Back from the conference and other good news

The morning of the conference started out with a veritable blizzard in Salt Lake City. But Daniel and Derek made it anyway, set up a table, and sold the book to attendees. It was a very interesting conference this year. The keynote speaker was Jack Welch, who gave some fascinating insights into legal procedures and possible Hebrew traditions hidden within Book of Mormon accounts.

Another high point of this year was speaker Royal Skousen, who for years has been in charge of the Critical Text Project, which attempted to recreate the most accurate original text of the Book of Mormon, using the original and printer's manuscripts. This peek into the process that resulted in our modern book of scripture brought to light the many difficulties in translation, transcription, and later editing that were required to transform this ancient record into a modern text that could be understood by us today. The conference ended with a panel of authors, discussing their opinions on whether the River Sidon is the Grijalva or the Usumacinta. It was interesting and slightly amusing to see how dogmatic and argumentative the experts can be. We hope it was all in good fun. Perhaps the best comment in the panel came from our friend Jerry Ainsworth, who ended his remarks by saying that it really didn't matter to him which river it was, since he knew the Book of Mormon was true anyway. We remain fairly open on the issue, although we have been down the Usumacinta twice and have never made it to the Grijalva yet.

Many people who attend have already purchased our book, so it's hard to keep sales up after a few years. But we did let everyone know about An LDS Guide to Mesoamerica in 2012. Many people signed our e-mail list, so we welcome all of our new fans and invite you to follow along with the blog and check out all our articles.

In other news, Daniel and Derek worked together over the weekend and were able to download all the video from our last trips to Guatemala, Mexico, and Honduras. Some technical glitches had been getting in the way, so this was quite the success for us. Now that the videos are on our hard drives, we will be able to prepare them to share, so stay tuned for new uploads to YouTube. Currently, Daniel has been studying the Maya Long Count calendar and what is supposed to happen next year. That information will be contained in its own chapter in our next book, so that's another reason to be excited about it. Using qualified Maya experts as his source, Daniel has found some surprising elements in the calendar that are probably not known to many people and has been looking for evidences of its use by Book of Mormon cultures.

More book news at the BMAF annual conference

Daniel will be attending the Book of Mormon Archaeological Forum's annual conference again this year. It will be this Saturday at the Sheraton hotel in downtown Salt Lake City. He had a great time as one of the speakers last year, and served double duty as he also manned a table to sell the books. This year, he will be selling the books again and telling everyone about our new book.

We have signed a contract to deliver a new manuscript to Cedar Fort next spring, so we are working on it now and looking forward to seeing it come out as an eBook next year. We have already found new information to add to sites we visited years ago, so we are excited to let everyone know that An LDS Guide to the Yucatán will be available!

Daniel's response to horses in the Book of Mormon

In July of this year, Ted Stoddard, a member of the board of advisers for the Book of Mormon Archaeological Forum, wrote a rebuttal to an article in the Mormon Times written by Linda and Richard Eyre. In that original article, they inferred that the use of the verb "bridle" in the Book of Mormon was simply an indication that Nephites had horses and used bridles. Bro. Stoddard called such a perspective "illogical, unfounded, and even deceptive."

The issue of horses in the Book of Mormon is a tricky one. It is accepted that no known Ancient American culture had horses or other draft animals. But does this extend back into Book of Mormon times? If Nephites and Lamanites did not have horses, then what animal is being described? If they did, then is there any evidence that such large animals existed on this hemisphere before Europeans 'discovered' it? Daniel has written a paper supporting the idea of actual horses in the Book of Mormon and shows evidence that modern horses did live on this continent anciently. He wrote a response to Bro. Stoddard's article that was also published by the Book of Mormon Archaeological Forum.

Click here to read Ted Stoddard's article on the BMAF website.
Click here to read Daniel's response on the BMAF website.

