Archaeo-linguistics ~ Two Peoples in Zarahemla

What the Book of Mormon Says

And at the time that Mosiah discovered them [the Mulekites in Zarahemla], they had become exceedingly numerous. Nevertheless, they had had many wars and serious contentions, and had fallen by the sword from time to time; and their language had become corrupted; and they had brought no records with them; and they denied the being of their Creator; and Mosiah, nor the people of Mosiah, could understand them. But it came to pass that Mosiah caused that they should be taught in his language. And it came to pass that after they were taught in the language of Mosiah, Zarahemla gave a genealogy of his fathers, according to his memory . . . (Omni 1: 17-18)

 

The Book of Mormon says that there were two languages spoken in Zarahemla and that they were different enough that the one couldn't understand the other and that a special effort had to be made to teach the Mulekites enough of the Nephite language that they could communicate with one another.

 

Now there were not so many of the children of Nephi, or so many of those who were descendants of Nephi, as there were of the people of Zarahemla, who was a descendant of Mulek, and those who came with him into the wilderness . . . And now all the people of Nephi were assembled together, and also all the people of Zarahemla, and they were gathered together in two bodies. (Mosiah 25: 2, 4)

 

While the two peoples peacefully co-existed in Zarahemla, they still retained their individual cultural identities, even in the way they gathered in the city.

 
What Archaeology Says:

This part of the Grijalva River Basin (where Zarahemla would have been) was populated by a mix of two cultural and linguistic groups:  The Olmecs who spoke Mixe-Zoquean and the Mayans who spoke Mayan.  The first came from the northeast on the Gulf of Mexico (La Venta) and the latter from the mountains of Guatemala (Kaminaljuyu.) [1] 

While the Mulekites were not genetically Olmecs, they did land in that area and had apparently after 400 years, had adopted the Olmec culture and language (see reference to their language in Omni quote above.) 

The Nephites came from the mountains of Guatemala as archaeology suggests, and they spoke a language that had evolved over 400 years.  They still taught pure Hebrew to their leaders who kept the records (see Mosiah 1:2) but they obviously spoke a language that was mixed with that of the indigenous people they lived among; otherwise, why would the king have to specifically teach his sons "in all the language of his fathers, that thereby they might become men of understanding; and that they might know concerning the prophecies . . . ?" (Mosiah 1:2) In the same way, the Jews of Jesus day could speak, read, and write Hebrew in the synagogue, but their commonly spoken language was the Aramaic that they brought with them from Babylon.

In one of the few digs at Santa Rosa, archaeologist Donald Brockington helped excavate the largest pyramid mound.  Sorensen described his findings in these words:

The base gravel was of two completely different kinds, clearly brought there from two sources.  The line separating the gravel areas was meticulously straight and was oriented approximately east and west, dividing the structure exactly in half.  Furthermore, the site's inhabitants lived in two oval-shaped zones separated from each other by a ceremonial zone oriented along the same line.  Brockington concluded that the gravel had been laid down by two distinct social groups that occupied the site and that seem to have related to each other by formal ritual and political arrangements . . . Could this be the people of Zarahemla and the people of Nephi? . . . If two distinct peoples did live in separate sections within the city, the arrangement would agree with later Mesoamerican practice. [2] 

The Book of Mormon said there were two distinct cultural and language groups living together in Zarahemla.  Archaeologist have found evidence of two distinct cultural and language groups living together in communities along the Grijalva River Basin.  Tomorrow, I will talk about another such community, one that some scholars believe to be a candidate for the fabled Zarahemla: Chiapa de Corzo.

[1] Wikipedia/Chiapa de Corzo
[2] Sorensen, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon,  pp. 155,6)

Text from the Book of Mormon and quotes from Sorensen's An American Setting for the Book of Mormon. 

Additional text copyright July 2013, Gebara Education.

 

Picture of the people of Nephi and the people of Mulek/Zarahemla meeting from www.lds.org

Picture of an Olmec pyramid mount from La Venta from www.frontiers-of-anthropology.blog