Book of Mormon Anachronisms — A Scholarly Response

A response to ldsdiscussions.com's anachronism arguments, examining archaeological evidence, translation theory, and the evolving scholarly consensus.

Introduction: The Nature of Anachronism Claims

Ldsdiscussions.com presents a catalogue of alleged anachronisms in the Book of Mormon — items, animals, plants, and concepts said to be out of place in pre-Columbian America. These include horses, steel, barley, wheat, chariots, elephants, silk, and various Old World domesticated animals. The argument, broadly stated, is that the presence of these elements in the text proves it was authored in nineteenth-century America rather than ancient antiquity.

This response examines that claim category by category, drawing on recent archaeology, linguistic scholarship, and translation theory. We do not argue that every question has been definitively resolved — honest scholarship rarely works that way. What we do argue is that the confident certainty with which these anachronisms are presented as fatal to the text's historicity is not warranted by the current state of the evidence, and that the trajectory of archaeological discovery has consistently favored the text rather than undermined it.

A particularly important data point: Matthew Roper's analysis published in the Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship examined 53 alleged anachronisms relating to ancient culture from the period 1966–2024. Of these, 87% received subsequent archaeological confirmation, with only five items remaining unconfirmed. That is a remarkable reversal for a list once considered embarrassing to defenders of the Book of Mormon's historicity.

Horses

The horse is perhaps the most-cited anachronism in the Book of Mormon. Mainstream paleontology long held that horses went extinct in the Americas at the close of the Pleistocene epoch, roughly 10,000–13,000 years ago, and were not reintroduced until the Spanish conquest. If that consensus is correct, then Book of Mormon references to horses (e.g., 1 Nephi 18:25; Alma 18:9–12; 3 Nephi 3:22) do pose a challenge. However, that consensus has been increasingly challenged by archaeological discoveries.

Post-Pleistocene horse remains. A 1989 study by paleontologist James S. Oliver documented 34 horse specimens (Equus caballus) from Shield Trap Cave in Carbon County, Montana, with radiocarbon dates ranging from 3456 BC to AD 754 — spanning the entire Book of Mormon period. Wade E. Miller and colleagues published findings from Rancho Carabanchel, Mexico (2022), yielding 26 horse bone fragments dated 1286 BC–AD 377, bracketing the Book of Mormon timeframe. A horse bone from Pratt Cave near El Paso, Texas has been dated to 6020–5890 BC, and a specimen from Horsethief Cave, Wyoming to approximately 1100 BC.

Yucatan discoveries. Henry Mercer's 1895 cave explorations in the Yucatan Peninsula recovered horse teeth identified by paleontologist Edward D. Cope as Equus conversidens, an extinct species known only from fossils. Horse teeth were recovered from a cenote at Mayapan, a major Maya city, in stratified layers pre-dating European contact. Peter Schmidt's 1977 excavations at Loltun Grotto yielded 59 horse bone fragments from Level VII, with associated radiocarbon dates of approximately 1805 BC.

The loanshift argument. The Book of Mormon claims to be a translation, not an original document. When Spanish conquistadors arrived, Maya peoples used their word for "deer" to describe horses — the closest large animal they knew. The Maya term tzimin came to encompass both tapirs and horses. It is therefore plausible that a Nephite word for a large draft or riding animal was rendered "horse" by the translator, whether that animal was a surviving Equus species, a tapir, or another creature. Zoologist Hans Krieg observed that tapirs resemble horses more than pigs in their movement and gait.

Sparse textual usage. Horses are never explicitly described as ridden in battle in the Book of Mormon, and are never depicted pulling chariots in war — uses expected if Joseph Smith were simply importing nineteenth-century imagery. The text says horses were found in the wilderness (1 Nephi 18:25), prepared with chariots (Alma 18:9–12), and kept with flocks (3 Nephi 3:22). This restrained, functional usage is consistent with an authentic ancient source, not a frontier author embellishing a fictional epic.

Steel and Iron

Ldsdiscussions.com cites the Smithsonian Institution's statement that "iron, steel, glass, and silk were not used in the New World before 1492" as proof that Book of Mormon references to steel (e.g., 2 Nephi 5:15; Ether 7:9) are anachronistic. This deserves careful unpacking.

Steel in the ancient Near East. Early references to steel in the Book of Mormon occur among the Nephites shortly after their departure from Jerusalem, where steel was known and used. Mesopotamian and Israelite metallurgy in the Iron Age included forms of carburized iron that ancient writers called "steel." The Hebrew word nechoshet is sometimes translated as bronze or brass and sometimes as a harder metal. References to steel in Lehi's family before they left the Old World present no anachronism problem whatsoever.

Translation and terminology. The Book of Mormon was translated into English, and Joseph Smith would have used the word "steel" for whatever hard metal or alloy the Nephites employed. Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica used hardened obsidian, copper, and various alloys in ways that could be functionally analogous to what an English translator might render as "steel." The absence of European-style smelted steel does not mean the absence of every hard worked metal.