An LDS Guide to the Yucatán

We are extremely pleased to announce that Cedar Fort, after many discussions initiated by Daniel, has agreed to publish our next book, albeit electronically. The current information we have is that it will be available through Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble for their e-readers, Kindle and Nook, respectively. It should also be available from our publisher as a direct download for those that don't have e-readers, but this could be a good reason to get one. As more formats become available, we will get the word out.

The authors at Chichén Itzá in 2006

Now you can read all about our experiences and adventures from our first-ever Mesoamerican trek through Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. This book will contain detailed information about sites like Ek Balam, Chichén, Itzá, Uxmal, the Caves of Loltún, Kabah, Xpujil, Becán, Calakmul, and Cobá. Thought-provoking evidence of gold plates, metal tools, unknown written languages, and indigenous horses will be presented as they pertain to these sites. Daniel had been discussing with the acquisitions editor at Cedar For on ways to cut costs on this next book. Initially, we were hoping for an actual hardcopy version to be published, but at least this way, the information gets out there and all of our color design, photos, and illustrations remain intact. If sales are good enough, they will consider publishing a physical book, so we are hopeful for that as well. We have also been told that our first book, An LDS Guide to Mesoamerica, is being prepared for release electronically.

Look for An LDS Guide to the Yucatán next year, in 2012. We feel that this could be just the right time for it. Not only will the Book of Mormon be the topic in Gospel Doctrine classes, but as everyone knows, it is the end of the Maya long count calendar, an event that has a lot of speculation flying back and forth. Our plan is to address this topic as well in the book, so it should be a worthwhile purchase. We will keep our followers updated on its progress.

The latest book news.

While things have currently been quiet in the area of firesides, Daniel has been working on updating chapters on what we hope to be our book on the Yucatán. We haven't heard much from our publisher lately, so he has been contacting them to find out just how things are going. Specifically, we are trying to convince them that publishing An LDS Guide to the Yucatán would be a worthwhile endeavor, especially if it came out in 2012. The current sales numbers we have from them state that over 2700 copies of our book have been sold. We know it has actually been more than that, because Daniel has purchased many boxes to sell at events he has attended, and those don't count toward sales. These numbers look good to us, but we don't really know how they look to professionals in the book publishing industry. Cedar Fort and some LDS bookstores have been offering drastically reduced prices on our book recently, so if you still haven't picked up your copy of An LDS Guide to Mesoamerica, now might be the time.

Some original Yucatán chapters have been revised already, and we are pleased to be able to offer a PDF of our chapter on Chichén Itzá. It is perhaps the best known ancient site in Mexico, and probably the most visited. The Book of Mormon comparisons from this site include Quetzalcoatl, Human Sacrifice, Bearded Toltecs, Warfare, the Underworld, Metal Weapons and Tools, Rule by Councils and Judges, Indigenous Horses, Plates of Gold, and Writing of Unknown Origin. This should be an interesting read, so please read it and let us know what you think. Chichén has been in the news lately because, much to our amazement, new excavation work has been done there since we last visited and  earlier structures have been found under the plaza around the Pyramid of Kukulcan. Also in the works is a new museum dedicated to ancient Maya culture of the area and officials are planning to feature some gold plates found at the Sacred Cenote. It just goes to show that there is always some new mystery to uncover here.

Click here to download the PDF.
Website for Cedar Fort, our publisher

Article on metal plates up at the BMAF website

The Book of Mormon Archaeological Foundation has published Daniel's latest article on ancient metal plates. Originally, he was asked by a representative of the BMAF to write an article responding to the announcement a few months ago of various ancient books or codices made from bound lead plates that were supposedly discovered in Jordan.

This seemed like a fascinating find, but the more he looked into it, the more suspicious these artifacts became. Most experts denounced them on many grounds and while there is no final word on the matter, it does appear that they are probably modern forgeries. But if they are, it means that the idea of ancient metal books is now widely supported. Daniel's article also includes many examples of non-controversial genuine ancient plates, mainly from the Mediterranean area, made from gold and other precious metals.

Click here to read Daniel's article on the BMAF website.
Click here to download a multi-page, formatted PDF of the article.