This file is split into three tiers. Tier A was opened, read, and quoted in the session that wrote the draft. Tier B is named in the draft but was written from general knowledge and has no verified citation yet. Tier C could not be located at all.
The article's index.md carries a status line reproducing this split, so no reader can mistake a Tier B passage for a citation.
Tier A — opened and verified this session
Primary scripture
| Source | URL | What it supplied |
|---|---|---|
| Book of Mormon, 24 chapters | churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/… |
Every Book of Mormon quotation in the article. Chapters cached: 1 Nephi 2, 4, 16, 17, 18; 2 Nephi 5; Enos 1; Jarom 1; Omni 1; Mosiah 8, 9, 21; Alma 1, 11, 18, 50; Helaman 3; 3 Nephi 3; Mormon 6, 9; Ether 7, 9, 10, 15. |
| Book of Mormon, Introduction | …/study/scriptures/bofm/introduction?lang=eng |
The "among the ancestors of the American Indians" wording (post-2006), and the book's own self-description as "a record of God's dealings with ancient inhabitants of the Americas." |
The full text was fetched with bin/pagetext.py, which returns verbatim page text rather than a summary. Chapter texts are cached under /home/eric/scratch/mormon-sources/bom/.
Official Church statements
| Source | URL | What it supplied |
|---|---|---|
| "Book of Mormon Geography," Topics and Questions (2023) | …/study/manual/gospel-topics/book-of-mormon-geography?lang=eng |
The Church's only-position statement; the no-position-on-locations statement; the instruction not to advocate personal theories; the Russell M. Nelson quotation; and the Church's own quotation of the 1834 Zelph letter. |
| Detailed Summary of Approved Adjustments for the 2013 Edition of the Scriptures | already in sources/papers/church-2013_approved-scripture-adjustments.pdf |
Confirms the pre-2013 Alma 11 heading read "Nephite coinage set forth" and that the 2013 change was purely grammatical. This is the decisive document for the coins claim. |
Primary documents
| Source | Route | What it supplied |
|---|---|---|
| Joseph Smith, Letter to Emma Smith, 4 June 1834 | josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-emma-smith-4-june-1834/2, transcript extracted from page HTML |
The phrase "wandering over the plains of the Nephites." The Joseph Smith Papers site renders transcripts client-side, so pagetext.py returns only the source note; the transcript had to be pulled out of the raw HTML. Recorded here as an environment gotcha for future sessions. The fuller quotation used in the article is the Church's own Topics-entry wording. |
| The Book of Mormon, 1920 edition (Salt Lake City) | archive.org/details/bookofmormonacco00smitrich, /stream/…_djvu.txt |
The Alma 11 chapter heading "Judges and their compensation—Nephite coins and measures—Zeezrom confounded by Amulek," and the index entries "Amnor, a silver coin, 222-6, 11" and "Antion, a gold coin, 222-19." This is the origin of the coins claim and it is now nailed to a primary scan rather than to secondary assertion. |
Scholarship
| Source | Route | What it supplied |
|---|---|---|
| Michael D. Coe, "Mormons and Archeology: An Outside View," Dialogue 8, no. 2 (Summer 1973), 40–48 | dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V08N02_42.pdf, extracted with pdftotext |
All five Coe quotations in the article, verbatim from the original pagination. Also supplies: Coe's own list of problem items; his statement that "quite a few Mormon archaeologists" agreed with him; his praise for the Mexican excavations; his approving citation of Hugh Nibley; and the bibliographic details of Dee F. Green's 1969 Dialogue article (4, Summer 1969, 71–80) from Coe's note 4. |
Note on Coe. His 1973 figures — horse extinct "since about 7,000 B.C." and Mesoamerican metallurgy "no earlier ... than about 800 A.D." — are quoted as his, not adopted as the article's own numbers, because both have been refined in the fifty years since.