The Smithsonian statement. The Smithsonian statement is a general institutional disclaimer about the Book of Mormon's use in archaeological research, not a peer-reviewed scholarly assessment of each individual claim. Its categorical phrasing reflects a default institutional position, not the granular conclusions of ongoing archaeological research. Scholars working in Mesoamerican archaeology hold far more nuanced views than this statement implies.

Chariots and the Wheel

The wheel was known in pre-Columbian America. Wheeled ceramic figurines have been found throughout Mesoamerica — wheeled animal toys from Veracruz dating to roughly AD 100–900. These demonstrate that the principle of the wheel was understood. The absence of large wheeled transport vehicles is likely explained by the absence of suitable large draft animals, but if post-Pleistocene horses existed, that objection is significantly weakened.

Chariots as litters. LDS scholar Brant A. Gardner and others have argued that the Book of Mormon's "chariots" may represent a translation of a term for royal litters or palanquins — a form of prestige transport well-documented in Mesoamerican art and archaeology. In every Book of Mormon passage mentioning chariots (Alma 18:9–12; 20:6; 3 Nephi 3:22), the context is ceremonial or royal, never military. This is precisely the context in which a litter or palanquin would be used, and is entirely inconsistent with the battle-chariot imagery a nineteenth-century author would have borrowed from the Bible.

LiDAR discoveries. Recent LiDAR surveys of Mesoamerican archaeological sites have revealed extensive networks of elevated causeways connecting major centers, prompting new scholarly discussion about transportation infrastructure in ancient Mesoamerica that earlier generations of researchers did not anticipate.

Barley and Wheat

Ldsdiscussions.com cites a 1987 pollen study of Honduran soil cores finding maize and amaranth but no wheat or barley, and uses this to argue these crops were unknown in the pre-Columbian Americas. This argument was more compelling in the 1980s than it is today.

Pre-Columbian domesticated barley. In 1983, archaeologists discovered domesticated "little barley" (Hordeum pusillum) at a Hohokam site in Phoenix, Arizona. This was cultivated, not wild. Subsequent investigation found little barley distributed across the Mississippi River Valley as a significant staple crop during the Middle Woodland period (200 BC–AD 500) and the Late Woodland period (AD 500–1000) — periods that overlap substantially with Book of Mormon chronology. Specimens from Gast Springs, Iowa have been dated to approximately 800 BC. Researchers also identified extensive evidence of cultivation in the American Southwest and parts of Mexico.

The Honduras pollen study does not settle the question. The study examined a specific site in Honduras. It cannot stand as definitive proof that barley was absent from all of the Americas during the Book of Mormon period, particularly given the subsequent Hohokam and Mississippi Valley discoveries. Absence of evidence in one location is not evidence of absence across an entire hemisphere.

Wheat. Domesticated Old World wheat has not been confirmed archaeologically in pre-Columbian contexts, and this remains a genuinely open question. However, the Book of Mormon mentions wheat only once (Mosiah 9:9), in a geographically unspecified context. The possibility that the translator rendered a native grain functionally similar to wheat as "wheat" remains a live hypothesis, not a desperate apologetic retreat.

Elephants

The Book of Mormon mentions elephants in the Jaredite account (Ether 9:19), placing them in the early second millennium BC at the latest. Critics note that mammoths and mastodons went extinct at the close of the Pleistocene, but new research on Holocene megafauna survival suggests large mammals persisted longer in isolated regions than previously believed — dwarf mammoths survived on Wrangel Island until approximately 1650 BC. The question of whether remnant populations survived into the early Holocene in parts of North America remains scientifically contested. The single mention of elephants in Ether does not carry the weight of a detailed naturalistic description, and the translation loanshift argument applies here as well.

Old World Domesticated Animals and the Law of Moses

Ldsdiscussions.com argues that cattle, sheep, goats, and other animals required for Law of Moses observance were absent from the Americas, making Nephite religious practice impossible.

The Law of Moses in diaspora contexts. Jewish communities in diaspora settings throughout the ancient world adapted their religious practice to local conditions. The Elephantine community — a Jewish military colony in Egypt of approximately the fifth century BC — practiced an adapted form of Israelite religion without Jerusalem's full cultic apparatus. Ancient Jewish legal precedent recognized that some provisions of the Law could not be observed outside the land of Israel. Nephite prophets themselves acknowledged they were in a distant land and could not fully observe the Law in traditional ways.

Loanshift for animal names. The same loanshift argument applicable to horses applies to other animals. The Book of Mormon was translated into English, and the translator would have used familiar English animal names for New World fauna. The tapir, American bison, various deer species, and native fowl could all have received Old World animal labels in translation.

