High and handsome, with legal counsel’s practiced authority, Ferguson trusted that the equipment of technology could persuade the global realm of the reality regarding the Book of Mormon. Quickly he began searching for clues in colonial documents that recorded some of Latin America’s indigenous traditions after he finished college. One, written around 1554 by way of number of K’iche’ Mayan villagers when you look at the Guatemala highlands, claimed that their ancestors—”sons of Abraham and Jacob”—had sailed across an ocean to attain their homeland. The K’iche’ had been beaten by Spanish conquistadors in 1524, as well as the references that are biblical most most likely the merchandise of connection with Catholic priests, whom enthusiastically converted allies and previous foes alike.
But Ferguson, that has developed in a Mormon household in Idaho, eagerly took syncretism that is such evidence that Israelites had when settled into the Americas. He had been additionally taken because of the misconception of QuetzalcГіatl, the feathered serpent deity that some colonial priests called a bearded man that is white. Ferguson determined that he had been Jesus, showing up in Bountiful after their resurrection just like the written Book of Mormon recorded. Their collection research spurred their very first search for archaeological proof, in Campeche in 1948.
Ferguson knew, nonetheless, that colonial sources represented evidence that is circumstantial most readily useful. Nor ended up being it adequate to locate ruins of previous civilizations much more or less the best location, as he’d carried out in Campeche. To persuade and transform outsiders—a concern for Mormons—he desired objects mentioned when you look at the Book of Mormon that archaeologists had not present in Mesoamerica: horses, wheeled chariots, metal swords, and, most significant, Hebrew or Egyptian script. “the ultimate test of our views of Book of Mormon geography should be archaeological work in the bottom it self,” Ferguson published in 1951 to their buddy J. Willard Marriott, the rich founder for the Marriott hospitality string and a strong figure into the church.
Ferguson’s proven fact that Mesoamerican communities had been seeded by Western people is commonly named racist today. Nonetheless it fit straight into the thinking that is archaeological of time, whenever Mesoamerican archaeologists had been consumed because of the concern of whether civilizations had developed separately into the Americas or had origins somewhere else. ” when you look at the 1940s and 1950s, these had been the concerns everyone was investigating,” states Robert Rosenswig, an archaeologist during the State University of the latest York (SUNY) in Albany.
Ferguson never received an education that is formal archaeology. He practiced legislation to guide their growing family members—he eventually had five children—as well as their research. However in 1951, he recruited leading archaeologists to explore dating after widowhood the foundation of Mesoamerican civilization as an element of an institution that is new the newest World Archaeological Foundation (NWAF). First up to speed ended up being celebrated researcher Alfred Kidder of Harvard University while the Carnegie organization for Science in Washington, D.C. Kidder thought Mesoamerican civilizations had developed individually, but he and Ferguson had met at a museum in Guatemala City in 1946 and struck up a communication.
Kidder “is thought to be the greatest [Mesoamerican] archaeologist of this twentieth century,” claims archaeologist John Clark of Brigham younger University (BYU) in Provo, Utah, who directed NWAF from 1987 to 2009. To have Kidder regarding the task, Clark claims, “there is no concern that Ferguson must be some charismatic man.” Additionally recruited had been Gordon Ekholm, an anthropologist during the United states Museum of Natural History in new york, who thought that Mesoamerican civilizations had their origins in higher level Asian countries.
A ritual figurine through the web web site of Los Horcones is scanned at “” new world “” Archaeological Foundation head office.
Their timing had been good. Radiocarbon dating had simply come to exist, and Ferguson instantly recognized its possibility of tracing the origins of Mesoamerican countries. “This is basically the best development because the start of archaeology,” he had written to LDS leadership. “we am of this opinion that is personal god inspired [radiocarbon dating] so it may be used efficiently associated with the Book of Mormon.”
Yet the initial many years of NWAF had been a scramble that is desperate cash. Ferguson contributed thousands himself and raised funds from rich Mormons additionally the audiences of their lectures about Book of Mormon geography. In 1952, NWAF was able to deliver a number of U.S. and Mexican archaeologists to review the drainage basin regarding the Grijalva River in Tabasco and Chiapas, which Ferguson considered to be the written Book of Mormon’s River Sidon.
By this point, Ferguson had are more discerning time durations than he previously held it’s place in the jungles of Campeche. The ruins he discovered there have been most most likely Timeless or post-Classic Mayan, from between 250 C.E. while the Spanish conquest—much too late to be Mesoamerica’s civilization that is earliest or perhaps the duration mentioned in the Book of Mormon, considered to be about 2200 B.C.E. to 400 C.E. “We’ll never re re solve pre-Maya origins by digging up more Mayas,” Ferguson penned to Kidder in April 1953. They required period that is formative, dating from about 2000 B.C.E. to 200 C.E., approximately matching the times from the Book of Mormon.
In-may 1953, Ferguson found its way to Chiapas to assist.
Straight right straight Back on the floor, Ferguson and Sorenson put down by jeep for a survey that is 10-day see just what else they are able to find. “we would go from web web site to site, city to city, asking вЂAre there any ruins around here?’” says Sorenson, whom proceeded to get a Ph.D. in anthropology from UC Los Angeles (UCLA) and it is now a teacher emeritus at BYU. Ferguson additionally asked locals whether or not they had discovered figurines of horses—unknown in ancient Mesoamerica—or resources of iron ore, which Sorenson discovered naГЇve. But his or her own training that is archaeological off, and also at some internet internet sites he had been in a position to determine the polished, monochrome pottery and hand-sculpted, irregular peoples figurines regarding the Formative duration, so not the same as the intricate but standardized figurines the Vintage Maya had created from molds. In all, Sorenson and Ferguson surveyed 22 web web internet sites on that journey and accumulated an astounding quantity of formative items. ” During my modest viewpoint there clearly was little if any concern about it—they are Nephite creating,” Ferguson published to their church funders.