But there are many centuries between Mormon and Nephi, and only 1 brass ball. How do the Nephites keep track of dorection in the interval. God may have GPS, but they don’t.

Answer: they start to use what all ancient cultures in Mesoamerica do — they use the sun.

The 23 degree thing isn’t a Book of Mormon guess about the Mayans. That’s pure archeology. The Mayans use rectangles to denote directions the way we use circles, and the rectangles are compressed to the east and west. When there are persons in the rectangle, the head faces the east.

In fact, if my memory serves, I think Givens cites a paper in which the relative mention of North, South, East, and West in the BofM is approximately the right ratio to match the relative “sizes” of North vs East. I’ll try to find the reference.

But the north-south orientation is a big issue with alternative theorists, as well as skeptics of the Book of Mormon. As I have said before, Potter has done some excellent work on Old World BoM geography. The BoM says Nephi travelled in a south-southeast direction for a long time, and then headed due east after burying Ishmael at Nahom. Potter and others feel this accurately describes the Frankincense trail, and Nahom (see my post on Nahom)has been discovered in Yemen. So, it seems that Nephi was following conventional north-south directions. For him to navigate all the way to the New World (Peru, Yucatan, Chile, New Orleans, Malay – wherever one thinks he went), and then suddenly get the directions fouled up in Meso because of the sun seems a bit of a stretch to me.

By contrast. in the Meso model, there is conveniently an east-west plate tectonics boundary (like the famous San Andreas fault) between the North American and Caribbean plates that runs from the Gulf of Honduras (Cayman Trough) across the mountainous strip that bordered the Lamanite lands from those of the Nephites. It is physically capable of generating all the observed effects (and has hurricanes and tempests in the area as well) and can drown cities on the EAST coast.

Also, don’t be too concerned by the orientation of the “narrow neck of land”, MH. While we picture north, east, west, and south as covering each 90 degrees of arc, Mayans did not because of their ties to the sun. Because the earth’s orbit swings only 23 degrees maximum from the plain of rotation, east or west was each imagined as only covering about 46 degrees, while north or south each covered about 134 degrees. The Book of Mormon has a lot of “land northword” in this model, even if we’d consider it as west or east.

1. Early BoM readers did not even think that there were other people here when groups arrived. Based on the huge numbers of people that were involved in the wars throughout the BoM it is pretty clear that other groups of people that were not with the three groups that came over were here already.
2. The Incas (and to some lesser extent the Maya) are well known for their road building prowess and their ability to communicate over large distances with runners on these roads. The Incas had communication runners all over peru and possibly further north and south than they are normally give credit for.
3. So much of the BoM geography changed after the nephites had been around for 600+ years and really trying to pinpoint anything with any accuracy is difficult at best and most of the authors trying to pinpoint locations suffer from a serious bias since if they are wrong their whole life’s work goes down the drain.

Anyway just a few thoughts. Take them for what they are worth.

I don’t want to throw a cold towel on this hot topic–so consider my comment as a footnote.

A Neal A. Maxwell Institute (F.A.R.M.S) online paper states: “Complex and sophisticated metallurgical technologies in the pre-Columbian New World, however, are presently recognized only in the Andes Mountains of Peru and Chile, where copper was smelted from rare copper arsenides, sulfates, and chlorides.”(Emphasis Added) Metal, in particular gold, silver, and copper are mentioned throughout the Book of Mormon. Jacob wrote that the land of promise abounds in precious metals (Jacob 2:12).

The footnote is

FARMS (now Neal A Maxwell Institute), “Copper, Bronze, and Brass” (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University, 2000), 1.

You can find the whole article at FARMS. The FARMS article deals more with copper than gold. Here are some key points from the FARMS article:

Although Nephi’s tools were most likely made of iron or steel, bronze remains a possibility. Thus a review of the development of copper and its alloys may be in order and of special interest to readers of the Book of Mormon.

The word bronze did not come into use before the 18th century and did not exist in Tudor England.58 It does not appear in the King James Bible (it does appear in other versions of the Bible) or in the Book or Mormon, and the objects designated “brass” were most likely the tin-copper alloy.

The article seems to be written more for geology aficionados. Potter’s quote of the FARMS article’s 4th paragraph.

as for favorite theories, they all have pros and cons. I think Sorensen has added a much needed level of scholarship to the area of bom geography and I appreciate his work. but I don’t think his narrow neck of land is narrow. the bom talks of the land northward and southward, but sorensen’s location is more of an east-west orientation.

the sword that sorensen proposed that the aztecs used is made of wood and obsidian-sharp, but incapable of rust. the anti-nephi-lehies said the steel swords rusted, and steel doesn’t seem to have been used by aztecs or olmecs.

of course there are animal, silk, and dna problems too. the people who support sorensen seem to look down on other theories, yet don’t like to acknowledge sorensen’s weaknesses. I just want to be open to other possibilities. I can’t say i’m satisfied with potter either, but his work in yemen and saudi arabia is excellent and I think he methods are worth an equal evaluation with sorensen.

http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSN156819820090615

It seems there is gold in dem dar hills.

I will say that potter and priddis share similarities in believing s america has a more similar climate to the mediterranean, better plant similarities. potter claims that dna evidence has been discovered in peru recently. this would be a big boost to the theory if potter’s claims are verified.