The Translation Model and Its Implications

A frequently overlooked point in anachronism discussions is that the Book of Mormon has always presented itself as a translation — not a direct transcription, but a rendering of an ancient text into nineteenth-century English. Translation is inherently an interpretive act. The King James Bible uses "candle" where oil lamps are meant, "corn" where various grains are intended, and "Easter" where Passover is the likely original reference (Acts 12:4). No one argues this makes the Bible a nineteenth-century forgery.

The translation model means that animal and plant names in the Book of Mormon are, at minimum, the translator's best English rendering of Nephite terms for creatures and crops that may not map perfectly onto modern species categories. This is not a desperate rescue device invented to explain away problems — it is the standard hermeneutic applied to every ancient text in translation.

Missing Elements: What the Book of Mormon Does Not Mention

Ldsdiscussions.com also argues from absence: the Book of Mormon fails to mention cacao, wild turkeys, or the Mesoamerican coinage system. This is a double-edged argument. If a nineteenth-century author were fabricating the text, he would presumably have included the culturally prominent New World elements he knew about — maize, tobacco, cacao, and similar items. The near-total absence of distinctively American flora from the text is actually more consistent with a genuine ancient Near Eastern record than with a fiction crafted in upstate New York by someone with access to popular accounts of Mesoamerica.

The Book of Mormon covers roughly 1,000 years of history narrated by authors with specific theological concerns. It is not a comprehensive natural history or ethnographic survey. The absence of cacao from the text is no more remarkable than its absence from the New Testament — which also fails to mention many things that existed in the ancient Mediterranean world.

The Trajectory of Archaeological Discovery

Perhaps the most significant argument available to defenders of the Book of Mormon's historicity is the direction in which archaeological discovery has moved over the past century. In 1830, critics could point to a long list of Book of Mormon elements with no known New World parallel: cement construction, writing on metal plates, extensive road systems, knowledge of the wheel, pre-Columbian barley, post-Pleistocene horses, and many more. Over the past century, nearly all of these have been confirmed archaeologically.

The Interpreter Foundation's analysis found that of 53 alleged anachronisms from the 1966–2024 period, 87% received archaeological confirmation. Only five items remain unconfirmed as of 2024. When a text's claims are repeatedly vindicated by subsequent discovery, the appropriate response is to extend provisional benefit of the doubt to remaining open questions — not to treat unresolved items as definitive proof of fraud. By the same logic applied to the Book of Mormon by its critics, the Iliad should have been dismissed as fiction until Heinrich Schliemann discovered Troy in 1871.

Conclusion

The anachronism argument against the Book of Mormon is not as simple as ldsdiscussions.com suggests. Each alleged anachronism requires examination in its own right, and in nearly every case the picture is more complex than the confident dismissal implies. Horses have been found in post-Pleistocene, pre-Columbian contexts in both North and Central America. Domesticated barley was present in the Americas during the Book of Mormon period. Cement, wheeled artifacts, metal plates, and extensive roadways have all been confirmed archaeologically. The Book of Mormon's sparse, non-martial use of horses and chariots does not resemble nineteenth-century fictional embellishment. The translation model provides a principled framework for understanding animal and plant names that cannot be resolved by simple species identification.

What remains are genuine open questions that honest believers and honest critics alike should hold with appropriate epistemic humility. The data do not support the conclusion that these anachronisms are decisive refutations of the text's ancient origin. They represent, at most, a set of as-yet-unresolved puzzles in a text that has been resolving such puzzles at a remarkable rate for the past century. For those investigating the Book of Mormon's historical claims, we recommend engaging with the primary scholarly literature rather than relying on summary presentations from either critics or defenders. The questions are live, the scholarship is active, and the evidence continues to develop.

Selected Sources and Further Reading

Wade E. Miller and Matthew Roper, "Animals in the Book of Mormon: Challenges and Potential Solutions," BYU Studies Quarterly 56:4 (2017).

Wade E. Miller et al., "Post-Pleistocene, Pre-Columbian Horses from a Site in San Luis Potosi, Mexico," Geological Society of America Annual Meeting Abstract, 2021.

James S. Oliver, "Osteology of Shield Trap Cave (24CB91), Carbon County, Montana, USA," Contributions to Geology, University of Wyoming, 1989.

Matthew Roper, "Anachronisms: Accidental Evidence in Book of Mormon Criticisms," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, serialized 2023–2025.

Brant A. Gardner, Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, 6 vols. Greg Kofford Books, 2007–2008.

John L. Sorenson, "Barley in Ancient America," archived at Scripture Central (scripturecentral.org).

Steven E. Jones and Wade E. Miller, "'Hard' Evidence of Ancient American Horses," BYU Studies 54:3 (2015).

FAIR Latter-day Saints, "Horses in the Book of Mormon," fairlatterdaysaints.org.

Scripture Central, "Book of Mormon Evidence: Barley," scripturecentral.org.