If La Venta stone carvings do not represent Mulekite/Olmec interaction, they show people with physical features similar to those we would expect in a Mulekite population visiting the Olmec capital at about the time the Mulekites arrived in the New World. Using his record and the fragments given by others, we see that the Mulekites were essentially contemporary with the Lehites and appeared to have been in the promised land almost as long. The Mulekites almost certainly did not abandon their ocean-going vessel(s) and portage their goods inland past the fall line on their river of choice. We may surmise that because the Lamanites and robbers occupied the Western Seashore, the Mulekites would have avoided them and ventured inland, no doubt following the Buffalo River as they went. 600 BC, the Phoenicians and the Greeks were in a major competition to settle the entire Mediterranean shoreline and establish trading colonies. Well, Israel, of course, silly! Rian Nelson - January 17, 2021. Portland on the Columbia, Buenos Aires on the Plata, Seville on the Guadalquivir - the list could go on and on. Movement by water is so much more energy efficient than overland cartage, that historic settlement patterns favor the area downstream from the head of navigation. Later a region was named for Zarahemla, a descendant of Mulek (Mosiah 25:2). Given what we know of Phoenician settlement patterns in the Old World, we would expect them to favor a city site close to the seacoast at a good harbor or along a large river downstream from the fall line. The Mulekites arrived in the New World ca. The SNHAAPMT model correlates the city of Zarahemla with the ancient pre-classic site of Nueva Esperanza/Calatraba in northern Chiapas. Answer: Travel was very difficult and unpredictable. Mulek is the last Nephite stronghold the Lamanites take before advancing on the land Bountiful (Alma 51:28). . This map shows Greek colonies in blue and Phoenician colonies in red. . They were discovered by Mosiah (Omni 1:14) several centuries after their arrival. Finally, the Mulekites show us that the Book of Mormon was written by real people with real social challenges. Share on Facebook. Communication was almost non-existent. Moroni invited the Lamanite army to "meet them upon the plains between the two cities" (Alma 52:20). Even less is known about their history or their journey to America. (book). 600 BC just as Greek historian Herodotus (ca. When Mosiah was commanded by the Lord to leave the land of Nephi he and his group traveled in the wilderness, being led by the Lord, until they found the land of Zarahema. Upstream areas tend to remain "wilderness" for generations. 600 BC. The Nephites taught the Mulekites their language and united to become one people, appointing Mosiah to be their king. To substantiate this, theorists claim they, particularly the Mulekites, were brought by the Phoenicians--who had operated successfully in the Mediterranean, establishing a number of colonies along the northern coast of Africa, the most famous being Carthage an 814 BC colony of Tyre, situated on a hilly promontory overlooking the Mediterranean, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is … Has An Artifact That Relates to the Book of Mormon Been Found? So, any name La Venta carried in Book of Mormon times is much more likely to have been Jaredite or Mulekite than Nephite. . Ether's plates (historical records), together with the decayed remains from the final Jaredite battle were later found by a group of lost Nephites who were searching for the city of Zarahemla ( Mosiah 8:8-11 ). up to the Jaredite destruction, estimated to be between 400 B.C. The Usumacinta in Tabasco and northern Chiapas is such a setting. The social strife between these groups, often hinted at throughout the Book of Mormon, provides a warning for modern readers. .” (1830 Book Of Mormon, Pgs. It remained a mystery to them until Mosiah I come down to Zarahemla from Nephi with the interpreters which allowed him to read Coriantumr's inscription. Mulek, a Book of Mormon character, son of Zedekiah, escaped the sack of Jerusalem (587 B.C.) Many journeys suffered delays or outright failure because the guides became disoriented and could not decide which way to go. 422-423, The Book of Helaman, Chapter II) When the Mulekites discovered Coriantumr, he was not previously known to them, . Pacumeni seeing this did flee to the walls and Coriantumr pursued and slew him against the walls. As Itzhak Perlman is to Violonists, the Book of Mo... Phoenicians could have circumnavigated Africa