Tall and handsome, with an attorney’s practiced authority, Ferguson trusted that the various tools of technology could persuade the global realm of the 
reality associated with the Book of Mormon. Quickly he began searching for clues in colonial documents that recorded some of Latin America’s indigenous traditions after he finished college. One, written around 1554 with a combined team of K’iche’ Mayan villagers into the Guatemala highlands, reported that their ancestors—”sons of Abraham and Jacob”—had sailed across an ocean to achieve their homeland. The K’iche’ had been beaten by Spanish conquistadors in 1524, therefore the references that are biblical most likely this product of connection with Catholic priests, whom enthusiastically converted allies and previous foes alike.
But Ferguson, that has developed in a Mormon family members in Idaho, eagerly took syncretism that is such evidence that Israelites had as soon as settled when you look at the Americas. He had been additionally taken because of the misconception of QuetzalcГіatl, the feathered serpent deity that some colonial priests referred to as a bearded man that is white. Ferguson figured he had been Jesus, showing up in Bountiful after their resurrection just like the Book of Mormon recorded. Their collection research spurred their very first search for archaeological proof, in Campeche in 1948.
Ferguson noticed, nonetheless, that colonial sources represented circumstantial proof at most useful. Nor ended up being it sufficient to get ruins of previous civilizations much more or less the proper location, as he’d carried out in Campeche. To persuade and convert outsiders—a concern for Mormons—he desired things mentioned within the Book of Mormon that archaeologists had not present in Mesoamerica: horses, wheeled chariots, metal swords, and, most critical, Hebrew or script that is egyptian. “the ultimate test of our views of Book of Mormon geography will likely be work that is archaeological the floor it self,” Ferguson had written in 1951 to their buddy J. Willard Marriott, the rich founder for the Marriott hospitality string and a strong figure into the church.
Today Ferguson’s idea that Mesoamerican societies were seeded by Western ones is widely recognized as racist. Nonetheless it fit straight into the thinking that is archaeological of time, whenever Mesoamerican archaeologists had been consumed by the concern of whether civilizations had developed separately when you look at the Americas or had origins somewhere else. ” In the 1940s and 1950s, these had been the questions everyone was investigating,” claims Robert Rosenswig, an archaeologist during the State University of brand new York (SUNY) in Albany.
Ferguson never received a formal training in archaeology. He practiced legislation to aid their growing family members—he eventually had five children—as well as their research. However in 1951, he recruited leading archaeologists to explore the origin of Mesoamerican civilization as an element of an institution that is new this new World Archaeological Foundation (NWAF). First up to speed ended up being known researcher Alfred Kidder of Harvard University while the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. Kidder thought Mesoamerican civilizations had developed separately, but he and Ferguson had met at a museum in Guatemala City in 1946 and hit up a communication.
Kidder “is named the[ that is bestMesoamerican] archaeologist associated with twentieth century,” claims archaeologist John Clark of Brigham younger University (BYU) in Provo, Utah, whom directed NWAF from 1987 to 2009. To have Kidder from the task, Clark claims, “there isn’t any concern that Ferguson needed to be some charismatic man.” Additionally recruited had been Gordon Ekholm, an anthropologist in the United states Museum of Natural History in new york, who believed that Mesoamerican civilizations had their roots in higher level cultures that are asian.
A ritual figurine through the web site of Los Horcones is scanned at New World Archaeological Foundation head office.
Their timing had been good. Radiocarbon relationship had simply come to exist, and Ferguson straight away recognized its possibility of tracing the origins of Mesoamerican cultures. “This is basically the best development because the start of archaeology,” he published to LDS leadership. “I have always been of this individual viewpoint that the Lord inspired [radiocarbon dating] so it may be utilized efficiently relating to the Book of Mormon.”
Yet initial many years of NWAF had been a hopeless scramble for money. Ferguson contributed thousands himself and raised funds from wealthy Mormons and also the audiences of their lectures about Book of Mormon geography. In 1952, NWAF was able to deliver a small number of U.S. and Mexican archaeologists to review the drainage basin associated with Grijalva River in Tabasco and Chiapas, which Ferguson considered to be the written Book of Mormon’s River Sidon.
By this point, Ferguson had are more discerning time durations than he previously held it’s place in the jungles of Campeche. The ruins he discovered there have been most likely Timeless or post-Classic Mayan, from between 250 C.E. plus the Spanish conquest—much too late to be Mesoamerica’s civilization that is earliest or even the period mentioned in the Book of Mormon, thought to be about 2200 B.C.E. to 400 C.E. “We’ll never ever re re solve pre-Maya origins by digging up more Mayas,” Ferguson penned to Kidder in April 1953. They required Formative duration websites, dating from about 2000 B.C.E. to 200 C.E., roughly matching the times linked to the Book of Mormon.
In-may 1953, Ferguson found its way to Chiapas to help.
straight Back on a lawn, Ferguson and Sorenson put down by jeep for a survey that is 10-day see just what else they might find. “We’d get from web site to web web site, city to city, asking вЂAre there any ruins around here?’” says Sorenson, whom proceeded to get a Ph.D. in anthropology from UC Los Angeles (UCLA) and it is now a teacher emeritus at BYU. Ferguson additionally asked locals if they had discovered figurines of horses—unknown in ancient Mesoamerica—or resources of iron ore, which Sorenson found naГЇve. But their own training that is archaeological off, and at some web web sites he had been in a position to determine the polished, monochrome pottery and hand-sculpted, irregular peoples figurines regarding the Formative duration, therefore not the same as the intricate but standardized figurines the Timeless Maya had produced from molds. In every, Sorenson and Ferguson surveyed 22 web web web sites on that journey and built-up a fantastic amount of formative items. ” In my opinion that is humble there minimum concern about it—they are Nephite generating,” Ferguson published to their church funders.