Tier B — named in the draft, not yet verified against an original
Everything in this tier is written in the draft without quotation marks and is flagged in the article's status line. Each needs an original opened before publication.
| Claim area | What the draft asserts | What must be opened |
|---|---|---|
| Nahom / NHM altars | Three inscribed limestone altars from the Bar'an temple at Marib, Yemen; excavated by the German Archaeological Institute under Burkhard Vogt; tribal designation NHM; seventh–sixth century BC | The original ABADY / Archäologische Berichte aus dem Yemen excavation reports; the DASI (dasi.cnr.it) inscription records; S. Kent Brown, Warren P. Aston, and Neal Rappleye's Latter-day Saint treatments |
| Niebuhr's map | That a form "Nehhm" appears on Carsten Niebuhr's Yemen map, printed in the 1772/1774 editions and in Robert Heron's 1792 English Travels through Arabia | A digitized copy of the map plate itself. This is the single most load-bearing unverified claim in the article, because the whole weighting of the NHM argument turns on it |
| Khor Kharfot / Wadi Sayq | Site description, Warren Aston's identification, absence of iron ore, tree species | Aston's publications; any non-LDS survey of the site |
| Wadi Tayyib al-Ism | George Potter's 1990s identification; the perennial stream | Potter's original article |
| Smithsonian | The former form letter and its shorter replacement | An archived Smithsonian-controlled page. Already flagged in the article text as unverified |
| National Geographic Society | The reply letter | Any primary or archived copy. Already flagged in the article; no wording is quoted |
| New World Archaeological Foundation | Founding by Thomas Stuart Ferguson, BYU attachment from 1961, Chiapas sequences | NWAF publications; a published institutional history |
| Thomas Stuart Ferguson | His disillusionment, published posthumously by Stan Larson | Larson, "The Odyssey of Thomas Stuart Ferguson," Dialogue, or Quest for the Gold Plates. Already flagged in the article |
| Brian D. Stubbs | Exploring the Explanatory Power of Semitic and Egyptian in Uto-Aztecan (2015) and the negative review by Chris Rogers in Journal of Book of Mormon Studies | Both originals. The article's verdict rests on Rogers, a BYU linguist, and that attribution must be exact |
| Hordeum pusillum | Pre-Columbian little barley in the Hohokam Southwest and the Eastern Agricultural Complex | The original archaeobotanical report |
| Horses | The 2023 Science study led by William Timothy Treal Taylor; Pleistocene extinction of American Equus | The paper itself |
| Metallurgy | Mesoamerican metallurgy beginning c. AD 600–800; Dorothy Hosler's West Mexican analysis; no iron or steel | Hosler, The Sounds and Colors of Power, or an open review |
| Fortifications | Becán's ditch and rampart, c. 1.9 km, Early Classic, published by David Webster | Webster's monograph |
| Cement | Teotihuacan and Maya lime concrete | A peer-reviewed archaeometric source |
| Wheeled figurines | Remojadas tradition, Veracruz, c. AD 300–900 | A museum or academic catalogue entry |
| Population figures | Teotihuacan c. 20 km² and c. 100,000 people; El Mirador Preclassic monumental scale | Standard references |
| Cyrus Thomas 1894 | The Bureau of Ethnology mound report settling the mound-builder question | The report itself, which is public domain and should be easy |
| Sorenson 1985 | An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon as the decisive limited-geography statement | The book |
| John E. Clark | The "trend" argument | Clark's BYU Studies / JBMS articles |
| Times and Seasons 1842 | Articles under Joseph Smith's editorship identifying Central American ruins with Book of Mormon peoples | The Joseph Smith Papers transcript. Partially covered: Coe (Tier A) reports that Smith "explicitly stated that Palenque was 'among the mighty works of the Nephites,'" but that reaches the article through Coe as an intermediary and is not used as a direct citation |
| Heartland model | Rodney Meldrum, Wayne May, 2000s organization | Their own publications |
| 1879 edition / Joseph Fielding Smith | Orson Pratt's footnotes; Joseph Fielding Smith's defence of a New York Cumorah | The 1879 edition and Doctrines of Salvation |
Tier C — sought and not found
- No Smithsonian-controlled or archived-Smithsonian copy of either statement was located. Every copy found was a retyping on a partisan site, which is exactly the failure mode the series conventions forbid.
