Where is modern day zarahemla

The Book of Mormon did not take place in a vacuum. In addition to being scripture, the Book of Mormon is a history of real people who lived and died in the New World. There was a Zarahemla. The current debate about the location of Zarahemla has to do with the authorship of three editorials in an early Church newspaper called the Times and Seasons. Read the full article. On that plain, there are 16, acres of fertile land bounded on the west by high bluffs.

September Survey of Des Moines Rapids. The photo shows men in the early s busting down and destroying ancient earthworks in Chillicothe, Ohio. From this site, there were small pieces of bark from a Black Locust Tree and certain artifacts.

One hundred years later, the radiocarbon dating of these fragments of tree bark fixed its age at AD In the chronology of the Book of Mormon, AD 33 has great significance. These men are digging a site that is associated with the time of Christ's visit to America. There are advanced technologies that measure and identify ancient features buried in the ground. The techniques come from solid scientific principles.

The procedures have had great success in unearthing history in other parts of the world. The most notable example is Stonehenge. German engineers made magnetic scans of adjacent lands. The scanning revealed features in the ground, which enlarged the world's understanding of that famous site.

This same German technology will search for the areas of the Book of Mormon. Cities are connected to vast landscapes. In December German technology found buried houses which are from the 1st Century. Some roundhouses were large, with diameters of 64 feet. There are billions of data points. The plotting of digital images from these points is the basis for discovering features for the lost city of Zarahemla. We will make magnetic images from the data that come from the ground. These digital images will locate ancient features in the cropland of Iowa.

The data plotted on digital maps, and from these images, we hope to identify and unearth the remains of Zarahemla. We are looking for the foundations of a city wall. Jerusalem in the 1st Century had a wall that was 12, feet in length. In that same century, the Roman city of London had a wall with a perimeter of 10, feet.

Ancient walls were expensive and gave important protection to the populations of cities. We expect to find traces of public buildings. We expect to find roads and market places. We expect to find traces of temples. We expect to find places where ancient people gathered for public events. We expect to find remnants of these destructions. Destruction of 2,year-old mound in Chillicothe using mules, drag lines, and dirt scrapers.

Zarahemla was an ancient city in North America. Today no one knows the exact location of Zarahemla. Many imagine that the well-known, cities of the ancient world are models for the construction Zarahemla. After all, so many of these cities were similar. Stone was the typical building material for many places 2, years ago. Some argue that if Zarahemla were a great city in history, the ancient people would have made it from stone, and that the remains would be impossible to hide from modern-day archaeologists.

Let us consider an alternative view for the construction of Zarahemla. There are interesting points of comparison with the history of Novgorod of AD to the history of Zarahemla of AD The establishment of the great nation of Russia finds its roots in Novgorod. In AD Novgorod was more important than Moscow. It was a city not built of stone but of earth and wood. Zarahemla in AD was a city built mainly of earth, cement and wood.

Novgorod was the main city of a territory which had an area of about , square miles. Zarahemla was the main city of a territory that had an area of about , square miles. Novgorod was a city that via the Volga River connected to the heartland of Russia.

Zarahemla was on the Upper Mississippi that connected it to the heartland of America. Scholars gathered in Provo, Utah, to discuss their theories about where the events described in the Book of Mormon took place. Others argued for a setting in the American heartland. Although he found the discussion interesting, he was obviously concerned that people were getting a little too worked up about their geographic theories.

He decided to intervene. But the advice President Joseph F. Smith gave at that conference years ago could apply equally to current disputes over Book of Mormon geography. More recently, the Encyclopedia of Mormonism described how "Church leadership officially and consistently distances itself from issues regarding Book of Mormon geography.

But the lack of an official position hasn't squelched interest. The subject attracts highly trained archaeologists and scholars and informed — and not-so-informed — amateurs and enthusiasts. Books, lectures and even Book of Mormon lands tours abound. In the middle of what could be a fun and intellectually exciting pursuit similar to archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann's famous search for the lost city of Troy, there are accusations of disloyalty tantamount to apostasy. In one corner is the more-established idea of a Mesoamerican setting for the Book of Mormon.

This theory places the events of the book in a limited geographic setting that is about the same size as ancient Israel. The location is in southern Mexico and Guatemala. The person most often associated with this theory is John L. A new book, tentatively titled "Mormon's Codex," is in the process of being published.

In the other corner is the challenger, a new theory that places Book of Mormon events in a North American "heartland" setting.

Like the Mesoamerican theory, it also is limited in area — but not quite as limited. Its symbolic head is Rod L. Meldrum and, more recently, Bruce H. Meldrum and Porter are the co-authors of the book "Prophecies and Promises," which promotes the heartland setting. It wouldn't be hard to predict that some friction might come about from competing theories — that healthy sparring would occur with arguments and counter-arguments.

But it has gone beyond that. Joseph Smith made several statements that can be interpreted to have geographic implications.

Proponents of a North American setting see these statements as authoritative and based in revelation. Mesoamerican theorists think that Joseph Smith's ideas about geography expanded over time and included approval of at least some connection to Central America.