Talk:Archaeology and the Book of Mormon/Archive 9

"Several hundred years"
The intro, on C-mas day 12/15/19, refers to B of M civilization as being over several hundred years. This is an understatement; it's incorrect. Isn't "several" a synonym for "a few?" More than 2 and less than 10? B of M speaks of peoples ranging from about 2000 yrs BC to "several hundred" years after Christ 4-500. Why don't we delete "several hundred" and put in "at least 2500?"Moabalan (talk) 17:09, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Several hundred is purposely vague because the main narrative from 1 Nephi through the end only happens over the course of less than a thousand years. The narrative for the pre-Nephi period is only brief and told as a narrative within the narrative by refugees.  It's hardly on the same level of narrative as the main timeline.  Presenting 2000 years as the timeline for the BOM is disingenuous at best since it implies to the casual reader that it is a more exhaustive piece of fictional history than it is.  "Several hundred years" maintains a certain ambiguity in the Wikipedia text for those who might want to include the barely passing reference to the period before Nephi.  --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 15:29, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Harvard reference Sorenson 1984
The phrase "and this view has been published in the official church magazine, Ensign." has a link to a Harvard citation, which previously gave an in-line error but linked to a source that looked like the right one. An editor has recently tried to fix it, and now the error is gone but so is the second part of the citation - the link just jumps to a dead link saying "Sorenson" further down the page and there's no way to see which Sorenson link it refers to. I don't (yet) understand the Harvard citation template well enough to fix it, so I'll revert it for now. Apologies to ‎ Mechachleopteryx - I hope you or someone else will manage to fix it. Pastychomper (talk) 08:22, 15 October 2021 (UTC)


 * @Pastychomper Now fixed. The issue was that there were two sources that match the description in the reference (Sorenson 1984) and the software that implements harv / sfn did not know which to link to.  Having looked at the articles it was clear that the first was meant, so I have disambiguated the dates as recommended in Template:Harvard citation.  Most of my editing is currently tidying this sort of issue with short footnotes, so feel free to drop me a line if you hit another one and can't work out how to fix it.  Best, Wham2001 (talk) 08:47, 16 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Pastychomper (talk) 09:14, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Lede
I am of the opinion that the wording in the second sentence in the lede is questionable, to say the least: "Although some historians and archaeologists consider the book to be an anachronistic invention of Joseph Smith, many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and other denominations of the Latter Day Saint movement believe that it describes ancient historical events in the Americas." Is there any evidence that even a small minority of non-LDS-movement historians and archaeologists believe that the Book of Mormon is any sort of accurate description of ancient history? I very much doubt it. And without such evidence, why 'some'? Why is Wikipedia implying that there is some sort of academic debate over this? This clearly needs rewording. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:09, 17 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Looking at the article history, 'some' seems to have been added as above by an anon IP in July this year, with no discussion.  Given the above issues, I'm removing it. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:28, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, not considered credible by historians, archaeologists and linguists, only by some proponents, of course. Thanks for noticing, — Paleo  Neonate  – 14:58, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the correction. Obviously, this page needs to be watched by non-mormons since some mormons are bothered that mainstream science considers their religion as bunk and they come here to distort reality. Vmelkon (talk) 02:33, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Dubious
"Archaeological studies in the New World that tie Book of Mormon places and peoples to real world locations and civilizations are incredibly difficult since there are generally no landmarks defined in the Book of Mormon that can unambiguously identify real world locations."

It would seem to me that this is inaccurate - or at least highly debatable - as the Hill Cumorah seems to be as close to a landmark that can "unambiguously identify real world locations" as one could want. I understand the "two Cumorahs" hypothesis is popular among some, but I don't think that the article should state this so categorically. Not to mention that this is arguably a non-sequitur: standard archeological research doesn't start with *any* landmarks to help them out so why should this make the process "incredibly difficult." Lastly, of course, I'd love to see a citation.

