Heap Mounds and Tower Pyramids

People ask "If the Book of Mormon happened in Mesoamerica, why does the text not contain the word 'pyramid' since stepped pyramids were ubiquitous anciently in the region?" Actually, the text does describe stepped pyramids. It calls them 'towers.' The term 'tower' appears 30 times in the Book of Mormon. How do we know that a tower in Nephite and Jaredite parlance was a stepped pyramid? Because 9 of the 30 instances of 'tower' in the text refer to the famous Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:3-5) which almost everyone recognizes was based on a Mesopotamian ziggurat or stepped pyramid.

Great Ziggurat of Ur, Southern Iraq

Stepped pyramids were built in many places around the world. Some of the more famous that can be visited today include:

• Calakmul, Campeche, Mexico
• Candi Sukuh, Mount Lawu, Indonesia
• Caracol, Belize
• Chogha Zanbil, Iran
• Djosser, Saqqara, Egypt
• El Castillo, Yucatan, Mexico
• Great Ziggurat of Ur, Iraq
• Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuacan, Mexico
• Tikal, Guatemala

Tikal Temple 1, Guatemala

Since the Bible and the Book of Mormon both call a Mesopotamian stepped pyramid a "tower" as in Mosiah 28:17 we can be quite certain that Nephites and Lamanites would have called the very similar Mesoamerican stepped pyramids "towers" as in Alma 48:1. In this verse, Lamanite towers were clearly dominant urban structures.

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Does the term 'mound' appear in the Book of Mormon? No. But the word 'heap' or a variant does 7 times in contexts that precisely match what we know of mortuary tumuli or surface earthworks worldwide. See for example, Alma 2:38, Alma 16:11, Alma 28:11, Alma 50:1, Mormon 2:15, Ether 10:23 and Ether 11:6. See the blog article "Mounds" for additional information on the global distribution of the simple structures the Book of Mormon text calls "heaps."

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We would expect to find Book of Mormon lands in a region such as Mesoamerica that has both towers and heaps.

El Pital, Veracruz, Mexico

Coastal El Pital is one of many sites in Mesoamerica that combine stepped stone pyramids with earthen burial mounds. 

Tamtoc, San Luis Potosi, Mexico

Huastec Tamtoc is another.