1830 Americas

Occasionally Latter-day Saints reference modern nations in Book of Mormon discussions. It is instructive to understand what the Americas looked like in March 1830 when the text first went on  sale to the public.

Sovereign Nations in the Americas in 1830

The white area represents the 24 states of the United States of America. The blue area represents Mexico. The red area represents the Federal Republic of Central America. The green area represents Great Colombia. All of modern-day Canada was a British colony as was Belize, then called British Honduras. The territory in modern-day Washington, Oregon, and Idaho was contested between Great Britain and the US, as was northern Maine.

How the countries ranked in approximate area:

1. Mexico 4.4 million square kilometers

2. Great Colombia 2.8 million square kilometers

3. United States 2.2 million square kilometers

4. Federal Republic of Central America 429,000 square kilometers

How the countries ranked in estimated population:

1. United States 13 million

2. Mexico 6 million

3. Great Colombia 2 million

4. Federal Republic of Central America 1 million

Year the countries declared independence:

1. United States 1776

2. Great Colombia 1810

3. Mexico 1810

4. Federal Republic of Central America 1821

Wars of Independence:

1. United States 1776 - 1781

2. Mexico 1810 - 1821

3. Great Colombia 1810 - 1822

Year slavery was abolished:

1. Federal Republic of Central America 1824

2. Mexico 1824

3. Colombia 1851

4. United States 1865

Many of the Book of Mormon prophetic passages that some associate exclusively with the United States of America apply equally well to Latin America. See the article "Book of Mormon Prophecies Fulfilled in Latin America."

Central Locations

I was at the Jerusalem Archaeological Park (Davidson Center) in June and saw this striking visual depicting the old city at the crossroads of 3 continents.

Jerusalem as Continental Axis
Photo by Kirk Magleby June 23, 2016

From this originating point, the blood of Israel and Christ's influence spread over much of the earth. This was an ideal location for the blessings of the Abrahamic covenant to extend to every nation, kindred, tongue and people as Nephi foresaw 2 Nephi 26:12-13.

Now consider where an ideal location would be in the New World for the blood of Israel and Christ's influence to spread over much of the earth in ancient times.

Mesoamerica as Continental Axis

The formulaic phrase "all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people" occurs 16 times in the text exclusive of the testimonies of the witnesses and Moroni's instructions to the prophet Joseph. The Book of Mormon writers cared about wide dissemination. In pre-Colombian times Mesoamerica was the crossroads of the western hemisphere with significant communication, trade, and emigration contact both northward and southward.

Joseph Smith in One Question

Like most Latter-day Saints of my generation, I grew up with a sanitized, larger than life-sized Joseph Smith as a persecuted demigod who worked endless streams of wonders against tall odds in his short 38 1/2 years on earth. I did not worship the man, but I was in awe of him as I still am. As I matured and developed a more nuanced view of my prophet, I had an abiding curiosity to know more about Joseph the man. Todd Compton and I were classmates at BYU. When his In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith came out in 1997, I was taken aback for a time. My respect for the prophet never waned, but I had even more desire to understand what made him tick.

When Richard Bushman's Rough Stone Rolling: Joseph Smith: A Cultural Biography of Mormonism's Founder appeared in 2005, I became a Bushman groupie. I attended his lectures from Provo to Ogden, asking many questions and carefully weighing his responses. Bushman had a deep understanding of the prophet that I was anxious to absorb. In the end, one sentence from Bushman helped me understand who Joseph really was. Bushman said, "Joseph sucked the air out of every room he ever entered." Joseph was such a powerful presence that no one else held a candle to him. He was supremely confident, without peer. It was always Joseph and the seven dwarfs. People hung on his every word. He had an opinion about and a ready answer for everything. He was often attacked from afar but seldom contradicted in person. That made sense to me given the nature of Joseph's interaction with deity and the divine.

