Stemelbow, please, with sugar on it, for your own sake, please go rent, buy, borrow, or steal a copy of
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.
If you want, also listen to the
Mormon Expression podcast on Guns, Germs, and Steel that I did with some of the other posters from this board. With all its flaws and warts, it also discussed some very interesting points, IMHO, that you should be exposed to.
Included in these points are the following:
1) Horses provided such a huge military and economic boost to every single society that's ever been documented as having them, that it has radically boosted their competitiveness with respect to their neighbors without horses, and lead to the horse-owners out-competing them.
2) The possession of domesticated horses, cattle, sheep, the organized production of wheat, barley, and other food crops and animals, and so forth have always lead to explosions in the populations of those societies that possessed, developed, or inherited these technologies.
3) The Book of Mormon description of the Lamanites as this booming population of savages, yet due to indolence and laziness, they were not as industrious as farmers and ranchers and whatnot as the Nephites, is completely ass-backwards. If the Nephites really practiced organized agriculture and the production of wheat, barley, corn, and so forth, and raised domesticated horses, cattle, sheep, and so forth, they would have dominated the Lamanites not only technologically, and militarily, but also
numerically This is exactly the opposite of what the Book of Mormon depicts.
The Book of Mormon simply isn't credible as a history of peoples who actually existed. Societies in ancient days, with access to food production and animal technologies as described in the Book of Mormon, reacted very, very differently in real life to how they are shown in the Book of Mormon, which shows that Smith et al. didn't really know what they were talking about.
Not to mention, the development of organized agriculture based on wheat, barley, and so forth, and domesticated cattle, sheep, and horses, would have been so widespread and have spread so fast throughout the area that the notion that all of these practices should have left no traces not only in archeological digs, but also on the cultures, art, and remains of the civilizations that really did exist in the ancient Americas, is outlandish, improbably, non-credible, and simply doesn't deserve to be believed.
Do yourself a favor. Read more about the real world. Come to a better understanding of how things really have occurred in the history of human civilization and colonization of the Earth. It rewards itself in many ways, and in many more than just rendering the Book of Mormon mythology all the less likely really to have happened. There is a
real history of humanity on Earth, that is incredibly more interesting than the made-up one foisted upon you by the likes of Joseph Smith. It is
your real history as much as it is mine and everyone else's on this board. Claim it as your own, and start to learn it, and appreciate it. You don't have to keep believing the children's stories of Mormonism.
Mormonism ceased being a compelling topic for me when I finally came to terms with its transformation from a personality cult into a combination of a real estate company, a SuperPac, and Westboro Baptist Church. - Kishkumen