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My TBM brother sent me this email. I’m sure he thinks this is the kind of thing that will help out an unorthodox mormon like myself. I’m pretty skeptical, especially since he doesn’t even have a name or any kind of reference. Sounds more like mormon legend than fact to me, plus if it is 30 years old I think people would have heard about it. Anyway – anybody else heard of such a story? Here is his email.
“…Anyway, also as part of our youth conference we had a archeologist give a
brief fireside about the possiblility (maybe probability) that the final
battles of the book of mormon occurred in Kentucky. There is an island in a
river there that they discovered bones piled about 4 feet deep across the
entire island. The bone measurements do not belong to any of the native
tribes of indians that occupied the area in the past (based on density and
length measurements), but do match very closely to the bone structure found
in ancient hebrew crypts. The local tribes had a valley in Kentucky that
they avoided and warned Daniel Boone and other white trappers to stay away
from because their customs and stories said the valley was “cursed with
blood” from ancient terrible battles. Lots of artifacts have been found
that tie the area to ancient civilizations of some parts of central america
and isreal/middle eastern cultures. Really interesting stuff. The
archeologist is a lady named Nibley. She was doing her thesis on Daniel Boone and the legends I
mentioned above about thirty years ago and went to mail it to some
professors and ran into missionaries in the post office with a poster that
showed “Christ in America”. She decided she would have to include the
“Mormon’s legend” as a possible but not probable answer to the mystery, and
as she was studying the silly mormon book, she became convinced it made more
sense than any of the other possibilities… And was eventually converted
and spent time at BYU and in the BYU branch in Jeruselem. Trying to find more info about her thesis and studies. – Kev”
Sounds like a mormon legend to me. We’d need sources to look into it further, and I’m no expert in this area, but I just know people have been looking for some archeological evidences for many many years to help support the Book of Mormon and nothing seems to stand up…to the point now that many theories it wasn’t even in North America sound plausible to me. If this was substantive…I think it would have been spread pretty wildly, probably over the pulpit in conference.
Sounds like someone pulling a Paul H Dunn…trying to inspire, but not using real facts.
Sounds like one of those e-mail stories that I despise. I know a man who is convinced that the Book of Mormon occurred in the Midwest – and particularly in Missouri and Illinois.
We have a Book of Mormon geography “expert” (
I haven’t heard of this particular theory; my first inclination is to think that it may be similar to Rodney Meldrum’s Theory. In a nutshell, Meldrum believes that Nephi landed near New Orleans, and the River Sidon is the Mississippi River (perhaps Missouri and/or Ohio too.) His geography model would be closest to this story. I’m always collecting theories like this–if you can get more info that I can track down, I’d love to hear more about it, but it could be an email hoax like Ray says. I’ve posted many items on Book of Mormon geography theories–I’m aware of over 100 theories currently in places as diverse as the Great Lakes Region, the Baja Peninsula, the Malay Peninsula, Africa, South America (Peru), and of course Central America. Wikipedia has a short list that needs to be updated desperately–I need to get around to updating it. You can see this list at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_Book_of_Mormon_geographical_setting http://mormonmatters.org/2009/04/20/unconventional-book-of-mormon-geography-theories/ Thanks for the info and the link — when I get a name of the archeologist or more details I will let you know. Wow MH, I had no idea there were so many. Not quite as many as Atlantis yet (which has been located everywhere!). I’m surprised Australia hasn’t been mentioned yet, or even New Zealand.