A few weeks ago I was privileged to spend time with Mike MacKay of the BYU Religion faculty. He worked on the Joseph Smith Papers Project and co-authored the very important From Darkness Unto Light: Joseph Smith's Translation and Publication of the Book of Mormon. His next major publication will be Joseph Smith's Seer Stones. I asked MacKay how he would characterize Joseph the man. "Joseph had a green thumb for religion" was his reply. As he shared examples of what he meant, I came to understand that post 1829 Joseph consciously fit every person, place, or thing he ever encountered somewhere into his expansive religious vision. That prompted me to ask MacKay one important question: "Did Joseph ever say 'I don't know'?" "No" was his quick reply.

In our current era of internet-inspired transparency, we hear the brethren say "We don't know" frequently. See for example, Pres. Uchtdorf's frank talk entitled "Come, Join with Us" in October, 2013 General Conference or the Gospel Topics Essays such as "Book of Mormon and DNA Studies." Top scholars say "I don't know" all the time. "I don't know" is a fundamental status endemic to the human condition.

One result from Joseph's tendency to never say "I don't know" were the 1834 Zion's Camp tales about Zelph, Onandagus, and the plains of the Nephites associated with Naples-Russell Mound 8 near Griggsville, Pike County, Illinois. See the 1989 BYU Studies article by Kenneth W. Godfrey entitled "The Zelph Story." Was the germ of the variant Zelph accounts revelation to the prophet? Was it well-meaning speculation? As with so much of the extra-canonical material attributed to Joseph Smith, we don't know.

This is from Paul Hoskisson's interview with Glenn Rawson on May 13, 2009 as part of the Joseph Smith Papers Project. "Joseph Smith was not beyond pulling people's legs and giving an answer just to satisfy somebody. Do you remember the famous story of where he and Eliza are walking (apocryphal, of course) along the river in Nauvoo in the evening and somebody runs up and says, 'Joseph, what do people on the moon look like? Are there really people there?' And Joseph says, 'Yes, and they look like, dress like Quakers.' Eliza afterward says, 'Do you really believe that Joseph?' And Joseph says, 'Of course I don't but its easier to give an answer to somebody than it is to say I don't know.'" 

See the article "Prophets Human and Inspired" for additional insights into the Mormon folk tendency to canonize a prophet's personal opinions.

Article updated May 20, 2020.

Textual Progress

August 2 & 3, 2016 Book of Mormon Central convened a working group to consider the sense of meaning of a number of passages in the text whose interpretations have proven controversial. The verses at issue are listed in the article "Problematic Passages." The group consisted of:

• Joe V. Andersen, Arizona attorney who has written many articles about Book of Mormon geography. Joe has recently co-authored several pieces with Ted D. Stoddard.
• Stan Carmack, Massachusetts philologist who has spent years studying and writing about the grammar and syntax of the earliest (Yale 2009) text. Stan works with Royal Skousen.
• Eric Eliason, member of the BYU English faculty who specializes in folklore and the Bible as literature. Eric edited Mormons and Mormonism, University of Illinois Press, 2001.
• Grant Hardy, member of the University of North Carolina, Asheville History faculty. Grant is the editor of The Book of Mormon: A Reader's Edition, University of Illinois Press, 2003. He is the author of Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader's Guide, Oxford University Press, 2010.
• Heather Hardy, who collaborates with and edits her husband's work. Heather is a specialist in Book of Mormon - Biblical intertextuality. 
• Kirk Magleby, author of this blog and Book of Mormon Central's Exec. Director.
• Alan Miner, author of Step by Step Through the Book of Mormon and A Chronology of Thought on Book of Mormon Geography. Alan's current passion is parallelistic formatting of the text.
• Neal Rappleye, Book of Mormon Central's Operations Manager. Neal has presented on various methodological approaches to Book of Mormon geography.
• Richard D. Rust, emeritus member of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill English faculty. Richard is the author of Feasting on the Word: The Literary Testimony of the Book of Mormon. He was a prolific contributor to FARMS publications.
• Royal Skousen, member of the BYU Linguistics faculty and editor of The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text, Yale University Press, 2009. Royal has directed the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project since 1988.
• Julie M. Smith, biblical scholar, is the author of Search, Ponder, and Pray: A Guide to the Gospels. Julie is authoring the volume on the Gospel of Mark for the BYU New Testament Commentary series.
• Robert F. Smith, Hebrew scholar, edited the first Book of Mormon Critical Text published by FARMS in 1984 - 1987. Bob also participated in the Book of Mormon geography group convened by David A. Palmer in the 1970's.
• John W. Welch, member of the BYU Law faculty, is generally considered the leading Book of Mormon scholar alive today. He also has significant expertise in the Greek New Testament. Jack founded FARMS, has edited BYU Studies for 25 years, and chairs Book of Mormon Central. He helps lead the BYU New Testament Commentary and the Academy for Temple Studies. He is a specialist in ancient law.

