Martin Harris Biography

The first serious biography of Martin Harris is now available from BYU Studies.

Martin Harris (1783 - 1875)

Written by seasoned historians Susan Easton Black and Larry C. Porter, this book tells the story of a man who conversed with an angel and had prophetic revelations directed personally to him D&C 5. Without Martin's timely $50 ($1,225 in 2017 dollars) here and $3,000 ($73,536 in 2017 dollars) there, we would not have the Book of Mormon as we enjoy it today. Martin was a man subject to the same desires & appetites we all share. He became disenchanted with the Prophet Joseph and fell away from the Church for a season, returning to the fold late in life.

This new biography tells his fascinating story in vivid detail with a great deal of new material that has never been published before.

Roman Figurine Head in Ancient Mexico

I was driving through central Mexico last year with my archaeologist friend, Javier Tovar, who lives in Atotonilco de Tula, Hidalgo.

Atotonilco de Tula, Hidalgo, 65 Kilometers North of Mexico City

Javier got his degree in archaeology through INAH's program at UNAM. We visited as we drove and he told me a stirring story. One of his classmates at INAH was a Bulgarian named Romeo Hristov who championed ancient transoceanic contacts much to the chagrin of most Mexican archaeologists who wanted their beloved Olmecs, Maya, and Aztecs to have developed without external influences of any kind. It was a matter of national pride. The general attitude was "Our ancients did not need outside help." This is classic isolationist thinking, aka independent inventionism, and it has been the prevalent viewpoint in Americanist studies since the time of Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826) and Alexander von Humboldt (1769 - 1859).

By force of will and dogged persistence, Hristov located in the vast INAH artifact collection a long-misplaced figurine head recovered by professional archaeologists in a controlled excavation at the site of Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca in 1933.

Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca, Mexico, 60 Kilometers West of Mexico City

Found in an unambiguous pre-Hispanic context, this head was stylistically identified as Roman from the second century AD by a number of competent classicists. Hristov had a tiny sample of the ceramic material dated via thermoluminescence at the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg, Germany. The date came back 1780 plus or minus 400 years before present, corroborating the second century AD classification.

Calixtlahuaca Head Frontal View
Photo by Javier Tovar

This full-bearded find was described in an article written by Romeo Hristov and Santiago Genovés entitled "Mesoamerican Evidence of Pre-Columbian Transoceanic Contacts," published in Ancient Mesoamerica, 10 (1999), pp. 207 - 213. The same authors published a Spanish version of their article entitled "Viajes transatlánticos antes de Colón" in Arqueología mexicana 6/33 (1998) pp. 48-53.

Calixtlahuaca Head, Side View, Photo by Javier Tovar

Hristov has continued his research in the Canary Islands where a Roman colony is now attested on Lanzarote between the first and fourth centuries AD. Hristov got some support for his research from FARMS and John L. Sorenson mentions this find in Mormon's Codex (Salt Lake City: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship and Deseret Book, 2013) p. 239. Naysayers have attempted to explain this piece away but their speculations have been unpersuasive in light of Hristov's meticulous scholarship over many years.

This piece was excavated by a credentialed archaeologist, José García Peyón.
It was found in-situ in a dig authorized by the appropriate Mexican governmental agency at the time, el Departamento de Monumentos Artísticos, Arqueológicos, e Históricos de la Secretaría de Educación Pública. It was stored in the collection of the Museo Nacional de Antropología for decades, mis-classified as a colonial era artifact. It was eventually located and since then has been championed by another credentialed archaeologist, Romeo Hristov. Dating tests appropriate to the material (ceramic) were run by one of the most respected physics labs in the world, the Max Planck Institute.