Ever wonder why the Smithsonian Institute wrote a disclaimer about its supposed use of the Book of Mormon to find archeological sites? http://www.utlm.org/onlineresources/smithsonianletter.htm I did, so I asked the following: >>> <randolfo>>> Thanks for your response, as a Mexican I am very interested in the history of my people & I think that most theories that establish other peoples as the 'mother culture' of Mesoamerica, are stealing our history. In essence, saying that 'others' needed to bring civilization to this hemisphere, because Native Americans here were too savage. I do have a related question; why did the Smithsonian Institute have to start making that statement about the "Book of Mormon" in the first place? Was it because Mormon missionaries were saying that the SI did indeed use it as a guide? What would be the history of that statement? Thanks again. Cordially, Randolfo And this was their responce: You are correct. We had to write a response to this question back in the 40's. Ann Kaupp, Head Anthropology Outreach Office Smithsonian Institution PO Box 37012 NMNH, Room 363, MRC 112 Washington, DC 20013-7012 (202) 357-1592 kaupp.ann@nmnh.si.edu
all I could find about the 1940’s and the book of Mormon was this …’Ariel Crowley in his most interesting little text "About the Book of Mormon," 1961, p. 142f, notes that way back in 1949 Dr. Julian H. Steward of the American Bureau of Ethnology, said, among other things, that since the influx of new information it cannot be disproved that non-Mongolian sources provide the ancestry of American Indians…http://www2.ida.net/graphics/shirtail/seeing.htm From what I can see on the web there was a fair bit of research into Native Indians (their origin) before the 1940’s. It would seem that around the time the supports of the Book of Mormon began to use the research in support of their arguments. As the research was carried out by the American Bureau of Ethnology which was and is part of the Smithsonian Institute, it became involved in the public debate of the history of the Native Indians. The statement could be seen as an attempt to distance its self as an institution from supporting the book of Mormon as a religious book. Looks like a tangled issue, but interesting if you could get the records. It may be a case of tracing the citation records.
tell me, weebee, is the BoM true or false, & how do you judge it & other books? I can't take the BoM seriously, it fails on so many points: 1) tech 2) foods 3) germs 4) language 5) race 6) customs 7) religion 8) animals 9) timelines 10) Bible 11) archeology as in: 1) steel, iron, swords, shipbuilding, chariots, etc. what happened to all this useful tech? 2) wheat, barley, etc. why no mention of chilies, tomatoes, maize?- oh & don't use the ancient term 'corn' which means kernal 3) read Jarrod Diamond's "Guns, germs & Steel" as to why no 'Old World' culture could have been here previous to Cristobal Colon, hint: find out what diseases originated in livestock & how it affected herders & farmers 4) Hebrew & Egyptian are written languages, they would have left a legacy to all that heard, read them 5) they trace Jewish DNA now, check Israeli studies 6) both Egypt & Israel came with thousands of years of different customs that nearby cultures would have picked up; like circumcision, shaving or not shaving (forelocks), calendars, alphabets, building techniques (like the arch), wheel, ceramics, foods, etc. 7) none of the Mexican or Iroquois (up-state NY) show any hint of Judaism until after CC in 1492; in fact most Mexicans practiced very un-Jewish rituals & religions until the Spanish 8) as anyone can tell; once horses, cows, sheep, goats, etc. were introduced to Native Peoples in 1492, they took them as their own, yet the BoM would say that those same people, lived side-by-side for thousands of years & never traded, stole or raised these animals until 1492? None ever escaped, like the mustangs or wild pigs? 9) timelines don't match up. the Iroquois, Mound-Builders, Mayans, Olmecs & Teotihuacános had already started civilizations that should have confronted the nascent BoM empires ( wherever they may be ), so that there should have been references in either the BoM or the Mayan, Olmec or Mixtec histories. also for references in the BoM to Christianity, the church, etc, prior to Christianity. 10) except for copying the Bible, the BoM is nothing more that a romance, a Gothic tale, a docudrama, not 'an other gospel or testament', unless you look at it as under the admonishments of Paul to the Galatians 11) still waiting for the slaughter sites to come up; if thousands of BoM people killed themselves in war, leaving metal war implements, wives, children, crops, cities to the nearby Natives, what happened? all gone? even the Hittites left references via the Bible, Troy via Homer; which were confirmed later by archeology. Check it out!