- No National Geographic Society primary or archived copy was located.
- Wayback Machine snapshots of the Church's Alma 11 page returned empty bodies, so the date at which "coinage" became "monetary system" in the online edition could not be established. The article says only that it happened after 2013, which the 2013 adjustments document proves.
2026-08-08 citation pass — sources newly opened
The article had no footnotes at all before this pass. It now has one hundred footnote marks and a ## Sources section. Everything below was opened, read, and quoted on 2026-08-08. Each entry gives what the source argues and the reason it gives, not just its verdict.
| Source | Route | What it argues, and why | How the article uses it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aston, "Newly Found Altars from Nahom," JBMS 10:2 (2001), 56–61, 71 | ScholarsArchive PDF, article=1289&context=jbms |
The three Bar'an altars name a donor of the Nihm tribe, and the rulers named in the text date them to within decades of 600 BC. Aston's reason is the ruler chronology in the inscription itself, not the stratigraphy. | The whole "what was found" description, the inscription translation, the discovery history, and the 2001 dating. |
| Aston, "A History of NaHoM," BYU Studies 51:2 (2012) | byustudies.byu.edu, full HTML with notes | Kitchen and Nebes have moved the altars back to 800–700 BC, and the tribal name back to 850–750 BC. Aston also documents more than twenty pre-modern maps showing the name, including English editions printed in New York (1814) and Philadelphia (1818), and argues the maps still cannot supply the eastward turn because Dhofar's fertility was not reported outside Arabia until 1846. | The revised dating; the pre-1830 print availability, quoted from Aston's own note; the strongest form of the Latter-day Saint reply. |
| Clark, "Archeological Trends and Book of Mormon Origins," BYU Studies Quarterly 44:4 (2005), 83–104 | ScholarsArchive PDF, article=3732&context=byusq |
If the book is ancient, confirmations should accumulate; Clark says they have, and that the book "looks better with age." His reason is a count of nineteenth-century criticisms that later research resolved. | The "strongest Latter-day Saint responses" section, quoted at length — and his own concession that the deficiencies in metals, Old World animals and plants, and place names "persist, for the most part." |
| Larson, "The Odyssey of Thomas Stuart Ferguson," Dialogue 23:1 (1990), 55–93 | dialoguejournal.com PDF | Ferguson's disillusionment was triggered by the Book of Abraham papyri, not by Mesoamerica, and cascaded from there. Larson's reason is Ferguson's own letters and his 1975 study. Larson questions whether the inference was justified. | Ferguson's own words on metallurgy and on Book of Mormon geography; the honest caveat that Larson himself doubts the logic of the jump. |
| Coe, "Mormons and Archaeology: An Outside View," Dialogue 8:2 (1973), 40–48 | dialoguejournal.com PDF and the journal's HTML transcription | No non-Mormon professional archaeologist sees scientific justification for the Book of Mormon, and specific items — horse, chariot, wheat, barley, metallurgy — are inherently improbable. Coe's reason is the dated Mesoamerican sequence. | Quoted verbatim, with page numbers. Re-verified in this pass; every quotation already in the draft was exact. |
| Elzinga, review of Stubbs, BYU Studies Quarterly 55:4 (2016), 172–176 | ScholarsArchive PDF, article=4725&context=byusq |
Stubbs's data are extensive and his scholarship sound; the book's real flaw is that it never went through peer review. Elzinga's reason is his own reading of the correspondence sets as a Uto-Aztecanist. | Used to state the Latter-day Saint case for Stubbs at full strength before evaluating it — the draft previously stated only the negative verdict. |
| Hansen, "An evaluation of the Nahuatl data in Brian Stubbs' work" (2019) | nahuatlstudies.blogspot.com | The Nahuatl comparisons rely on massaged glosses and ignore internal Nahuatl history. Hansen's reason is his own reconstructions of proto-Corachol-Nahuatl. He is careful to limit his verdict to Nahuatl. | The independent, non-BYU evaluation, and — flagged as second hand — the summary of Rogers's review. |
