George Potter makes the case that Lehi landed in modern-day Chile in South America. We’ll discuss his reasons for making the case, and anachronisms. Check out our conversation…
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Charting Nephi’s Ocean Journey
GT 00:25 Okay, so you’re going with what Joseph Smith taught. You’re going with the 30 degrees south latitude. Is that Chile or is that Peru?
George 00:32 That’s Chile.
GT 00:33 Chile?
George 00:33 Well, it’s just part of ancient Peru.
GT 00:35 Okay.
George 00:36 I mean, I was with a person last night who works with Richard Hawk down in Khor Kofut, and he was down mountain climbing in Argentina and found Inca ruins as far down as, almost down to Patagonia in Argentina. So, ancient Peru took in a vast area. It was as large as the Roman Empire, all the way from Colombia down to Chile.
GT 01:00 Okay.
George 01:01 So, it’s all Peru. But until the Smiths’ time, that was now a nation called Chile. It’s indicated, it’s purported that he taught that they landed 30 degrees south in Chile, that was supported by many of the apostles, the people who knew him at the time. That’s what they taught. They didn’t teach the Heartland model. They didn’t teach the Mesoamerican model. That’s what the early church leaders taught. That Joseph Smith had indicated.
GT 01:33 The early church leaders believe that South America was the land southward and North America was the land northward. It was more of a hemispheric model, right?
George 01:42 I don’t know that.
GT 01:44 But that’s the way I understand it.
George 01:46 Okay, I have not…
GT 01:47 Panama’s the narrow neck of land.
George 01:49 Yeah, I don’t know that that is what they taught.
GT 01:53 Let me ask you another question. Are you familiar with a book by Venice Priddis? The Book and the Map, I think it’s called? [It’s a ] blue book.
George 02:01 Unfortunately.
GT 02:02 You’re unfortunately familiar with it?
George 02:04 Well, let’s put it this way. It’s a pretty naive notion that South America just rose out of the ocean 2000 years ago, it’s been there for millions of years.
GT 02:15 Okay, because it does look like, for those who aren’t familiar with it. Basically, the Amazon River was an ocean, basically. And so it’s nice because you’ve got a narrow neck of land. It makes it more of a land northward/land southward. Um, it’s great. The problem is, like you said, that may have been true 2 million years ago, it wasn’t true 2000 years ago.
George 02:40 Like 50 million years ago, maybe?
GT 02:41 Yeah.
George 02:42 Okay, let’s just kind of get…
GT 02:45 So, you don’t think South America was flooded?
George 02:47 For these, well, they call them internal models of the Book of Mormon. Now, it has to be a narrow neck of land, there has to be this or that, and that. That, to me is absolute nonsense. Because all those things are based on assumptions that people are making about the language in the Book of Mormon.
GT 03:06 Okay.
George 03:07 They went down to Zarahemla. What does that mean? They went up to the city of Nephi. Are they going up in altitude? Are they simply going north or south? You don’t know. Because in Hebrew, the semitic languages, like in English, up means north. It could also mean they’re going up in altitude, and they travel for a period of time. “Oh, it had to be exactly 19 days?” How do you know that? It’s all based on people’s assumptions as to if it fits. There are so few geographical clues in the Book of Mormon, you cannot make a map out of it. Or you could turn around, you could make up, using assumptions, 30 different maps and I’ve seen at least 30 maps of people, who have come to me and said, “I’ve got this map of where the Book of Mormon took place.” And I go, that could be, but where’s the proof? Where?
GT 04:01 That’s what all the skeptics say.
George 04:04 Now go there and dig and find me a Nephite civilization.
GT 04:07 Okay.
George 04:07 Just try it. Go there. Dig. Like you said, it’s only 2000 years ago. You’d think they would have left some trash behind, some indication that they’re actually there. So, that’s what I say to all these internal…
GT 04:24 So, you reject all the internal maps, because you think those are just subject to interpretation.
George 04:30 Always based only on people’s assumptions.
GT 04:32 Up doesn’t necessarily mean North. It could, it may or may not.
George 04:35 And you don’t know how long it took them, Alma to get to Zarahemla. You don’t know how it took Mosiah to get there. You don’t know any of these things. They’re just making up distances, what they assume it took.
GT 04:51 Okay.
George 04:51 To fit their already preconceived idea where it took place. So I just say, let’s go dig there and see what we find. Show me there’s a Nephite civilization in Michigan, or Ohio or North Carolina or in Baja, California. Show me.
