Some little quibbles:
Nobody, Catholic or otherwise, killed Darwin. He died of old age. Likewise, the contsruction of the statues on Easter Island by Polynesian colonists is less
mysterious than you might think from popular entertainment. ;-)
I'd heard that Mormons believed that Jesus had been to North America, but I hadn't heard about the whole "lost civilization" angle--I figured
he was just supposed to have walked around talking to the people who were already there. Just goes to show, being overly specific in your religious writings
isn't a good idea...
That said, let's be fair to the author. Smith came up with that in the early 19th century, when archaeology was still quite primitive. He lived in Ohio,
and back then Americans still believed that the Mound Builders couldn't have been Indians. I'm not up on Mormon mythology, but I'll bet that if you
looked into it you'd find that Mormons back then were claiming the mounds were remains of the civilizations in their stories. Back then, they wouldn't
have had any reason to know differently.
Nobody, Catholic or otherwise, killed Darwin. He died of old age. Likewise, the contsruction of the statues on Easter Island by Polynesian colonists is less
mysterious than you might think from popular entertainment. ;-)
I'd heard that Mormons believed that Jesus had been to North America, but I hadn't heard about the whole "lost civilization" angle--I figured
he was just supposed to have walked around talking to the people who were already there. Just goes to show, being overly specific in your religious writings
isn't a good idea...
That said, let's be fair to the author. Smith came up with that in the early 19th century, when archaeology was still quite primitive. He lived in Ohio,
and back then Americans still believed that the Mound Builders couldn't have been Indians. I'm not up on Mormon mythology, but I'll bet that if you
looked into it you'd find that Mormons back then were claiming the mounds were remains of the civilizations in their stories. Back then, they wouldn't
have had any reason to know differently.