| Smith and Yarnell, PNAS 106:16 (2009) | PMC2666091 | Little barley is one of three eastern seed plants identified as likely crops by abundance rather than by morphological domestication. Their reason is direct AMS dates and reanalysis of the Riverton assemblage. | Replaces the draft's looser "cultivated and possibly domesticated" wording. |
| Taylor et al., Science 379:6639 (2023) — abstract only | Europe PMC record, PMID 36996225 | North American horses are of Iberian descent and spread north through Indigenous networks by the first half of the 17th century. | The horse section. Full text paywalled; the article says so. |
| The Book of Mormon, 1879 edition | Internet Archive full text | Orson Pratt's printed footnotes place the landing on "the coast of Chili, S. America" and Cumorah "in Manchester, Ontario Co., N. York." | Direct evidence that the hemispheric reading was printed inside the scriptures. |
| The Book of Mormon, 1920 edition | Internet Archive full text | The Alma 11 chapter heading and the index entries "Amnor, a silver coin" and "Antion, a gold coin." | Proves the "coins" objection targets a 1920 editor, not the translated text. Re-verified this pass. |
Sources sought and not obtained
- Chris Rogers, "A Review of the Afro-Asiatic-Uto-Aztecan Proposal," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 28 (2019), 258–267. JSTOR returns 403 without a session; the University of Illinois Press copy is paywalled. Rogers is the single most important critical source on Stubbs, and the article uses Hansen's summary of him with an explicit note that Rogers was not opened. This is the largest remaining gap in the article.
- Kitchen, Documentation for Ancient Arabia vol. 2 (2000), and Nebes, "Zur Chronologie der Inschriften aus dem Bar'an-Tempel," Archäologische Berichte aus dem Yemen 10 (2005). These are the actual authorities for the 800–700 BC altar dating; both reach the article only through Aston. Getting Nebes would let the article state the dating from the excavation report rather than from an apologetic summary.
- Givens, By the Hand of Mormon (Oxford, 2002). Quoted only as Aston prints it.
- John S. Robertson's Interpreter review of Stubbs. Reported only through Hansen.
- Harding, An Index and Concordance of Pre-Islamic Arabian Names and Inscriptions (1971), and Groom's topographical dictionary. These would settle whether NHM really is a unique Arabian toponym, which is the strongest single point in the Latter-day Saint case. The article currently reports Aston's claim and says plainly that it could not be checked.
- Warren Aston's Bountiful fieldwork reports and George Potter's Valley of Lemuel publications. The site descriptions in the article are summary, not citation.
- Standard Mesoamerican references — Hosler on West Mexican metallurgy, Webster on the Becán earthworks, the Remojadas figurine literature, Teotihuacan and Maya lime-plaster studies, Cyrus Thomas 1894, Sorenson 1985. All are named in the
[^unopened]footnote in the article rather than dressed as citations.
Aggregators deliberately not cited
Per the series conventions, FAIR, Scripture Central, the Interpreter Foundation, MormonThink, the CES Letter, and Utah Lighthouse Ministry were treated only as maps to primary sources. None is cited in the draft for any fact. Several Tier B items will be reached through those sites' bibliographies in the next pass, but the citation must land on the original.
Deliberately excluded
The Bat Creek stone, the Los Lunas Decalogue stone, the Michigan relics, and the Kinderhook plates are mentioned in the article only to say that they are not treated as candidates. No serious Latter-day Saint scholarship defends them as Book of Mormon evidence, and including them would be attacking a position nobody holds. The Kinderhook plates belong to article 11 of this series, on testing Joseph Smith's prophetic gift, where Coe's 1973 account of the Lawrence metallurgical tests will be useful.