GT 04:52 I’m glad you’re familiar with these. That’s good.
George 04:58 Show me, show me the civilization.
GT 05:03 Malay, you forgot that one. {Rick laughing}
George 05:16 A lot more than that. People want to go ahead and they want to always use statements of the prophets. Or they think what the Prophet said. But, the best indication we have is 30 degrees south latitude in Chile. Now, they’ll accept Joseph Smith, but they won’t accept the prophets of today. So, you take, for example, Harold B Lee. What did Harold B Lee say about where the Book of Mormon took place, quote, “from the writings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and of other inspired men, it seems that all are in agreement that the followers of Lehi came to the western shores of South America. While I was a missionary in Peru, the Prophet of the Church, Joseph Fielding Smith, wrote to the missionaries and said, (in Bolivia,) ‘You are blessed because you are being able to serve, in an area which was a center of the church at the time of Christ.'” Russell M. Nelson, he just, a couple years ago, he was down in Brazil, talking to the missionaries and said, “You want to get your investigators interested in the Book of Mormon. Tell them about Christ’s mission in South America.” These are prophets. So, if they’re going to base it on what so-called apostles and prophets have said when you’re talking at stake conference, it doesn’t have much credence compared to what the prophets actually said. So, let’s just take that aside and say, “Where was there a Nephite civilization at the time the Book of Mormon, found in the Americas? Where?”
GT 07:16 I’ve got lots of answers, but you tell me.
George 07:19 Okay, let me just go over some of the things that were pertained to in a Nephite civilization, according to the Book of Mormon. They believed in a white God, in the form of a man, not a snake, not a serpent who flew around. They had gold, and they had gold plates. The Book of Mormon is written on gold plates. There is silver copper, bronze and brass all in abundance, not here or there, a trinket, in abundance. They were able to make steel. They grew barley, wheat, corn. They had iron, so, they must have been mining iron. They lived in buildings. They had sheep, they had horses. They had two different races who hated each other, one that was fair skinned one that was dark skinned. They had woven armor. They had solar and lunar calendars. They had a climate where seeds from Palestine could grow. They wore fine apparel, even silk. There were four seas in their area. Their lands were divided into four quarters. They had cement and they had highways.
GT 08:48 Okay.
George 08:51 Show me in North America or Mesoamerica, where there’s a civilization that had those characteristics. There is none.
GT 09:00 But there is in South America, you’re telling me?
George 09:02 There is in South America.
GT 09:04 Okay.
George 09:06 And I also talked about during Book of Mormon times, not stuff that’s made up. I’m talking about carbon 14 dating, actual civilizations that existed at that time. You have to go south of Panama to get to it. Take something like sheep. Ammon goes and he does what? He protects the flocks of the king.
George 09:35 So, what were the flocks in North America, buffalo? What were they? Dogs? Mesoamerica, they’ve never found bones of sheep or anything, animal like a sheep. The only animals that were ever domesticated in Mesoamerica were dogs, ducks, turkeys and rabbits. There’s even a person, who had the gall, to publish an article that Ammon’s flocks were turkeys. He took the turkeys down to the water. Can you imagine that saying those are his flock? So what do we have? We have sheep mentioned in the Book of Mormon 24 times, herds 22 times. You have flocks mentioned 63 times. When the Spanish got to South America, they looked at the animals down there, they looked at the alpacas and they said, these sheep are better than our sheep back in Spain. Their wool is finer, their meat is more delicious. They called them sheep. They found one owner, one herdsman there who had 40,000 alpacas. They called them sheep.
George 11:01 What were the horses that were there? When the Incas saw the horses of the Spanish, they said, my gosh, those are big llamas. Okay, because they’re used for packing animals. That’s what they used the llamas for. They’re bigger, stronger than alpacas, because they can’t take the burden. But they have actual–they put cargo on top of the llamas, and they use them to haul their cargo, their freight.
GT 11:31 Aren’t llamas and alpacas, they look very similar, don’t they?
George 11:34 Yeah, but a llama is twice the size on alpaca.
GT 11:37 Oh, okay.
George 11:38 And twice as strong,
GT 11:39 And so an alpaca could be used as a horse, whereas a llama would be used as a sheep.
George 11:46 They have chariot races using llamas.
GT 11:52 So llamas are horses and alpacas are sheep. Is that what you are saying?