Participants were chosen for their demonstrated ability to closely read English texts. Many others could have been invited, but we purposely limited the size of the group. The intent of the conclave was to see if these people, working together with good will for two days, could shed light on the most likely interpretation of some Book of Mormon verses that cause much of the geographical turmoil in the world today. That goal proved elusive. There are several viable ways to read some passages in the text. The Book of Mormon contains propagandist hyperbole as does the Bible. There is so much potential intertextuality between the Bible and the Book of Mormon that until we have thoroughly analyzed this fundamental feature of the text, convincing interpretations of some passages are premature. The words we read today may have been authored to resonate with people familiar with the Psalms, for example, or Deuteronomy. Some parts of the text are clearly symbolic or formulaic and other parts may be. The literal approach I have taken in the article "Book of Mormon Lands Map January 2016" and throughout this blog is one way to read the text. Other approaches are not only possible but likely to yield persuasive readings.

We did manage to reach general agreement on some key points.

• In a relative hierarchy of classes of evidence, the text itself, subject to interpretation, must be primary. There has been no authoritative revelation on Book of Mormon geography in this dispensation. Revelation to the current Prophet could trump the text, but only if it carried the same degree of certainty as the words Joseph received through the seer stone.
• The phrase "running from the east towards the west" in Alma 22:27 most likely refers to the narrow strip of wilderness rather than the river Sidon.
• The words "only the distance of a day and a half's journey for a Nephite" in Alma 22:32 most likely refers to a Nephite convention rather than the extreme performance of an elite athlete.
• The phrase "down into the borders of the land Manti" in Alma 43:32 refers to travel from the valley west of Sidon where Captain Moroni hid part of his army. Relating this phrase to Jershon which is mentioned several verses before (Alma 43:25) is an incorrect forced reading.
• The pass mentioned in Alma 62:24 was an entrance into or out of the walled city of Nephihah. See Alma 49:18-22 for similar verbiage describing the walled city of Noah. Interpreting the pass as a natural topographic feature is most likely incorrect.
• The events described in Alma 62:24-38 occurred within a time period of weeks or months as part of Mormon's annual summary for the 31st year of the reign of the judges which begins in verse 12. Attempting to compress all this action into a single 24 hour period based on the words "awoke" in Alma 62:24 and "on the morrow" in Alma 62:38 is an incorrect forced reading.

The implications of these likely interpretations are:

• River Sidon flows generally south - north rather than east - west.
• The narrow strip of wilderness runs generally east - west.
• The boundary line between Bountiful on the south and Desolation on the north is relatively short. The distance across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (216 air kilometers) is too long to be the place Alma 22:32 is referring to.
• The notion that River Sidon flows from north to south is not supported in the text. River Sidon flows from south to north just as Book of Mormon scholars have been saying since the 1800's.
• The land between Nephihah and Moroni is not necessarily mountainous.
• The notion that the Nephite east coast was significantly shorter than the west coast is not supported in the text. Both coasts may have similar lengths.

We did not achieve general agreement on these important issues:

• cardinal directionality.
• whether the four seas mentioned in Helaman 3:8 are literal or metaphorical. 

A useful analogy emerged. Book of Mormon geography is a 1,000 piece puzzle. We only have 150 of the pieces and we don't have a picture on the box to follow. Some of the pieces we do have fit together which gives us confidence that over time a generally accepted solution will emerge.

