHeqiDJlwSuDI

I got as far as this and then couldn't stop laughing:


"The city of Zarahemla in 335 AD was bigger than London and at that time it was the capital city of North America inhabited by hundreds of thousands of people."

And nobody can find it? If the above were true, how could you not find it?

I would like to sell these people time shares in Zarahemla.

But wait! They have maps! And, there were those mound builders that we still have evidence of, so, of course Zarahemla. lol So glad I was able to make my way out of this cult. And, so sad to have so many gullible relatives still in it.

London would have been tiny in the 4th century. The Romans had abandoned it. Maybe they need to look nearer Bimini.

My mormon bishop FIL will tell you that Cahokia is Zarahemla.

Joseph Smith and John Taylor placed Zarahemla in Guatemala. Are Wayne May and his Heartland minions implying that the Blessed Prophet of the Restoration was… (gasp)… speaking as a man?!?


Times & Seasons 3:23 (10/1/1842), p. 927:

ZARAHEMLA.

"Since our 'Extract' was published from Mr. Stephens' 'Incidents of Travel,' &c., we have found another important fact relating to the truth of the Book of Mormon. Central America, or Guatamala [sic], is situated north of the Isthmus of Darien and once embraced several hundred miles of territory from north to south. The city of Zarahemla, burnt at the crucifixion of the Savior, and rebuilt afterwards, stood upon this land as will be seen from the following words in the book of Alma: – 'And now it was only the distance of a day and half's journey for a Nephite, on the line Bountiful, and the land Desolation, from the east to the west sea; and thus the land of Nephi, and the land of Zarahemla was nearly surrounded by water: there being a small neck of land between the land northward and the land southward.'"

"It is certainly a good thing for the excellency and veracity, of the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon, that the ruins of Zarahemla have been found where the Nephites left them: and that a large stone with engravings upon it as Mosiah said; and a '(large round) stone, with the sides sculptured in hieroglyphics,' as Mr. Stephens has published, is also among the left remembrances of the, (to him,) (lost and unknown). We are not going to declare positively that the ruins of Quirigua are those of Zarahemla, but when the land and the stones, and the books tell the story so plain, we are of opinion, that it would require more proof than the Jews could bring to prove the disciples stole the body of Jesus from the tomb, to prove that the ruins of the city in question, are not one of those referred to in the Book of Mormon."

[Note: B. H. Roberts believed that Quirigua, along with Palenque and Copan, were Jaredite ruins instead.]

I'd like to know about the BH Roberts view. Later in his life, after all, he lost all faith in the BoM.

From "New Witnesses for God Vol. II," YMMIA Manual (1904):

http://www.solomonspalding.com/docs2/Rob1904a.htm


See ch. 26 (especially pp. 249-58).

p. 258:

"If some of the earlier monuments of Central America, such as Copan, Quirigua and Palenque, represent Jaredite ruins, as I am inclined to believe, then it is most likely that the truncated mounds in the north — which so much resemble the stone-faced pyramids of the south — were also built by them."

Thank you.

It was 18 years later that he presented his critique and questions to the Q15 and they had no answers. From that point on there are no records of his ever having endorsed the BoM or cited it as evidence of the restoration. He favored the D&C and more or less ignored the BoM.

The evolution of a serious, and honest, mind. . .

I happened to visit Cahokia exactly a week ago; it's about three hours from where I live and I had never been there before. Since I knew nothing about it, I also bought a book there, a festschrift from the 2017 conference on Mississippian culture celebrating the anniversary of the first such conference in 1967, and have been reading the papers in it this week.

Moundbuilder culture had its roots in the period 800-1000 CE and flourished at Cahokia from approximately 1050 CE to 1200 CE before entering a period of decline 1200-1275 CE and then a short revival; the site was abandoned by 1400 CE. Scholars argue about what influences drove the development of Cahokia, some arguing that it was primarily Native Americans from present-day Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee migrating westward, others that some sort of Mesoamerican migration happened around 1000 CE. But the timeline of moundbuilder culture is undisputed, and has been corroborated by the development of radiocarbon dating in the last half century.

Further, estimates of Cahokia's population put it at around 40,000 people at its height. If "Zarahemla" contained HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people only 700 years earlier, you can bet your shorts we would have found evidence of it by now.

All of which is to say three things:

1) Wayne May, with his artists' depictions of Zarahemla as a Mississipian city full of mounds, is full of shit and would be laughed out of any conference of archaeologists who actually study ancient American cultures.

2) If "Mormonism sprang from the mounds," a quote proudly cited on their website, what we know now about the timeline of moundbuilder culture that was NOT known in the nineteenth century provides compelling evidence that Joseph Smith was full of shit as well.

