Smithsonian Institute Statement Regarding the Book of Mormon

As stated at MRM.org:

Some Latter-day Saints, in their zeal to give tangible authenticity to the Book of Mormon, have told prospective converts that the Smithsonian Institution has used the Book of Mormon to verify sites in the New World. In response to numerous requests on this subject, the Smithsonian has issued the following paper detailing their position on the matter.
Information from the National Museum of Natural History Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 20560

Statement Regarding the Book of Mormon

1. The Smithsonian Institution has never used the Book of Mormon in any way as a scientific guide. Smithsonian archaeologists see no direct connection between the archaeology of the New World and the subject matter of the book.

2. The physical type of the American Indian is basically Mongoloid, being most closely related to that of the peoples of eastern, central, and northeastern Asia. Archaeological evidence indicates that the ancestors of the present Indians came into the New World — probably over a land bridge known to have existed in the Bering Strait region during the last Ice Age — in a continuing series of small migrations beginning from about 25,000 to 30,000 years ago.

3. Present evidence indicates that the first people to reach this continent from the East were the Norsemen who briefly visited the northeastern part of North America around A.D. 1000 and then settled in Greenland. There is nothing to show that they reached Mexico or Central America.

4. One of the main lines of evidence supporting the scientific finding that contacts with Old World civilizations, if indeed they occurred at all, were of very little significance for the development of American Indian civilizations, is the fact that none of the principal Old World domesticated food plants or animals (except the dog) occurred in the New World in pre-Columbian times. American Indians had no wheat, barley, oats, millet, rice, cattle, pigs, chickens, horses, donkeys, camels before 1492. (Camels and horses were in the Americas, along with the bison, mammoth, and mastodon, but all these animals became extinct around 10,000 B.C. at the time the early big game (sic) hunters spread across the Americas.)

5. Iron, steel, glass, and silk were not used in the New World before 1492 (except for occasional use of unsmelted meteoric iron). Native copper was worked used (sic) in various locations in pre-Columbian times, but true metallurgy was limited to southern Mexico and the Andean region, where its occurrence in late prehistoric times involved gold, silver, copper, and their alloys, but not iron.

6. There is a possibility that the spread of cultural traits across the Pacific to Mesoamerica and the northwestern coast of South America began several hundred years before the Christian era. However, any such inter-hemispheric contacts appear to have been the results of accidental voyages originating in eastern and southern Asia. It is by means certain that even such contacts occurred; certainly there were no contacts with the ancient Egyptians, Hebrews, or other peoples of Western Asia and the Near East.

7. No reputable Egyptologist or other specialist on Old World archaeology, and no expert on New World prehistory, has discovered or confirmed any relationship between archaeological remains in Mexico and archaeological remains in Egypt.

8. Reports of findings of ancient Egyptian, Hebrew, and other Old World writings in the New World in pre-Columbian contexts have frequently appeared in newspapers, magazines, and sensational books. None of these claims has stood up to examination by reputable scholars. No inscriptions using Old World forms of writing have been shown to have occurred in any part of the Americas before 1492 except for a few Norse rune stones which have been found in Greenland.

9. There are copies of the Book of Mormon in the library of the National Museum, of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.

SIL – 76 Rev. May 1980
Unfortunately, some anti-Mormons, in their zeal to disprove the Book of Mormon, have taken this and other similar letters as proof that the Book of Mormon is false. But let’s examine each part of the statement the Smithsonian makes:

“The Smithsonian Institution has never used the Book of Mormon in any way as a scientific guide.” – Fair enough. The Book of Mormon was never intended to be such, and I believe any thinking Mormon would agree the Book of Mormon is a poor guide to the archaeology of the Western Hemisphere. Of course that doesn’t stop Mormons from getting excited about any archaeological news that might support the Book of Mormon, but any Mormon who would rely on such news or “evidence” as proof that the Book of Mormon is true is, as the statement above says, most likely mislead by their “zeal”.

“Smithsonian archaeologists see no direct connection between the archaeology of the New World and the subject matter of the book.” – This is not to say there is no connection, merely to say the Smithsonian archaeologists don’t see any such connection. But is that because they’ve researched it thoroughly and can’t find any connection, or because they don’t care enough about the matter to research it at all? Remember, the purpose of this statement was not to state that the Book of Mormon is not true, only to stop those rumors that the Smithsonian had used the Book of Mormon in their archaeological studies.