Given that some ambiguity is inherent in this text, we came up with a methodology that is likely to advance the state of the art in Book of Mormon geography. We intend to build a website where proponents of various models can advocate their positions point by point and respond to feedback. Invited reviewers can indicate whether they agree or disagree with each point and state their reasons why. Interested parties of good will will have a path to follow to become an insider, propose a model, or write reviews. I talked with Blake J. Allen at the FairMormon Conference. He and his father, Joe, have created a very good model based on decades of boots-on-the-ground experience in Mesoamerica. Blake is willing to advocate his model and interact with reviewers on the proposed website. If a handful of others are willing to do the same, we will see progress.

Note: The article "Auditing Book of Mormon Geography Models" documents progress made toward the goal of reconciling various proposed maps.

Frauds and Hoaxes

In the latter 1970's, I spent three years as Dr. Paul R. Cheesman's research assistant. During that time, his office was ground zero for most things Book of Mormon within the Church. One day we got word that President Kimball's office had a set of metal plates purported to be the brass plates of Laban mentioned in the Book of Mormon 1 Nephi 3:3. They arrived in our office a few days later and it fell to me to determine if they were authentic or not. One look told me they were modern fakes, but I gave them the benefit of every doubt. They came with a wild story attached.

A family, recently baptized in England, had supposedly inherited the plates from a mysterious ancestor who had discovered them in a cave in Peru in the 1800's. The Mission President in England thought they were genuine ancient artifacts because the family appeared to have altruistic motives. He arranged for the plates to be shipped to Salt Lake. Dr. Cheesman, who was a big fan of metal plates, thought they might be genuine ancient artifacts because they were shiny and 1 Nephi 5:19 says the brass plates of Laban would never be dimmed by time.

I cataloged all the characters engraved on the plates and compared them with character sets from known ancient languages. The number of correlates were trivial. I plotted the frequency of character repetition and compared that with examples from known ancient languages. The repetition pattern was less random than I would have expected. My friend, Herschel Pedersen, helped me get one of the plates tested by the metallurgy lab at Geneva Steel. They determined it was cold rolled brass plate manufactured in Birmingham, England between 1920 and World War II. They further determined that the markings were engraved by someone hammering on the plates with a tempered steel cold chisel.

As I was writing my report, the English donor family visited us. They had met Pres. Kimball and been feted for a few days in Salt Lake before coming to BYU where the hospitality continued. I got to spend a couple of hours with them asking questions about the supposed expedition to Peru. They showed me a letter purportedly from their explorer ancestor describing other artifacts still in the Peruvian cave, including more engraved metal plates. The letter referenced a secret map identifying the location of the treasure. They gave me a "urim and thummin" which they had tried unsuccessfully to give to Pres. Kimball. It was a costume jewelry necklace that included a couple of large glass balls. It was obvious the family hoped I would get excited about the other artifacts reportedly still hidden in Peru. My report predicted that upon their return to England, they would ask for money to mount a new Peruvian expedition.

They returned to England and sure enough, asked for a large yacht and funds to finance several years of South American travel because they had just "found" the surreptitious treasure map. Of course the Church denied their request since their motive now unmasked the fraud. The family immediately went inactive. I hope they enjoyed their all expense paid trip to Utah.

Unfortunately, we saw many other cases of fakery during my years with Dr. Cheesman. Some came from Mexico, others from all over the U.S. All had a price tag attached. Many came with the tantalizing promise that there were more "artifacts" where these had come from, but only the person requesting funds knew where to find them. The dark art of forging "antiquities" to dupe gullible Mormons was alive and well in the 1970's.

Joseph Smith had to deal with similar nonsense. See the August, 1981 Ensign article by Stanley B. Kimball entitled "Kinderhook Plates Brought to Joseph Smith Appear to Be a Nineteenth-Century Hoax."

Because the Book of Mormon is often considered a forgery by those who do not know it well, we as Latter-day Saints should be fastidious to avoid frauds and hoaxes as we deal with questions of its historicity.

These "artifacts" and many others of similar ilk are known fakes:

• Davenport Tablets in the collection of the Putnam Museum in Davenport, IA.
• Grave Creek Stone. The original has been lost. The characters were copied from a book published in Madrid, Spain in 1752.
• Las Lunas Decalogue Stone, aka Las Lunas Mystery Stone about 56 kilometers south of Albuquerque, NM. An Albuquerque newspaper published a photo of the stone slab before it was engraved.
• Newark Holy Stones, aka Decalogue Stone on display in the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum in Coshocton, OH.
• Soper-Savage collection aka Michigan relics currently in the Michigan Historical Museum in Lansing, MI and in private collections.