George 11:56 If you think about it, Nephi gets there, they have these packing animals. Well, they call them horses, because they use them as packing animals. So you have animals, elephants. Any animal that had a tusk in Nephi’s day was an elephant. Nephi never saw an elephant in his life. The Jaredites never saw an elephant, or that they recorded, at least. But they do have the Peccary which have tusks. So, in Greece, the Middle East, these, any animal that had a tusk was an elephant.
GT 12:33 You said, what was the name of that animal again?
George 12:35 Peccary.
GT 12:36 Peccary?
George 12:37 Peccary. So, but you think about you know…
GT 12:42 But that doesn’t look like an elephant. It just has a tusk.
George 12:44 Well, what is an elephant? What was the elephant to Nephi? It was a tusked animal. It wasn’t a huge animal that lived somewhere in India or Africa. There’s no elephants in the Mediterranean, until Hannibal brought them in from India. They didn’t have elephants.
GT 13:01 Okay.
George 13:02 Okay. Nephi never saw one. There’s nowhere in the Book of Mormon that even talks about anybody riding a horse. It doesn’t say anybody rode…
GT 13:10 What about chariots? Nephi would have known what a chariot was and wouldn’t the Egyptians and Israelis have used horses for those?
George 13:18 Okay, and they do use, I’ve been in South America, I’ve seen llamas carrying, hauling carts, being used to haul carts in South America, in the Andes.
GT 13:33 Alright, so these are chariots, chariots in Nephi’s day?
George 13:38 It might have been. I don’t know. In the shoreline, certainly, there could have been chariots down there. In the mountains, no. The mountains are not–hat’s why they say the Incas didn’t use the wheel. Because the wheel is no good in those Andes.
GT 13:53 Okay.
George 13:54 But down on a coastal plain, they could have been used. I’m just saying they could have carried a chariot. S, let’s say that is a weak evidence for a Nephite civilization down there, but it is possible. So, let’s take gold, silver, and copper in abundance.
GT 14:16 Okay.
George 14:17 Nephi wrote the Book of Mormon on gold. There is no gold north of Panama till 700 or 800 AD. They have gold plates they’ve found on the coast in Peru that date back to 1900 BC, thin plates. They also have, along the shoreline, now this goes back to Jaredite times, they have the image of the staff God, who is very kosher, the white God, who had tears in his cheeks. We know in the Book of Mormon, the Lord cried for his people. Those go back, again, to the second millennium BC so that you have an image of God. Let’s just go back to the gold plates. There’s no gold, no silver, no copper being mined or used in Mesoamerica or in North America.
GT 15:12 Or South America?
George 15:14 Oh yes. In South America, there’s lots of it.
GT 15:16 Okay, because I’m not aware of any gold books found in South America, unless you’ve got something I don’t know about.
George 15:24 It’s gold plates.
GT 15:25 That’s what I mean.
George 15:27 On the temple in Cusco, Peru, which I believe is the City of Nephi, the entire temple was lined by gold plates, gold plates, the whole outside of the temple is pure gold when the sun shined on it, from the east, it just lit up like a fire, because that represented the spirit of their God.
GT 15:49 Okay, but was that, were they using that to inscribe books? Or was this just gold plating on the palace?
George 15:56 There are plates they would take out from the temple. The priests would take out they would read from these plates. They were plates of wood, they weren’t plates of gold, but they were plates of wood.
GT 16:05 Gold covered wood? Is that what you’re saying?
George 16:11 No, I’m not saying that.
GT 16:13 Okay,
George 16:13 I have no indication they’re covered with gold. The temple inside and outside was covered with gold. But the priests would come out and they would read from plates. In fact, according to Boyd K. Packer, when he talked about the sticks of Joseph and the stick of Judah, those were not rolled up papyrus, those were actual plates of wood that they would use to read from. So, let’s just go back to that. They’ve got to have, to be the land of the Book of Mormon, you have to have gold, silver, and copper. And I’ll tell you, go to the gold museum in Cusco alone. [There are] 10,000 articles of gold, 10,000 articles of gold. The Spanish took so much gold out of Peru that it filled up the tower there in Seville, Spain. That whole altar that you see there in the great cathedral in Seville, that gold came from Peru, silver, gold, copper all there.
