Click to enlarge.
However, it does suggest that the history of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica isn’t yet perfectly known, and that the archaeological record isn’t yet complete:
Heck, I could have told you that.
It’s true even of the Middle East — which is far better documented, quite a bit better known, topographically easier — so how could it not be so of the Americas?
My experience in Mesoamerica is quite limited. But I’ve spent some time at archaeological digs there, and paddling along rivers and walking through jungles to get to them, and camping there beside rivers whose water rose so rapidly that we had to abandon our campsite, and so forth. It’s quite different from the mostly “clean” and clear deserts of the Middle East, where “tells” or archaeological mounds are sometimes visible from a distance, at first glance.
The Mesoamericanists with whom I’ve spoken tell of excavating a building one year, and then having to re-excavate it the next year because the trees had overgrown their site in the intervening months. Once or twice, we walked within ten or fifteen feet of a small pyramid, which would have passed unnoticed had our guide not pointed it out to us. I can easily understand the people in the Book of Mormon (particularly in Mosiah) who go out into the wilderness and get completely lost.
Several people have brought this article to my attention, and I thank them. I’d thank them by name, except that I can’t remember all of those who wrote to me about it and I don’t want to leave anybody out. (So, to be equal, I leave everybody out!)
Posted from Monterey, California
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