3) Mississippian culture is fascinating and needs no made-up "histories" like the Book of Mormon to offer anachronistic and, frankly, racist 19th-century explanations for the "savage native" narrative they believed in at the time to make it worthy of study.

EDIT: Shockingly, the book I purchased at the Cahokia Visitors Center contains no references to the Book of Mormon. Not one!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/31/2020 03:37PM by Anziano Young.

Facts are all well and good, and often even useful, but mormons are guided by ꭛ﷻThe Spiritﷻ꭛, so there's that ...

*replied to wrong post*



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/01/2020 10:52AM by Anziano Young.

Those aren’t the mounds I normally associate with Mormonism.

The Kinderhook mound and Naples Mound 8 (Zelph mound) are intimately connected with Mormonism; both are Mississippian mounds, as are the mounds that previously stood where Nauvoo is today (and other cities; St. Louis was built on a site that contained 28 mounds).

If you are referring to the Hill Cumorah, that is a natural formation, not a man-made mound.

Mormon doctrine is more like the mounds my dog leaves in the back yard.

Yes, but he couldn't remember how to get home.

I read that and thought:"The people...who went forth became exceedingly expert in the working of cement; therefore they did build houses of cement..."

Sooooo....in the United States, which has been heavily explored and built on and farmed, and documented, they think that only trace evidence will show a BoM huge city *without* cement?

Hey, I'm strictly going off what the prime EllDeeEss book says...

Wayne May wanted a $10 donation to help him hasten his work but I already spent my $10 on a down payment for the Brooklyn Bridge.

Why can't the prophet simply ask God where it is?????

Maybe . . .

If Rusty asks God, and doesn't get an answer, then he has to admit that he's not God's prophet; God's mouthpiece to the world. As long as he doesn't "inquire of the Lord" then he's always got the chance that he is really the prophet even if he never hears from the Big Guy.

Of course that is like thinking as long as you don't go to the doctor so he/she can diagnose your illness, then you have no illness. Mormon thinking, you know?

I have a saying: Facts will lead u to the truth/Belief will lead u away from the truth.

Very applicable to many things we see were religions are involved.

We have the Bat Creek stone. Some Mormons still try to use it as proof of the BoM. I live 50 miles south.


From Wikipedia

The Bat Creek inscription (also called the Bat Creek stone or Bat Creek tablet) is an inscribed stone collected as part of a Native American burial mound excavation in Loudon County, Tennessee, in 1889 by the Smithsonian Bureau of Ethnology's Mound Survey, directed by entomologist Cyrus Thomas. The inscriptions were initially described as Cherokee, but in 2004, similarities to an inscription that was circulating in a Freemason book were discovered. Hoax expert Kenneth Feder says the peer reviewed work of Mary L. Kwas and Robert Mainfort has "demolished" any claims of the stone's authenticity.[1] Mainfort and Kwas themselves state "The Bat Creek stone is a fraud.

In a 1988 article in Tennessee Anthropologist, economist J. Huston McCulloch compared the letters of the inscription to both Paleo-Hebrew and Cherokee and concluded that the fit as Paleo-Hebrew was substantially better than Cherokee. He also reported a radiocarbon date on associated wood fragments consistent with Gordon's dating of the script. In a 1991 reply, archaeologists Robert Mainfort and Mary Kwas, relying on a communication from Semitist Frank Moore Cross, concluded that the inscription is not genuine paleo-Hebrew but rather a 19th-century forgery, with John W. Emmert, the Smithsonian agent who performed the excavation, the most likely responsible party. In a 1993 article in Biblical Archaeology Review, Semitist P. Kyle McCarter, Jr. stated that although the inscription "is not an authentic paleo-Hebrew inscription," it "clearly imitates one in certain features," and does contain "an intelligible sequence of five letters -- too much for coincidence." McCarter concluded, "It seems probable that we are dealing here not with a coincidental similarity but with a fraud."[6]

I thought it was somewhere around Bakersfield, CA.

You mean the greatest city of ancient America is buried beneath the wind blown sands of Oildale!?

Where do I send my 10%?

the Moon Quakers invited the Zarahemalites (Zarahemilians?) to re-locate, and it seemed a good idea at the time; Tapirs were used to move their goods, their buildings, Everything!!

Dr. Andrew White (anthropological archaeologist) had some things to say about this on his blog.


Did You Know that Heartland Mormons are Planning on Excavating a Hopewell Site in Iowa?
https://www.andywhiteanthropology.com/blog/did-you-know-that-heartland-mormons-are-planning-on-excavating-a-hopewell-site-in-iowa


Photos from the "Zarahemla Temple" Excavation
https://www.andywhiteanthropology.com/blog/photos-from-the-zarahemla-temple-excavation