George 17:16 There is enough copper taken out of Potosi in Bolivia, to make a rod of silver all the way from Bolivia to Spain and back. It still–the minerals down there are amazing. But not only that, but the ink is good. They had all sorts of alloys that they would mix the metals, they are the best metallurgists in the whole world. Then you take, for example, silk. They said they had silk. What is silk? Silk is a Middle Eastern word. It’s not a word from China. Silk is silka in Arabic, it means any fine material, a fine cloth. It’s very fine, that’s silk. The weavers of South America, of Peru, were the world’s greatest weavers. They had fantastic clothing, cloths. They’re just amazing. And art galleries will tell you they are the finest weavers of all the ancient world. They had all sorts of different dyes and things that they used. The robe of the Inca, himself, was actually woven from bat skin, bat fur, excuse me, bat fur.
GT 18:37 Hmm.
George 18:37 Okay. Beautiful. If you’ve ever had like alpaca or vicuna like a sweater made out of vicuna or a rug made out of vicuna, it is the softest wool you’ll ever feel. It’s amazing.
GT 18:52 But it’s not silk.
George 18:55 What’s silk?
GT 18:57 Well, silk would imply Silkworms and you’re using that.
George 19:01 That’s how we interpret silk today. Silk, the word silk, remember they came from the Middle East? That is selkie that’s where the word silk comes from. It’s any cloth that’s very fine and soft. Any fine woven cloth is silk. We today misuse silk to refer to fabric that’s made from the silkworm.
GT 19:25 Silkworms.
George 19:26 Yeah, okay, but that’s not what silk was in Nephi’s day.
GT 19:31 Okay, so let me push back a little bit.
George 19:32 Okay, push back.
GT 19:33 There’s a famous quote. “The Book of Mormon is the most correct book on earth.” You’re telling me that horses are alpacas, no their sheep. Alpacas, or llamas are horses. Silk doesn’t really mean silk. My understanding of or in South America they did use iron ore for paint but they didn’t use it for swords. They didn’t use it for anything like that. You mentioned they didn’t use a wheel, especially in the mountains. You said maybe they used it in the low lands. But isn’t Cusco? You called that the city of Nephi? Isn’t that in the mountains?
George 20:21 That’s in the mountains? Yes.
GT 20:23 So isn’t…
George 20:24 They had chariots in Cusco?
GT 20:27 They didn’t use the word Cusco, for sure.
George 20:29 I understand. Joseph Smith is translating the words that Nephi wrote. So we have to remember that Joseph Smith is translating Nephi’s words. Okay, or Mormons words. So Nephi comes to Peru. He see’s alpaca? What is he going to call it?
George 20:50 The Spanish got there. They said, the animals look different than sheep. It looks pretty much like a sheep. It’s a sheep. Right? Nephi would have had the same problem. He didn’t have a word for it. What’s that animal?
GT 21:05 Okay.
George 21:05 He had to call it something. Well, that’s a sheep. This is a animal, carries a burden. We’ll call that a horse because we can pack it. We can put packs on it.
GT 21:14 So you’re a loose translation guy. Not a tight translation guy? {Rick chuckling}
George 21:17 Yes. But a reasonable translation guy. So Nephi had to come up with words for things that were familiar. Like what’s a hippopotamus? We didn’t know what to call it. They called it a water horse? Is it a water horse? No. But they had to give it some kind of a name. So we’ll call it…
GT 21:39 Well there’s cureloms and cummoms. Right?
George 21:43 Yeah, there’s cuy, every guy down there eating a guinea pig. Okay. There’s all sorts of different things that he had no names for. He made up names for some of them because it was animal they had nothing to. a rat without a tail? I mean, call it a cuy. So yeah, I mean, there has to be some reasonable explanation here as to why you would use words that you’re familiar with. To remind you of animals in your old world, you’re going to use those same words to describe similar animals in the new world that you’re in. So I think it makes sense. But if there’s a Book of Mormon model, certainly, you can’t call herd, flocks, turkeys are buffalo or deer.
GT 22:29 I think some people are going to feel the same way about Alpacas and horses and llamas and sheep.
George 22:35 At least I have a reasonable explanation.[both chuckling}The Spanish had the same problem. They seemed to call them those things. They just had the same problem in reverse with the horse. That was a llama.
GT 22:45 I mean, because
George 22:47 That makes sense, but you can make it out of nothing. Here we have a reasonable explanation for a Nephite civilization having existed. Let me share this map. If you think those attributes I just showed those little dots indicate those features are described in the Book of Mormon, a Nephite civilization and where they would have existed. Now Mesoamerica I can add a couple they did find some horse bones there. There were a little pony, okay.
GT 23:19 Okay. What other things are there? Well, before we go there, because we’re kind of talking about anachronisms a little bit. It says that the swords rusted. Did anybody use swords in South America?
