Part 10 - Plants and Animals

The Book of Mormon mentions a number of plants and animals not known to exist in the Americas during the period it covers (600 BC to 421 AD for the Nephites and Lamanites and 2200 BC to 600 BC for the Jaredites).  The following lists are taken from the appendix of the book, Quest for the Gold Plates, by Stan Larson, and originally appeared a paper written by Thomas Stuart Ferguson, a lawyer and amateur American archeology enthusiast who actively promoted and participated in research in the 50s and 60s.

Plants mentioned in the Book of Mormon:

• Barley
• Figs
• Grapes
• Wheat

Animals mentioned in the Book of Mormon:

• Ass
• Bull
• Calf
• Cattle
• Cow
• Goat
• Horse
• Ox
• Sheep
• Sow
• Elephant

Ferguson points out that no evidence for any of these plants and animals in the period covered by the Book of Mormon has been found in the Americas despite intense effort.  Ferguson helped found and promote the New World Archeological Foundation.  Although this foundation did not find any Book of Mormon connections as Ferguson had hoped, it produced good work that was well-respected by non-Mormon scholars.

The plants mentioned in the Book of Mormon are all domesticated food crops.  Domestic crops that are know to be native to the Americas during Book of Mormon times include corn, squash, beans, chilies, avocados, tomatoes, and chocolate.  Of these, only corn is mentioned in the Book of Mormon with three references.  However, it is not clear whether these cursory references to corn indicate maize native to the Americas, or simply generic references to grain as found in biblical passages.

A list of animals native to the Americas is too extensive to cover here, as can be seen on this website.  However, as with plants, it is useful to consider domesticated animals since these should have been familiar to the Nephites or Lamanites and it is reasonable to expect some of them to be mentioned in the Book of Mormon.  Native Americans domesticated very few animals, mostly because animals suitable for domestication either did not exist or went extinct shortly after the first arrival of humans.  Jared Diamond addresses this in his book, Guns, Germs and Steel.  According to Diamond, animals domesticated in America include turkeys, llamas, dogs, Muscovy ducks, and guinea pigs.  Of these, only dogs are mentioned in the Book of Mormon.  There are six references to dogs, all of which are either biblical quotes or refer to wild dogs metaphorically for teaching purposes.

I have looked at the issue of plants and animals in two directions: plants and animals mentioned in the text that are not native to the Americas, and plants and animals know to be native to the Americas that are not mentioned in the text.  In both directions there is a disconnect that, in my view, discredits the Book of Mormon as a genuine historical account.

Brant Gardner, author of The Gift and Power: Translating the Book of Mormon, addresses some of these issues in a Mormon Stories podcast found here.  According to Gardner, this disconnect between ancient America and the contents of the Book of Mormon mostly has to do with the translation process where Joseph Smith used elements familiar to him to explain the less familiar aspects of the original Nephite text.  However, Gardner's views presuppose the idea that there was actually something to translate.  Since there are no gold plates for us to examine and compare with the Book of Mormon text, specific views on translation are highly speculative and generally matters of faith.

Descriptions of Joseph Smith translating by looking into a hat with a stone in it do not make it clear that he was actually translating anything rather than inventing the story or recalling a previously invented story from memory.  Therefore, discussions of translation the way the term is understood today do not seem very relevant to the creation of the Book of Mormon.  I have little choice but to accept the words of the Book of Mormon at face value, and this type of analysis reveals very little connection at all with ancient America.

This is just one data point that demonstrates the improbability of the historicity of the Book of Mormon.  There are many others including some I have already written about and some that I will write about later.  Each of these probabilities would need to be multiplied to determine the overall probability that the Book of Mormon is historical.  Multiplying probabilities less then one (with 1 being certain and 0 being impossible) produces an overall probability that gets smaller and smaller with each improbability until finally it is so close to zero that we can consider it nearly impossible.