ca. The Book of Mormon text specifically says they established their city in a wilderness, . The people of Zarahemla are thus often referred to as Mulekites. Where do ocean-going migrants typically locate first generation cities? Coriantumr lived the last few months of his life among a strange people, . Their languages evolved to become so dissimilar that at initial contact they could not understand each other. To produce a map that shows where the Lamanites of the world are located today, the mapmaker must first decide exactly what a Lamanite is. This turns out to be no small task, because the term Lamanite is used in several different senses in the scriptures to describe a particular racial lineage, a political/religious group, a covenant people, etc.. Nephite or Mulekite, Whos Culture Dominated? This underscores the fact that all three groups were located in geographically separate areas, the Jaredites in the land northward (v. 22), the Nephites to the south in the land of Nephi, and the Mulekites in the middle. So, in summary, the SNHAAPMT model which has passed a rigorous audit with a perfect score of 100% places the first Mulekite landfall at the mouth of the ancient Grijalva, modern Tonala river not far from La Venta. People who had been on the trail recently and more or less knew the way still did a lot of wandering around, . This correlation represents a convergence of several lines of reasoning: The Mediterranean Port City, Sidon, in Context, Philip Beale, British Banker Turned Explorer, Phoenicia, Working Phoenician Ship Replica, Phoenicia Circumnavigation of Africa 2009-2010, Proposed Mulekite Landfall, Settlement in Context, Columbus, Heyerdahl, and Phoenicia Expeditions, 93 Human Powered Voyages that Followed Transatlantic Ocean Currents, La Venta Stela 3 Excavated by Matthew Stirling in 1943, Bearded Foreigner Depicted on La Venta Monument 13, Photo by Linda Schele, Greek (Blue) and Phoenician (Red) Colonies ca. 200 BC. Such behavior is simply atypical of first generation settlers arriving by sea. Several lines of reasoning about the Mulekite ocean voyage across the Atlantic point to Tabasco, Mexico, as likely landing locations. The Mulekites did not land in the Land Northward and did not know the Jaredites except for Coriantumr whom they did not understand his language nor his writing. Former Nephites introduced writing to the Lamanites, , which fueled an immediate economic boom. Prior to Alma’s arrival in Zarahemla, the Nephite people in Zarahemla wearied Mosiah with requests to send an expedition to find out what became of the people of Zeniff, for they had heard nothing from them. 586 BC and Mosiah I did not lead a group of Nephites from the city of Nephi to the lesser land of Zarahemla until ca. Zoramites = Cherokee Mulekites = Algonquian Hagoth = Polynesians. Answer: The most likely place for the Mulekites to have founded their city was in a coastal plain, on the navigable portion of a major river, upstream from the seasonal floods in the delta but not beyond the head of navigation at the fall line. and 250 B.C. This would make the journey from the land of Nephi to the land of the Mulekites a total of twenty days. Extract from Step by Step Through the Book of Mormon by Alan C. Miner, Copyright © 2021, Book of Mormon Archaeological Forum, The Jaredites & Mulekites were contemporaries for about 200 years until the Jaredite collapse. Very little information is really given about the Mulekites, who, by descent, outnumbered the Nephites. The proposed first landing near La Venta is in the Olmec heartland which can reasonably accommodate the Jaredite destruction narrative including a likely hill Ramah/Cumorah. Think London on the Thames, Alexandria on the Nile and Shanghai on the Yangtze. All the indigenous people in the Western Hemisphere came from Israel at one time or another. By. 425 BC) says they did. Amaleki wrote more about the Mulekites than any other Book of Mormon author. The wicked plan to slay the righteous if Samuel’s signs are not given. Their histories were parallel in many ways. This of course required a route across the Atlantic Ocean, not the Pacific. 