How do we know these controversial "antiquities" are forgeries? They are out of context. Genuine artifacts relate to their surroundings in discernible, reproducible ways. Frauds do not fit their environment. An excellent book was published by Bob Bennett, former US Senator from Utah, in 2009. Entitled Leap of Faith: Confronting the Origins of the Book of Mormon, it analyzes famous forgery cases, detailing the techniques used by forensic law enforcement officers to distinguish frauds from genuine documents. Bennett's methodology is germane to any discussion of one-off eccentric "relics" that enter into the Book of Mormon conversation.

Unfortunately, Mormons with more zeal than knowledge (Hugh Nibley's phrase) sometimes promote fake antiquities as they talk about the Book of Mormon. That is the reason the Lord tells us to seek wisdom "out of the best books" D&C 88:118 through disciplined learning. Articles, periodicals, books, and other media divide into these categories:

• Junk science. Speculation by non specialists.
• Pseudo science. Arguments by people working outside their field of expertise.
• Science. Work done by trained specialists in their chosen discipline which is then reproduced by peers in the same discipline.

Since the 1970's, my radar screen is always on the lookout for junk science. It has no useful place in Book of Mormon studies. In the words of Elder Dallin H. Oaks, "a bad argument is worse than no argument at all." People who promote forged "antiquities" do much more harm than good. Eventually the naive people who believe them suffer a betrayal narrative.

What is the common denominator behind frauds and hoaxes? Money. The Newark Holy Stones generated revenue as "curiosities" in the nineteenth century and more than 150 years later people are still going to Coshocton, OH and paying good money to see them in a private museum. How many magazines, books and documentaries promoting the Las Lunas Decalogue Stone have been sold? The Soper-Savage "discoveries" generated a cash flow to the perpetrators for decades.

While I am on the subject of lies, it is not helpful to the cause of the Book of Mormon around the world to have for-profit enterprises masquerading as non-profits. The LDS Church is a genuine non-profit that goes to great lengths to separate its commercial business holdings in for-profit legal silos. BYU and BYU Studies are non-profit. FARMS was non-profit. FAIRMormon, Interpreter Foundation, and Book of Mormon Central are all legitimate non-profit charitable institutions. People who register .org domains or use the term "foundation" when in reality they are for-profit corporations or LLC's are being disingenuous and doing a dis-service to the body of believers. The Book of Mormon deserves better.

Characteristics of movements promoting frauds and hoaxes:

• Proof texting. This is the practice of spot reading material, focusing only on the parts that support a pre-conceived notion.
• Obsolete citations. Archaeology, with good reason, favors the most recent reports because science is continually improving.
• Uncredentialed sources. Many lay people dabbling in technical disciplines lack the background necessary to be source critical.
• Isolates and eccentrics. Artifacts that do not fit cultural patterns known to science are always dubious. Items of unknown or questionable provenience are less useful than material found in situ under controlled conditions.
• Conspiracy theories. People who allege widespread conspiratorial data suppression are often outsiders with limited understanding of how academic or scientific organizations work. Departments, institutions, and entire disciplines do have biases, but academic freedom is the norm and paradigm-shifting interpretations are often celebrated.
• Sales hype. Truth can be understated. Frauds are typically oversold.
• Profit motive. The age-old adage "follow the money" applies. Sensationalism sells. Think P.T. Barnum, the master of celebrated hoaxes. "Every crowd has a silver lining" and "There's a sucker born every minute." In the world of frauds and hoaxes, something is always for sale - a magazine subscription, a book or DVD, a replica, an event ticket. The Book of Mormon emphatically condemns priestcraft Alma 1:12, 16 and invites all to come "without money and without price" 2 Nephi 9:50, 2 Nephi 26:25, Alma 1:20.