The funny about Atlantis is that I had a guy tell me that it is in the South China Sea right by the Malay Peninsula! Apparently some PhD has put a lot of time and effort into Atlantis, and enjoyed my post about Malay. I just came across a map of Theodore Brandley that you might be interested in. Brandley proposes a hemispheric model for the Book of Mormon, encompassing much of the United States. He says the Jaredites landed in Massachusetts (near the Pilgrim’s landing site), the Land of Moroni is in North Florida, and Bountiful seems to be near the Blue Ridge Mountains (close to Kentucky I believe.) (The model shows some similarities to Meldrum’s model, though it appears to show more lands in the East than Meldrum does.) Check it out. http://www.bookofmormongeography.org/theodore-brandley-model.jpg Thanks for the maps – I have browse your links, and am looking forward to reading it more thoroughly when I get some time. Very interesting theories. Now if we could just find some EVIDENCE. The lack of any substantial archeological evidence is aggravating to me. MH – just spent an hour and read all the links. Great stuff. I like the Malay idea you posted on mormonmatters. Something about it just works for me – I probably need to dig into further. Thanks for the info
Yes CWald, I agree that the archaeology is a bit aggravating, but I will mention that there are some VERY promising finds about the Book of Mormon in Yemen. You may recall that Lehi invited Ishmael and his daughters on the journey to the New World. Ishmael died in a place called Nahom, and it was discovered in 1994. See http://www.mormonheretic.org/2009/01/28/nahom-archeaological-evidence-of-book-of-mormon/ There are also 2 ideal candidates for Nephi’s harbor in Yemen. One is an ancient shipbuilding harbor called Khor Rhori–George Potter has done some fantastic work there and you can see more at his website
http://nephiproject.com ; another site is promoted by Warren Aston of BYU called Wadi Sayq that is also a good candidate. Seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology_and_the_Book_of_Mormon#Old_World_setting And lest you think the Bible is on solid ground archaeologically, I recently did a post on the Exodus. You might enjoy this quote:
Quote:During Passover celebrations in 2001, Rabbi David Wolpe created international headlines in Israel by proclaiming to his Jewish congregation in Los Angeles, “the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all.”
The Exodus has many similar problems as the Book of Mormon. For example, we don’t even really know where Mount Sinai is, and there are some scholars who believe the Exodus story is a complete myth. Of course, there are others who believe the Exodus story and try to explain it. It’s a really long post, but if you’re interested, go to
http://www.mormonheretic.org/2010/04/11/questions-about-the-exodus/ I think it also depends on how literal we are with the BoM. Either we see it as an allegory or parable etc, in which case I’d suggest it was in and around JS’ section of the Great Lakes.
Or if we are more literal, it could probably be anywhere. 3 Nephi towards the end claims that a lot of the locations went under the sea, or were destroyed in earthquakes.
If we’re looking for narrow necks of land, well, they’re in a number of places that I can think of. Cape York Peninsula, New Zealand, Kamchatka, Patagonia, Central America, Florida, BC-Washington-Oregon, the British Isles and Scandinavia, the area in and around Lake Victoria and modern day Somalia etc
I often wonder if the river referred to is in the area around Eilat/Aqaba. It was ?2 or ?3 days travel from Jerusalem, and on the Red Sea at the end of the Gulf of Aqaba. Anyone going there would have to skirt the Negev desert from round about Beersheba. I have taken that trip myself in someone’s car, it’s barren country, with some kibbutzim in it. There is a wadi on the Israel-Jordan border round here. Maybe at one time it flowed more often (climate change over the centuries has to be taken into account. There are paintings from the nearby Sahara which show it was once much more green than it is now).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabah 
[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Wadi_Aravah_Sunset_Israel_Jordan.jpg [/img] I gotta say: bones on the surface in a wet climate like Kentucky would not last since Book of Mormon times. I have the same issue with the story of the skeleton they found, I think it was during Zion’s Camp, and Joseph Smith pronounced him to be a BofM character, Ziff, I think it was. No way that surface bones in that climate lasted that long.
Similar vein to the ‘altar’ found at Adam-Ondi-Ahman. Not six thousand years old. Sorry.
Thought I would post this link from the SLT about the theory of the BofM location east of the Mississippi. kind of an old news article (March 31), but it was new to me when I came across it today. http://www.sltrib.com/faith/ci_14750506http://www.sltrib.com/faith/ci_14750506” class=”bbcode_url”>
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