The Book of Mormon and Mesoamerican Directionality

The Book of Mormon and Mesoamerican Directionality

Summary: Since the Book of Mormon was first published, believers in it have searched for where in the Americas it might have taken place. Today, most scholars of the Book of Mormon who believe in its divine origins place the book in Mesoamerica—what today looks like the southern part of Mexico and northern Guatemala. Critics have turned their attention to this area to see if they can debunk any major correlations cited by apologists as supporting Mesoamerica as the Book of Mormon’s geography.

One of the problems that critics cite is the supposed need to twist the Book of Mormon’s geography to fit the Mesoamerican landscape. The late John Sorenson was the foremost advocate of the Mesoamerican geography for the Book of Mormon. Deanne G. Matheny, a lawyer with a Ph.D in anthropology from the University of Utah, articulated a problem with Sorenson’s model:

The most fundamental geographical problem associated with Sorenson’s model has to do with issues of directionality. . . . In order for his model to fit the geography of Mesoamerica, one must assume that the Nephites had a system of directions with cardinal directions skewed “45 degrees or more” off of the usually observed cardinals. . . . In other words, the whole directional card must be shifted more than 60 degrees to the west for this model to fit the geography of the chosen area. Otherwise, as Vogel has pointed out, the land north will be on the west, the land south on the east, and so forth. . . . Making this shift in directions creates its own set of problems, however, because in such a Nephite directional system the sun would come up in the south and set in the north.

When reconstructing a map of the Book of Mormon, most are inclined to draw a map something like this where ‘the Sea East’ and ‘the Sea West’ are on the cardinal directions that we recognize today in Western societies especially:

Figure 1. Hypothetical map of the Book of Mormon.

However, John Sorenson’s model runs into a problem since Mesoamerica today is situated like this where its seas look more like they lie on the north and south.

Figure 2. The geography of Mesoamerica. Public domain.

Thus, how does one believe that this is the land where the Book of Mormon took place when there is such an obvious error in the positioning of the seas?

This issue has been addressed by Book of Mormon scholar Brant A. Gardner and Latter-day Saint apologist Michael R. Ash. This article relies on their work.

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Mesoamerican Center

The first thing to recognize is that, along with the other four major directions, Mesoamericans placed the center as part of their directional scheme. Where the center actually is depends primarily upon the people that decide where the center is. For a Mesoamerican city, that city and its inhabitants would have conceived of the city’s center as the center of geography. Thus, the center direction shifts depending on the residence of the Mesoamerican you would speak to.

Mesoamerican Conception of Direction

The next important thing to learn is that Mesoamericans did not conceive of directions in a ‘+’ shape like we do today. Instead, Mesoamericans conceived of directions more like an ‘x’ shape. They did not typically have names for south, north, east, and west, but they did conceive of those directions. They just gave different names to them. The ‘east’ direction was conceptualized most likely by tracing the path of the sun from sunrise to sunset from equinox to equinox. This tracing naturally creates a wedge shape since the earth tilts on its axis from equinox to equinox and thus, from the perspective of those here on earth, the sun moves throughout the year in relation to where it appears to rise and where it appears to set.

Gardner provides the following figure in his article and notes, “The figure on the right indicates the solstitial path. This was often conceptually regularized into the pattern on the left.”

Figure 3. Brant Gardner's reconstruction of Mesoamerican conception of directionality.

Ancient Hebrew Conception of Direction

The Mesoamericans were not alone in conceiving of direction this way. Before the magnetic compass, ancient peoples typically used the sun as their tool of orientation. The late William J. Hamblin, a professor of political science at Brigham Young University, wrote:

The Hebrews, like most Semitic peoples, oriented themselves by facing east, toward the rising sun. Thus east in Hebrew was simply front (qedem), with south as right (yamîn), north as left(śemôl), and west as rear (achôr) or “sea” (yam). . . .

The Egyptians oriented themselves by facing south, toward the source of the Nile. “One of the terms for ‘south’ [in Egyptian] is also a term for ‘face’; the usual word for ‘north’ is probably related to a word which means the ‘back of the head.’” The word for eastis the same as for left, and west is the same word as right.

Having now gained an understanding of how the ancients conceived of direction, we can now apply that to the Book of Mormon.

Applying the Ancient Conception of Direction to the Book of Mormon

Gardner has helpfully made that application and its results are tantalizing. The following is how those living in the land of Nephi would have conceived of direction.

Figure 4. Brant Gardner's reconstruction of direction from the perspective of one who lives in the land of Nephi.

The following his how those living in the land of Bountiful would have conceived of direction.

Figure 5. Brant Gardner's reconstruction of direction from the perspective of one who lives in the land of Bountiful.

One can thus easily see how Mesoamericans could have talked about the Pacific Ocean on the "west" side and the Gulf of Mexico (aka "Gulf of America") and Caribbean Sea on the "east" side as the sea east and the sea west. Gardner proposes—instead of ‘sea east’ and ‘sea west’ being formal, proper names—that ‘sea east’ and ‘sea west’ be viewed as designations (i.e. “the sea which is to the east”).

This conceptual scheme makes sense of all the data and preserves Mesoamerica as a viable candidate for Book of Mormon geography.

Notes