So, if you see people telling only one side of a story, citing old sources, relying heavily on non-professionals, promoting items that do not fit known cultural patterns, talking about data being systematically suppressed, and making a sales pitch, the story they are peddling is likely bogus.

In the fall of 1954, Milton R. Hunter (1902 - 1975) took Sidney B. Sperry (1895 - 1977), Hugh W. Nibley (1910 - 2005), John L. Sorenson (1924-2021), and Welby W. Ricks (1918 - 2013) to visit the Las Lunas Stone south of Albuquerque. Sperry and Nibley pronounced it a fake based on the Hebrew inscription. Sorenson pronounced it a fake based on the ambient archaeology. As the group was leaving, Ricks overheard the two locals who had arranged the visit talking. One asked the other, "Do you think they bought it?"

State Level Society

Anthropologists use criteria to distinguish tribal societies from more sophisticated civilizations that reach state level. These criteria include:

• Social stratification. Tribal societies develop a chiefly elite who outrank commoners. State level societies have complex social class hierarchies, each with different access to resources. Alma 51:8, 3 Nephi 6:12.
• Dense populations. Tribal societies settle extensively across their ecosystems. State level societies support intensive populations. Omni 1:17, Ether 7:11. 
• Urbanization. Tribal societies build hamlets and villages with occasional towns at particularly favorable sites such as the confluence of two rivers. State level societies build large, well-organized cities and city states. Mosiah 27:6, Helaman 7:22.
• Food surpluses. Tribal societies subsist on hunting, agriculture, and extractive industries. State level societies produce surplus food that gets re-distributed to urban centers. Alma 1:29, Helaman 6:12.
• Labor specialization. People in tribal societies tend to work in homogeneous occupations closely tied to nature. State level societies produce artisans Mosiah 11:10, lawyers Alma 10:15, merchants 3 Nephi 6:11, etc. who work in a wide variety of vocations.
• Centralized government. Tribal societies organize along kinship lines. State level societies develop formal ruling institutions Alma 11:2 where shared ideologies Mosiah 29:39 allow elites to control power Mosiah 29:2.
• Controlled trade. Tribal societies engage in long-distance trade of exotic goods. In state level societies, elites control trading networks to maximize their wealth Ether 10:22.
• Public works. Tribal societies erect stones and heap up dirt. State level societies build monumental architecture such as palaces Mosiah 11:9, pyramids Mosiah 11:12, temples Alma 16:13, roads 3 Nephi 6:8, markets Helaman 7:10, etc.
• Written records. Tribal societies communicate verbally and with ideograms or mnemonic devices. State level societies use writing systems Mosiah 28:11, develop widespread literacy Alma 46:19, and maintain record archives Jarom 1:14, Helaman 3:15.
• Symbolic art. Tribal societies produce naturalistic art. State level societies portray symbol complexes representing abstract or theological ideas 1 Nephi 11:7-11, Alma 32:28.
• Intellectual disciplines. Tribal societies orally transmit traditional wisdom. State level societies develop organized branches of knowledge such as biology Alma 46:40, physics Helaman 12:15, mathematics Alma 11:5-19, etc.
• Standing armies. Tribal societies muster attackers or defenders based on perceived vulnerabilities or threats. State level societies maintain a professional military apparatus Alma 2:13, Alma 62:43.
• Organized religion. Tribal societies have shamans, councils, and localized rituals. State level societies develop a priestly class overseeing religious institutions Mosiah 25:21-23, Alma 6:1.

One word commonly associated with tribal societies is "tradition." One word commonly associated with state level societies is "command." Nephite writers often associated Lamanites with traditions as in Mosiah 1:5, Alma 9:16, and Helaman 15:4. Nephite writers often associated Nephites and deity with commands as in Alma 5:61, Helaman 14:9 and 3 Nephi 23:13. Another word commonly associated with tribal societies is "identity." A word commonly associated with state level societies is "institution."

As they increase in complexity, tribes become chiefdoms and states become empires.

The Book of Mormon unequivocally describes state level society, as well as the precise moment when complex Nephite government degenerated into tribalism 3 Nephi 7:2-4.

