Tall and handsome, with an attorney’s practiced authority, Ferguson trusted that the equipment of technology could persuade the realm of the facts associated with the Book of Mormon. Quickly after he completed university, he started trying to find clues in colonial documents that recorded a number of Latin America’s indigenous traditions. One, written around 1554 with band of K’iche’ Mayan villagers into the Guatemala highlands, claimed that their ancestors—”sons of Abraham and Jacob”—had sailed across a ocean to attain their homeland. The K’iche’ had been beaten by Spanish conquistadors in 1524, while the biblical sources had been most likely this product of connection with Catholic priests, whom enthusiastically converted allies and previous foes alike.

But Ferguson, who’d developed in a Mormon family members in Idaho, eagerly took such syncretism as proof that Israelites had when settled in the Americas. He had been additionally taken by the misconception of QuetzalcГіatl, the feathered serpent deity that some colonial priests referred to as a bearded man that is white. Ferguson determined that he had been Jesus, showing up in Bountiful after their resurrection just like the written Book of Mormon recorded. Their collection research spurred their hunt that is first for proof, in Campeche in 1948.

Ferguson knew, nevertheless, that colonial sources represented evidence that is circumstantial most readily useful. Nor was it sufficient to get ruins of previous civilizations much more or less the best location, as he’d done in Campeche. To persuade and convert outsiders—a concern for Mormons—he desired objects mentioned within the Book of Mormon that archaeologists had not present in Mesoamerica: horses, wheeled chariots, metal swords, and, most critical, Hebrew or Egyptian script. “the last test of y our views of Book of Mormon geography will likely to be work that is archaeological the bottom it self,” Ferguson published in 1951 to his buddy J. Willard Marriott, the rich creator associated with Marriott hospitality string and a robust figure when you look at 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 were consumed because of the concern of whether civilizations had developed individually into the Americas or had origins elsewhere. ” In the 1940s and 1950s, these had been the concerns everyone was investigating,” claims Robert Rosenswig, an archaeologist in the State University of brand new York (SUNY) in Albany.

Ferguson never received an official training in archaeology. He practiced legislation to guide their growing family members—he eventually had five children—as well as their research. However in 1951, he recruited leading archaeologists to explore the foundation of Mesoamerican civilization as an element of a new organization, the newest World Archaeological Foundation (NWAF). First up to speed had been celebrated researcher Alfred Kidder of Harvard University while the Carnegie organization 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 struck up a correspondence.

Kidder “is thought to be the[ that is bestMesoamerican] archaeologist associated with twentieth century,” states archaeologist John Clark of Brigham younger University (BYU) in Provo, Utah, whom directed NWAF from 1987 to 2009. To have Kidder regarding the task, Clark states, “there isn’t any concern that Ferguson needed to be some charismatic guy.” Additionally recruited had been Gordon Ekholm, an anthropologist during the United states Museum of Natural History in new york, who thought that Mesoamerican civilizations had their origins in advanced Asian countries.

A ritual figurine through the web site of Los Horcones is scanned at “” new world “” Archaeological Foundation head office.

Their timing ended up being good. Radiocarbon relationship had simply been invented, and Ferguson straight away recognized its prospect of tracing the origins of Mesoamerican countries. “this is actually the best development because the start of archaeology,” he wrote to LDS leadership. “we have always been for the individual viewpoint that god inspired [radiocarbon dating] so it may be utilized efficiently associated with the Book of Mormon.”

Yet initial many years of NWAF had been a scramble that is desperate cash. Ferguson contributed thousands himself and raised funds from rich Mormons as well as the audiences of their lectures about Book of Mormon geography. In 1952, NWAF been able to deliver a few 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 true point, Ferguson had be much more discerning time durations than he’d held it’s place in the jungles of Campeche. The ruins he found there have been most most likely Timeless or post-Classic Mayan, from between 250 C.E. and also the Spanish conquest—much too belated to be Mesoamerica’s civilization that is earliest or the duration 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 published to Kidder in April 1953. They required period that is formative, dating from about 2000 B.C.E. to 200 C.E., approximately matching the times from the Book of Mormon.

In-may 1953, Ferguson found its way to Chiapas to help.

Straight 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 would get from web web site to web site, city to city, asking ‘Are there any ruins around here?’” says Sorenson, whom continued to get a Ph.D. in anthropology from UC l . a . (UCLA) and it is now a teacher emeritus at BYU. Ferguson also asked locals if they had discovered figurines of horses—unknown in ancient Mesoamerica—or resources of iron ore, which Sorenson discovered naГЇve. But his or her own archaeological training compensated off, and also at some web web web sites he had been in a position to recognize the polished, monochrome pottery and hand-sculpted, irregular individual figurines for the Formative duration, therefore distinctive from the intricate but standardized figurines the Timeless Maya had created from molds. In every, Sorenson and Ferguson surveyed 22 web web sites on that journey and built-up a number that is astounding of items. ” During my modest viewpoint there clearly was little if any concern about it—they are Nephite generating,” Ferguson published to their church funders.