550 BC, Proposed Zarahemla in the Coastal Plain Between Swamps and Mountains, Proposed Mulekite Landfall 60 Air Kilometers from Likely Ramah/Cumorah, Dozens of Known Archaeological Sites in the Olmec Heartland. Answer: They had no relationship - zero communication for centuries. The Mulekites landed twice, once in the land northward near the place where the Jaredites were destroyed. The Mulekites “At this time,” explained John W. Welch, “the land of Zarahemla had become a very diverse place because of several major demographic changes.”2 First, there had been the merger of the Nephites and the Mulekites two generations earlier (Omni 1:12–19). With the River Sidon identified, we can go on to identify the location of the City and Land of Zarahemla. The Caribbean is an overwhelmingly likely landing place for any ancient voyage passing through the Straits of Gibraltar and the Canary Islands on its way to the Americas. The northern group, called Mulekites in their land of Zarahemla, were separated from the Nephites by the mountain range in the wilderness strip which goes from sea to sea. Known Phoenician settlement patterns in the Mediterranean during Mulekite times accommodate an initial landfall in Tabasco with a capital city on a large navigable river. First were the Jaredites, who left their homeland after the scattering at the Tower of Babel. The best Book of Mormon scholarship has the Mulekites landing first at the mouth of the Papaloapan River in southern Veracruz. Desolation was located on the southern part of the land northward and bordered the same Nephite west sea. The Mulekites crossed the ocean to the New World sometime after the Babylonians captured Jerusalem. Ancient iconography at La Venta strongly supports the idea of foreign visitors about the time the Mulekites would have landed. Answer: No. There was little or no regular communication, . For the most part, Nephite scribes are uninterested with the Mulekites… The Mulekites, or at least a branch of the Mulekites, may have lived among the Jaredites from the Mulekites' arrival in the New World in the sixth century B.C. Tabasco is in the northern tier of a viable land southward as the text requires and the Usumacinta area had wilderness characteristics when the Mulekites first arived. by Nephi and other New World scribes. The Mulekites, however, are clearly indicated in the Book of Mormon to have first landed on the east coast of the “Land Northward” part of its area (quite surely the Gulf Coast portion of the ancient high-culture area known as Mesoamerica). 22. Coriantumr was later discovered by the people of Zarahemla (Mulekites), with whom he lived for "nine moons" . PARALLELS: Mesoamerican and Ancient Middle Eastern Traditions, Decoding Ancient America: A Guide to the Archaeology of the Book of Mormon, Mesoamerica and the Book of Mormon, Is This the Place? The Nephites sailed over in 600 BCE, the people of Zarahemla (aka the Mulekites) did likewise in 586 BCE, as did Corantumr's people (aka the Jaredites) at the time of the Tower of Babel. ... Nephi, the son of Helaman, departs out of the land, and his son Nephi keeps the records. Alma, in describing the city Bountiful, wrote that Bountiful was “so far northward that it came into the land which had been peopled and been destroyed …, which was discovered by the people of Zarahemla the Mulekites, it being the place of their first landing.” (Alma 22:30.) Phoenicians could have sailed from the Old World to the Americas ca. Mosiah receives a record from the Mulekites - the account of Coriantumr and the Jaredite people, whom the Mulekites had discovered. They must have investigated the mouth of the Coatzacoalcos River and the mouth of the Mezcalapa-Grijalva which at that time ran where the Tonala River flows today. Most serious Book of Mormon geographers consider the Mexican states of Tabasco and Chiapas to be part of the … Think Boston on the Charles, New York on the Hudson, Philadelphia on the Delaware and Augusta on the Savannah. Monuments at La Venta dating to the Mulekite time period record the visit of foreign people whose beards and facial features would have been at home in ancient Jerusalem. . It is the first place up the Mississippi river from the Gulf Coast that, historically, was impassable for large ships, due to the Des Moines rapids located just south of there. The Route of the Mulekites We now turn our attention to another group of Jewish refugees who also made their way to America at about the same time as Lehi, the Mulekites. , then coasting along the Gulf of Campeche. Now, after seeing the Nephites flee and be slain, Coriantumr became courageous in his heart and went out to march against the whole land, for he had the capital which was the stronghold of the land. “. No one in the Mulekite community had enough experience with Jaredite culture to translate Coriantumr's stela. When looking at the Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio regions, better known as the Havana Hopewell Region, as the settings for the Lands Northward and keeping that in mind while studying the Book of Mormon a new picture starts to form. Answer: The Mulekites did not establish Zarahemla among the Jaredites. 