No "Nephites" Necessary.

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https://www.historyhaven.com/documents/trade_americas.pdf

Trade Routes in the Americas before Columbus

Compared with Eurasia, the development of trade routes in
the pre-Columbian Americas was constrained by the fact that
the largest states, such as the Aztec and Inca empires, arose in
inland settings, not along major rivers, and that the hemisphere
lacked domesticated pack animals, except for llamas and relat-
ed camelids of the Andes. The Mississippi, Amazon and other
major rivers served as important arteries for commerce and
cultural exchange. Yet with no large early riverine civiliza-
tions stimulating maritime trade, as the Egyptians did in the
Mediterranean and Red Sea, seafaring of the early Americas
remained relatively small scale and confined to coasts. Given
these limitations, pre-Columbian peoples developed ingen-
ious means for connecting vast areas through trade networks,
including the vertical economies that integrated mountainous
highlands and tropical lowlands in Andean South America and
Mesoamerica, and the continental-scale exchange centred on
Mississippian North America. This overview selectively high-
lights and compares a few of these networks, their organization
and developmental trajectories.


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Thanks, it looks fascinating. I have downloaded it.

The Aztec homeland ("Aztlan") location is unknown, but some clues point to a lake in California.


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https://www.thoughtco.com/aztlan-the-mythical-homeland-169913

Aztlán (also spelled Aztlan or sometimes Aztalan) is the name of the mythical homeland of the Aztecs, the ancient Mesoamerican civilization also known as the Mexica. According to their origin myth, the Mexica left Aztlan at the behest of their god/ruler Huitzilopochtli, to find a new home in the Valley of Mexico. In the Nahua language, Aztlan means “the Place of Whiteness” or “the Place of the Heron.” Whether it was a real place or not is open to question.

What Aztlan Was Like

According to the various Mexica versions of the stories, their homeland Aztlan was a luxurious and delightful place located on a large lake, where everyone was immortal and lived happily among abundant resources. There was a steep hill called Colhuacan in the middle of the lake, and in the hill were caves and caverns known collectively as Chicomoztoc, where the ancestors of the Aztec lived. The land was filled with vast quantities of ducks, herons, and other waterfowl; red and yellow birds sang incessantly; great and beautiful fish swam in the waters and shade trees lined the banks.

At Aztlan, the people fished from canoes and tended their floating gardens of maize, peppers, beans, amaranth, and tomatoes. But when they left their homeland, everything turned against them, the weeds bit them, the rocks wounded them, the fields were filled with thistles and spines. They wandered in a land filled with vipers, poisonous lizards, and dangerous wild animals before reaching their home to build their place of destiny, Tenochtitlan.


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Also fascinating - because it's serious ;-). Thanks again.

Are you going to break into a Linda Ronstadt song?

bradley Wrote:
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> Are you going to break into a Linda Ronstadt song?

Nah, this song is a better choice to describe the Mormon cult:

Fleetwood Mac - "Little Lies" (1987)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCGD9dT12C0