Does anyone object if I simply strike this sentence? Trevdna (talk) 17:44, 26 September 2023 (UTC)


 * You are looking in the wrong place. Look in North America. You won't find much evidence though because Most of it was destroyed by the government to show that the Native Americans are savage, or were destroyed by accident by farmers when creating farmland. 38.141.37.227 (talk) 21:03, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm not looking anywhere, myself. I'm just here to write an encyclopedia. Cheers! Trevdna (talk) 15:54, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Joseph Smith himself identified several locations across North America as specific locations in the Book of Mormon. For example, when he found a skull in the midwest, Smith purported to identify the individual as a Lamanite who was killed in the final wars that exterminated the Nephites. Less definitively, Smith commanded that the banks of the river across from Nauvoo should be called "Zarahemla". Finally, Smith himself was very clear that the Palmyra hill was the location of the last battle of the Nephites. The two Cumorahs theory is a post-hoc explanation after it because definitive that no ancient battlefield or even stone box was ever present on and around the hill. There had previously been a story recounted by Brigham Young and otheres about Smith finding an even larger trove of plates in a cave that magically opened to him . However, this story has been downplayed and discredited by the church and its adherents for many decades now after it became clear that the hill is a drumlin (a gravel pile deposited by a glacier) and a cave is physically impossible.
 * Smith was also extremely clear on several occasions, not to mention the Book of Mormon itself, that the entire western hemisphere is where the events of the Book of Mormon took place. All the apologia since has had to discredit his declarations because the archeology so decidedly discredits Smith.
 * I say strike it. Frogontrombone (talk) 21:43, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Anachronisms
There is already a whole page for Anachronisms in the Book of Mormon and it seems redundant to have so much on this page. Before I do anything, does anyone have thoughts on moving any information not already there to the Anachronisms page? I could leave a condensed summary on this Archaeology page linking to Anachronisms. Feel free to leave feedback or alternate suggestions! I'm not thinking to move everything, probably things like the animals. Adri-at-BYU (talk) 19:47, 5 March 2024 (UTC)


 * We should definitely remove the apologetics from that part of the article. But removing this section would detract from the article. If we aren't talking about what hasn't been found, what are we talking about? Big Money Threepwood (talk) 08:22, 6 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Yes it would detract from this article in the sense of reducing it considerably, but I don't see a problem with that. Wikipedia as a whole is the project we're trying to improve, we don't need to pad one page with a slightly condensed version of another page just to make the first page look good. I agree the section is redundant, and it requires duplicated effort to keep both pages current and consistent.


 * Talking of duplicated effort, this suggestion has been made before - I was involved in a discussion in 2018, and an archive search tells me that wasn't the first. Small improvements have been made but there has never (yet?) been enough consensus to fix the underlying problem, which is the large overlap in scope between the two pages.


 * We could do with reaching some kind of consensus here. Do we carry on as it is? Merge the two pages under one heading? Delete the duplicated parts from this page or the other? How about, replace the Anachronisms section here with a one-paragraph summary, and move it up the page so it's more obvious that this is not the only archaeology-related Book of Mormon page? Pastychomper (talk) 15:45, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
 * This article is, at least in name, about archaeology. Does any of the content here discuss actual archaeology? I see the 19th century findings section doesn't discuss anything found in the 19th century for example.
 * If this article is purely a duplicate of one or more, we are better moving information into appropriate articles and winding this one down. On the other hand, if someone has sources about archaeology and not anachronisms, this article may be able to be built into the expected direction. Big Money Threepwood (talk) 15:53, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
 * There are also pages for Historicity of the Book of Mormon and Proposed Book of Mormon geographical setting as well as the anachronisms one, and among those, a lot of content from this archaeology page is covered. What I'm not sure about placing from this page onto others is the old world archaeology section, cultural belief section and information from Latter-day Saints and Book of Mormon Archaeology section. Maybe the page can start with those. The stuff about Mound Builder fiction might belong better on another page, or it could be organized differently. I recognize my bias (so please correct me if needed), but I have been source checking and this page feels at times like a synthesis essay than an encyclopedia article presenting relevant coverage on archaeology and the BoM Adri-at-BYU (talk) 19:30, 6 March 2024 (UTC)