“When I was a
young married man,” recalled President Heber J. Grant in 1929, “another young
man who had received a doctor’s degree ridiculed me for believing in the Book
of Mormon. He said he could point out two lies in that book. One was that
people had built their homes out of cement and that they were very skillful in
the use of cement. He said there had never been found and never would be found,
a house built of cement by the ancient inhabitants of this country, because the
people in that early age knew nothing about cement. He said that should be
enough to make one disbelieve the book. I said: `That does not affect my faith
one particle. I read the Book of Mormon prayerfully and supplicated God for a
testimony in my heart and soul of the divinity of it, and I have accepted it
and believe it with all my heart.’ I also said to him, `If my children not find
cement houses, I expect that my grandchildren will.’ He said, well what is the
good of talking to a fool like that.”
Heber
J. Grant, Conference Report, April
1929, 129.
What I find significant about
Book of Mormon references to pre-Columbian cement (Helaman 3:3-12) is not that
it existed in the Americas (some nineteenth century sources do reference this),
but rather the level of skill involved in that technology. The people, Mormon
affirms, “became “exceedingly expert” in this technology (Helaman 3:7). The
other significant point is the reference to its introduction among a particular
group of people more than two thousand years ago. Both of these points find substantial
confirmation archaeologically. The following initially appeared as a FARMS
Update in May 1991 based on research by Matthew G. Wells and John W. Welch and
was subsequently published in Reexploring
the Book of Mormon (1992), 212-14.
Helaman
3:7-11 reports that Nephite dissenters moved from the land of Zarahemla into
the land northward and began building with cement. "The people . . . who
went forth became exceedingly expert in the working of cement; therefore they
did build houses of cement," "all manner of their buildings,"
and many cities "both of wood and of cement." The Book of Mormon
dates this significant technological advance to the year 46 B.C.
Recent research shows that cement was in fact
extensively used in Mesoamerica beginning largely at this time. One of the most
notable uses of cement is in the temple complex at Teotihuacan, north of
present-day Mexico City. According to David S. Hyman, the structural use of
cement appears suddenly in the archaeological record. Its earliest sample
"is a fully developed product." The cement floor slabs at this site
"were remarkably high in structural quality." Although exposed to the
elements for nearly two thousand years, they still "exceed many
present-day building code requirements" (David S. Hyman, A Study of the Calcareous Cements in
Prehispanic Mesoamerican Building Construction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University, 1970), ii, sect. 6, p. 7).
After its discovery, cement was used at many
sites in the Valley of Mexico and in the Maya regions of southern Mexico,
Guatemala, and Honduras. It was used in the construction of buildings at such
sites as Cerro de Texcotzingo, Tula, Palenque, Tikal, Copan, Uxmal, and Chichen
Itza. Further, the use of cement "is a Maya habit, absent from non-Maya
examples of corbelled vaulting from the south-eastern United States to southern
South America" (George Kubler, The
Art and Architecture of Ancient America. Baltimore: Penguin, 1975, 201,
italics added).
Mesoamerican cement was almost exclusively
lime cement. The limestone was purified on a "cylindrical pile of timber,
which requires a vast amount of labor to cut and considerable skill to
construct in such a way that combustion of the stone and wood is complete and a
minimum of impurities remains in the product" (Tatiana Proskouriakoff, An Album of Maya Architecture.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963, xv). The fact that very little
carbon is found in this cement "attests to the ability of these ancient
peoples" (Hyman, A Study of
Calcareous Cements, sect. 6, p. 5).
John Sorenson further noted the expert
sophistication in the use of cement at El Tajin, east of Mexico City, after
Book of Mormon times. Cement roofs covered areas of seventy-five square meters!
"Sometimes the builders filled a room with stones and mud, smoothed the
surface on top to receive the concrete, then removed the interior fill when the
[slab] on top had dried" (John Sorenson, “Digging into the Book of Mormon,”
Ensign 14 October 1984: 19).
The presence of expert cement technology in
pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica is a remarkable archaeological fact, inviting much
further research. Cement seems to take on significant roles in Mesoamerican
architecture close to the time when the Book of Mormon says this development
occurred. It is also a significant factor in locating the Book of Mormon lands
of Zarahemla and Desolation, for Zarahemla must be south of areas where cement
was used as early as the middle first century B.C. Until samples of cement are
found outside of the southwest areas of North America, one may reasonably
assume that Book of Mormon lands were not far south of the sites where ancient
cement is found.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.