A useful summary of  tribal societies and states in our modern world was written by David Ronfeldt in 2006. Entitled "In Search of How Societies Work: Tribes, the First and Forever Form," it was published as a working paper by the Rand Corporation's Pardee Center. In light of Ronfeldt's analysis, the Book of Mormon is stunningly accurate in its portrayal of tribal social dynamics:

• Page 1 The tribal form is based on kinship. 3 Nephi 7:2.
• Page 17 External depredation causes societies to tribalize. 3 Nephi 7:6.
• Page 20 Evil influences spread quickly through tribal societies. 3 Nephi 7:7-8.
• Page 35 Tribes form alliances with other tribes. 3 Nephi 7:14.
• Page 42 Tribes severely divide and separate members from non-members. 3 Nephi 7:2.
• Page 43 Tribes have difficulty addressing problems of power. 3 Nephi 7:18.
• Page 46 Tribes appoint a chief. 3 Nephi 7:3.
• Page 46 In tribal societies, war is never far away. 3 Nephi 7:14.
• Page 46 Tribal chieftains exercise centralized authority. 3 Nephi 7:14.
• Page 61 Failed states degrade into tribes. 3 Nephi 7:2.
• Page 71 Tribes enforce very strict rules. 3 Nephi 7:14.

Two images illustrate the stark difference between tribal and state level societies. The first comes from the remarkable Ohio History Connection Museum in Columbus. It is a collage of Hopewell artifacts assembled for a 2014 exhibition entitled "Top Ten Masterpieces of the Hopewell Culture."

Outstanding Hopewell Artifacts

The artifacts portray a raptor's talons, bear, heron, bird in flight, human head, and wheel design. The wheel is symbolic. See the article "Four Sides, Four Quarters, and a Center." The other pieces are art drawn from nature. No qualified anthropologist on the planet would describe the society that created these objects as a state. This assemblage is diagnostically characteristic of tribalism.

Now compare the Hopewell collection with an image from the Museo del Sitio at Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico.

Palenque Glyphs

Anthropologists worldwide recognize that classic lowland Maya society achieved state level.

State level society cannot be created out of whole cloth, not can it be explained away. A society either has it or it doesn't. State level societies leave unmistakable traces that scientists recognize. No North American culture known to science achieved state level society during Book of Mormon times. Several Mesoamerican cultures achieved state level societies during Book of Mormon times. John L. Sorenson succinctly summed up the situation: "Only one area in ancient America had cities and books: Mesoamerica." Mormon's Codex p. 21.

Four Sides, Four Quarters, and a Center

The Book of Mormon describes its world as having four sides aligned with the four cardinal directions Mosiah 27:6, 3 Nephi 1:17. It also describes its world as having four quarters Alma 43:26, Alma 52:10. The Nephites described their focal point as the heart Helaman 1:18 or center Helaman 1:25-27 of their land. Furthermore, they perceived themselves inhabiting a single isle of the sea 2 Nephi 10:20-21 nearly surrounded by water Alma 22:32 with salt water on every side Helaman 3:8. For more context see the blog articles "Test #5 North South East and West" and "Smoking Gun."
For examples of the widespread Mesoamerican notion of a spatial quincunx, see the article "Light from LA" points 6 and 43.

A beautiful portrayal of this worldview was found at Masada where a replica hangs in the Visitor Center.

Replica of Mosaic, Masada, Israel Photo by Kirk Magleby June 20, 2016

This wall hanging shows four sides, four quarters, and a center all surrounded by water.

Corresponding depictions are found throughout the Americas. This is a museum replica of the well-known Inca Chakana.

Chakana from Museo Larco, Lima, Peru in Kirk Magleby's Collection

A very similar version of this symbol is on the Lanzon at the Temple of Chavin. It is attested in Andean art from Chavin  through Inca times (2nd millennium BC - European contact).

The same idea is expressed on the striking Hopewell Wheel displayed in the Ohio History Connection Museum in Columbus.

Hopewell Copper Wheel First Millennium AD

As we would expect, this worldview was widely portrayed throughout Mesoamerica. This is a pre-columbian representation thought to have originated in Veracruz.

Codex Fejervary-Mayer now in the World Museum, Liverpool, England