My friend, Warren Aston, sent me some information a few days ago about modelers who posit Book of Mormon lands covering about 1.5 million square miles. The entire contiguous US is about 3.1 million square miles (about the size of Australia), so these Book of Mormon geographers envision a territory about half the size of the lower 48. A land mass that large is simply out of the question. The text specifies distance in days of travel and the modest numbers it reports (1 day Helaman 4:7, 1.5 days Alma 22:32, 3 days Alma 8:6, 8 days Mosiah 23:3, 12 days Mosiah 24:25) are inconsistent with a surface area of 1.5 million square miles. Something on the order of 150,000 - 300,000 square miles is much more likely.
Those of us who locate Book of Mormon lands in Mesoamerica are generally comfortable with surface areas in the 150K to 300K range. This is the approximate extent of Mesoamerica.
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| Mesoamerica in White |
The white area in the map above is 342K square miles or 887K square kilometers. The red line is the longest straight line distance between any two points in the area. It is 1,200 miles or 1,932 kilometers in length. If the Book of Mormon happened in this space, as many believe, the text is describing a surface area with a maximum extent of about 300K square miles since the land far to the north was beyond Nephite terra cognita (3 Nephi 7:12, 13). Any blank spots on the Nephite map such as large tracts of wilderness could reduce the size of this area, so 150K square miles is still in the ballpark.