GT 23:19 Alright.
George 23:19 And they also found barley growing there. But if you want to find the most features that are described in the Book of Mormon and has a Nephite civilization, you have to go to the Andes.
George 23:44 Yeah, these wooden swords and their tipped sometimes with copper, so it made them hard.
GT 23:49 Copper doesn’t rust?
George 23:52 I think it does. Sure.
GT 23:53 No, I mean, it turns green, but it doesn’t. I mean steel will. Steel rusts.
George 23:59 Steel will rust away. Yeah.
GT 24:01 And there are no steel swords in South America that I am aware of.
George 24:07 Yeah, I agree with that. They’ve never found an iron sword in South America.
GT 24:12 Okay, so that’s a problem then. Isn’t it? Because we’ve got the people that buried their swords, the anti-Nephi-Lehi’s.
George 24:22 They know that they mined ore, okay? in South America,
GT 24:27 But wasn’t it used for paint? It wasn’t used for swords.
George 24:30 If I could explain.
GT 24:31 Sorry.
George 24:31 Okay, that’s down in Nazca area in the mountains.
GT 24:35 Okay.
George 24:35 They know they use that as a base for their paint and their pottery. It doesn’t say they didn’t use it for other purposes. But they knew what iron was at least they mined it. But if you go north of Panama, where’s your copper mines? People say well, there’s iron up in Michigan. Yeah, well nobody ever mined it. It’s just in the ground. There’s no record. Again, at least we know that people recognize the mineral and they mined it, in South America. No indication that north of Panama, of any mining, whatsoever.
GT 25:12 Okay.
George 25:13 Okay, so let’s go to something else. The Book of Mormon talks about the land was divided into quarters, the north south and the Northeast, Northwest, South southeast, they describe the quarters in the Book of Mormon. There actually, there was no such thing as the Inca Empire. It was called Tawantinsuyu. That was the name of the Inca Empire. Why? Because it’s divided into four quarters. It was the land of four quarters. Cusco, City of Nephi, being the center, and then it was divided into four quarters.
GT 25:47 Okay.
George 25:47 Okay, how about, they have to have four sea’s. Right?
GT 25:53 Okay.
George 25:54 So what’s the Sea of Galilee? It’s a lake. Right?
GT 25:58 We would call it a lake, yeah.
George 26:00 Nephi would call it a lake too. Barian Sea would have….
GT 26:00 He would have called it the Sea of Galilee, wouldn’t he?
George 26:03 Yeah, well, or the Sea of Galilee. Okay, so a lake can be a sea. Okay. So, And so the ocean could be a sea as well.
GT 26:15 Hmmm.
George 26:15 Okay. So, where are your four seas north of Panama? Well, they can kind of configure them okay.
GT 26:24 {Rick chuckling} I don’t want to talk about Meso. I want to talk about your [theory.].
George 26:27 Okay. South America what do you have in Peru? Obviously, you have the Pacific. You have Lake Titicaca or Concha which means sea in Quechua. Concha, Titicaca on your east. You have Pupa, the great salt sea to the south of that. And it flows just like you know, Lake Jordan into the Salt Lake or the Sea of Galilee into the Dead Sea. You have the same thing there you have a freshwater Lake Titicaca, flowing down into this huge salt lake which is 10 times bigger than the Great Salt Lake, the area of the salt flats. Then you go to the north. What’s the sea of the North? I didn’t know what the sea of the North was. In my book, I made a mistake. I said it was the Amazon floods must become like a sea in the rainy season.
George 26:27 Then a member from South America wrote to me says don’t you know where the the sea of the North is in Peru. I go “no, I don’t know”. Well, it’s chinkacouture. It’s actually called the North Sea. He says just go to Wikipedia, go to an on the website. And sure enough, the second largest lake in Peru is actually called the North Sea. So you have the four sea’s, you got the four corners. You’ve got exceedingly high mountains. You’ve got the Andes. How about the highways? They made many highways and they broke up throughout the land. The Inca highway system high ways going up to 15,000 feet in altitude, actually high ways that Nephi would have ridden not like freeways today, highways in the mountains 25,000 miles of Inca roads. It was a larger road system than they had in Rome. So there’s another interesting feature there. Where are the highways in North America? Where are the highways in Meso-America? They have little roads that went here in the jungle we think. Nothing like 25,000 miles of highways in the high mountains, in the Andes.
GT 27:21 Right.
{End of Part 2}
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