Ancient Treaty AD 353

Abstract: An alliance celebrated on February 26, AD 353 at the Maya site of Tortuguero in modern Tabasco may be the same treaty the Nephites entered into with the Lamanites and the Gadianton robbers ca. AD 350 as recorded in Mormon 2:28.

Tortuguero is one of the westernmost Maya sites, about 20 km SE of Macuspana, Tabasco. It is 46 km NW of Palenque, Chiapas, and 94 km NW of Tonina, Chiapas. It is 107 km SE of Comalcalco, Tabasco, which is generally regarded as the westernmost Maya site. As with all images on this blog, click to enlarge.

Tortuguero and Environs

Tortuguero Monument 6 is a well-known stela from the site. Most of the stone carving is housed today in the Carlos Pellicer Museum in Villahermosa. One fragment from the stela is housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Monument 6 gained notoriety in the years leading up to 2012 because it references the 13-Baktun period ending event on 13.0.0.0.0 (Winter Solstice, December 21, 2012). Maya long count dates in this article are shown in standard baktun (144,000 days), katun (7,200 days), tun (360 days), uinal (20 days), kin (1 day) format. Gregorian dates are from the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of the American Indian Maya Calendar Converter. 

Monument 6 celebrates a structure dedication event held on January 11, 669 in the latter part of the reign of Balaam Ajaw who ruled Tortuguero from AD 644 - 679. Key early events in Balaam Ajaw's reign as recorded on Monument 6 include:

• 9.10.11.3.9 (2/06/644) An alliance facilitated by a marriage.
• 9.10.11.3.10 (2/07/644) Balaam Ajaw's accession to the throne.
• 9.10.11.9.6 (5/30/644) First war against a rival kingdom.
• 9.10.17.2.14 (12/18/649) Major war against Comalcalco that resulted in "blood became a lake, skulls became a mountain".

This information is from Sven Gronemeyer and Barbara MacLeod, "What Could Happen in 2012: A Re-analysis of the 13-Bak'tun Prophecy on Tortuguero Monument 6," Wayeb Notes, No. 34, 2010.

One of Balaam Ajaw's objectives in erecting Monument 6 was to legitimize his lineage and power over a large expanse of time. Thus, the monument contemplates a far-off event more than a millennium in the future. The Maya also observed cycles in the passage of time. In that vein, the AD 644 alliance recalled another treaty (literally "bound the word") reached long-ago on 8.15.16.0.5 (2/26/353) that Gronemeyer and MacLeod describe as "a great political accord both worthy of distant recall, yet impersonal, and a milestone in the collective memory of the Baakiil lineage."

In Mormon 2:28-29 the Nephites negotiated a treaty with 1) the Lamanites and 2) the robbers of Gadianton which ended Nephite presence in the land southward and bought the doomed nation 10 years of temporary peace. This treaty was finalized ca. AD 350. Mormon's Codex (John L. Sorenson's apt name for the Book of Mormon) and Tortuguero Monument 6 may be describing the same political agreement. A few reasons this makes some sense:

1. Mormon gathered the Nephites into the city of Desolation on the extreme southern border of the land northward (Mormon 3:5-7). The Book of Mormon map with the highest degree of fit to the text (100% satisfaction of 247 basic criteria) correlates the city of Desolation with El Paredon on the shores of Mar Muerto in Chiapas. If Paredon is Desolation, then the western Maya in Tonina (216 km distant) or Tortuguero (230 km distant) could have been part of the Lamanites.

2. Numerous lines of reasoning support the idea that the Gadianton Robbers could have been Teotihuacanos. See the blog articles "Robbers and Lamanites" and "Notes on the Maya and Teotihuacan." Right at the time Tortuguero Monument 6 reports a political agreement (AD 353), Teotihuacan influence was spreading throughout the Maya area. Close to AD 350 Maya elites living in Teotihuacan suffered persecution and death. Then in AD 378 (near the time of the Nephite demise at Cumorah) military emissaries allied with Teotihuacan forced regime change in Tikal. Teotihuacan influence is known from Palenque and Panhale which are geographically close to Tortuguero. See the lecture David Stuart gave at Dumbarton Oaks on December 1, 2022 entitled Rulers from the West: Teotihuacan in Maya History and Politics.  See also Armando Anaya H., Peter Mathews, and Stanley Guenter, "A New Inscribed Wooden Box from Southern Mexico" in Mesoweb Reports, August 27, 2001. If the Gadiantons were Teotihuacanos, then the AD 353 treaty ratified at Tortuguero could have involved them.

3. The Tortuguero AD 644 alliance was followed by war, then a few years later by a decisive war that inflicted heavy casualties on Comalcalco. In the cyclical way the Maya viewed time, the AD 353 alliance could also have presaged war. Monument 6 does not explicitly mention war following the AD 353 accord, but the text has many allusions to war as Gronemeyer and MacLeod point out. So, if the AD 353 alliance did involve the Nephites, the massive destruction at Ramah/Cumorah ca. AD 385 could be implied. The Book of Mormon map with the highest degree of fit to the text correlates Ramah/Cumorah with Cerro San Martin Pajapan in the eastern Tuxtlas of southern Veracruz. Pajapan is 160 straight line kilometers due west of Comalcalco. See the blog article Ramah/Cumorah.

There are enough if/then conditionals in this logic chain to make this correlation tentative, but the ca. AD 350 treaty mentioned in Mormon 2:28-29 is thoroughly plausible. Its in a time and place when far-flung projections of military force were creating new alignments of power between allies and enemies. At minimum the Book of Mormon treaty has a known contemporaneous parallel in the historical record of the Tortuguero royal dynasty.