“The physical type of the American Indian is basically Mongoloid, being most closely related to that of the peoples of eastern, central, and northeastern Asia. Archaeological evidence indicates that the ancestors of the present Indians came into the New World — probably over a land bridge known to have existed in the Bering Strait region during the last Ice Age — in a continuing series of small migrations beginning from about 25,000 to 30,000 years ago.” – I’m a Mormon, and I agree with this statement, yet I still believe the Book of Mormon to be true. The “urban legend” amongst many, if not most, Mormons has long been that all natives of North and South America, from the Eskimos in Alaska to whatever natives live farthest south were exclusively descendants of the people of the Book of Mormon. However, the intrinsic and extrinsic evidence points to the Book of Mormon people (excluding those in the book of Ether known as the Jaredites–who are of unknown origin although there is some evidence to suggest they came from some part of Asia) being a relatively small civilization amongst many others that already existed on these Western continents.

Much of this confusion among Mormons most likely stems from a misinterpretation of passages in the Book of Mormon referring to “the narrow neck of land” and the “land northward” and the “land southward”. It is easy to see how someone would immediately assume these passages refer to the area that is now home to the Panama Canal, and the North and South American continents. However, the most basic reading of the Book of Mormon is enough to disprove the isthmus of Panama as being the “narrow neck of land” since the Book of Mormon also describes it as a “day’s journey” whereas the isthmus is not nearly narrow enough at any point to allow a person to cross it on foot in anything close to as little time as one day. In addition, there are other areas of Central America that do conform to the descriptions given, and which make quite a bit more sense upon a more thorough investigation of the Book of Mormon text. But of course in the early days of the LDS Church such investigation was not possible, geographic knowledge was limited, and so it’s simple to see how an erroneous assumption could have been made. That the urban legend still exists today is a testament not to the stubbornness of Mormons to believe what is scientifically doubtful, but rather a sign of the lack of importance given to this matter by most Mormons. It is a matter of curiosity, not of faith. If they think about it at all, most Mormons assume it all makes sense somehow, even if the information to piece it all together isn’t yet available.  But who cares? For most, it’s just for fun, and the important stuff is living the faith, not the archaeology of it.

“Present evidence indicates that the first people to reach this continent from the East were the Norsemen who briefly visited the northeastern part of North America around A.D. 1000 and then settled in Greenland. There is nothing to show that they reached Mexico or Central America.” – More or less irrelevant, since it’s believed Lehi’s family arrived from the West, and again, they were a small civilization among many others.

“One of the main lines of evidence supporting the scientific finding that contacts with Old World civilizations, if indeed they occurred at all, were of very little significance for the development of American Indian civilizations, is the fact that none of the principal Old World domesticated food plants or animals (except the dog) occurred in the New World in pre-Columbian times. American Indians had no wheat, barley, oats, millet, rice, cattle, pigs, chickens, horses, donkeys, camels before 1492. (Camels and horses were in the Americas, along with the bison, mammoth, and mastodon, but all these animals became extinct around 10,000 B.C. at the time the early big game (sic) hunters spread across the Americas.)” – Again, if the civilization of the Book of Mormon was relatively small, it’s easily possible that animals and plants mentioned in the Book of Mormon could have existed without there being any fossil or historical record of them. The fossilization of a single organism is an extremely rare event, generally understood to represent tens or hundreds of thousands or even millions of such organisms that did not become fossilized. And if we have no history of the Book of Mormon people other than that in the Book of Mormon itself, then if some of these plants and animal species were unique to their civilization as a matter of their being brought over with them, then this is not unfathomable.

I’m not sure it makes sense to respond to the rest of the items, because they all hinge on the same point–if the Book of Mormon claimed that its people filled North and South America and were the sole progenitors of today’s Native Americans, then yes, there is a problem. If, as I claim here, the Book of Mormon people were a small civilization among many others, then these statements by the Smithsonian say nothing but that there is still ample archeological work to be done in Central America, where there are thousands, if not tens of thousands of known sites that have never been excavated or researched. I’ve been there and seen it. Who knows what is yet to be found?

More resources related to this topic:

Jeff Lindsay – The Smithsonian Institution’s 1996 “Statement Regarding the Book of Mormon”
FAIR – Book of Mormon/Archaeology/Smithsonian statement
LDS Church News – Paleontologist defends the Book of Mormon