0. There is a good reason why the Mulekites would have stopped in Iowa, across from Nauvoo. and went with others to a place in the Western Hemisphere that they called the land of Mulek . Amaleki makes this perfectly clear that the Mulekites land in the area where Mosiah found them (Omni 1:16). Groups got lost as they traveled or attempted to travel between the two lands, . The settlers traveled along the Gulf Coast of Mexico and eventually settled in the areas of Campeche and Chiapas on the southeast side of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The Jaredite final battles had a massive casualty count. Then, after a huge leap forward in time, two migrations took place that were almost contemporaneous. Mosiah translates Coriantumr's record. The west sea land Bountiful bordered the west sea, extended northward from the narrow strip of wilderness, and was located south from and adjacent to Desolation. 11 And again, they have brought swords, the hilts thereof have perished, and the blades thereof were cankered with rust; and there is no one in the land that is able to interpret the language or the engravings that are on the plates. Omni 1:22 his first parents came out from the … The land southward was divided into the land north where Mulek landed and the land south where Lehi landed, Tabasco is in the northern portion of what many consider the land southward, which fits. The proposed first Mulekite landing near La Venta in the Olmec heartland could reasonably have been proximate to the massive destruction mentioned in, Some Book of Mormon modelers over the years have tried to correlate La Venta with the city of Mulek based on the likely Mulekite/Olmec interaction in the Olmec capital recorded on stone monuments such as Stela 3 and the Nephite cultural pattern of naming cities after their founder. Combining different societies, just as the Nephites and Mulekites did, takes patience and humility. 484 BC - ca. We are told very little about the Mulekites, whose journey may have … The Lamanites "marched to the borders of the land Bountiful, driving the Nephites before them and slaying many" (Alma 51:28). Coriantumr must have died among the Mulekites after this, because Ether’s prophetic curse (Ether 13:21) specified that Coriantumr “should only live to see…another people receiving the land for their inheritance; and…receive a burial by them”. Later on, it was hard enough to cross to separate the Nephites, who went north to join the Mulekites, from their Lamanite enemies to the south. The people of Zarahemla had come from the land of Jerusalem under the leadership of Mulek, the only surviving son of King Zedekiah. How did the Mulekites lose their language? This is the famous La Venta Stela 3 dubbed the "Uncle Sam" stela which dates to 600 - 550 BC. They lived on the margins of and somewhat isolated from the strong influence of the Jaredite culture core. The site is riverside west of the Usumacinta in the coastal plain upstream from the perennial flood zone and downstream from the fall line. The Mulekites landed in the area where the Jaredites lived … The land southward was divided into the land north where Mulek landed and the land south where Lehi landed Helaman 6:10. The Mulekites did not migrate very far away from their original homeland in Zarahemla, . The contents of all BMAF publications are the sole responsibility of the individual authors and therefore do not necessarily represent the views of BMAF or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Jaredites (/ ˈ dʒ ær ə d aɪ t /) are one of four peoples (along with the Nephites, Lamanites, and Mulekites) that the Latter-day Saints believe settled in ancient America.. The model predicts the second Mulekite landfall was at the mouth of the Usumacinta which led to settlement immediately upstream of the permanent wetlands. Ca. and the land north was called Mulek, which was after the sons of Zedekiah; for the Lord did bring Mulek into the land north, . https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCliMKFrhnpYVk4RrMudzrxw. The “Mulekites” (a term never used in the Book of Mormon) are barely mentioned in the Nephite record. Tracks became impossible to follow after only a few days, . Subsequent travel happened intermittently, but the routes were not yet well-established. 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