Sacsayhuaman near Cuzco

The Urubamba River.


The Urubamba River valley seen from Machu Picchu.


The sacred Urubamba River valley, the trail of Viracocha. (Click to enlarge).


The fortress of Sacsayhuaman.



Doorway up on the 2nd level.


Sacsayhuamán: the remains of a tower.

"It was in this area of Cuzco in 1463 that the Inca rose to power, obviously utilizing a series of buildings, temples, and other magnificent structures, including the fortress of Sacsahuaman, the much earlier Nephites left behind. Since at no time in the scriptural record do we find the Lamanites constructing buildings, roads, palaces, or other magnificent edifices, we must conclude that the ancient workmanship of the Andean Plateau, from Tehuantepec (Lake Titicaca) to Sacsahuaman (Cuzco) to Pachacamac (Lima) were built by the ancient Nephites."

Inti-Raymi, Festival of Incas

"In the town of Cusco, in the early 15th century, the area was ruled by a younger son of the ruler. In 1438, he defeated the Chanca people, a neighboring tribe and gave himself the tile of Pachacuti, meaning, transformer of the earth. He then started a huge process of military expansion. This was later continued by his son Topa Inca."




The Inca king during the Festival of the Sun, Inti-Raymi. "Prior to the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century, northern Chile was under Inca rule while the indigenous Mapuche inhabited central and southern Chile".

Valparaiso, Chile - The Mapuche Indians

Calendario Mapuche, Chile. The Mapuche calendar.


Mapuche women from Valparaiso, Chile.


A Mapuche ceremony.

Lehi - First Landing

"While we think of South America as individual countries today, in 600 BC., the area along the western strip, usually referred to as the Andean area, was one continuous, unbroken wilderness (uninhabited), with tall cliffs along the Pacific shore with only a few areas suitable for landing a group of people from a deep-sea, ocean-going vessel. That area is today called the Bay of Coquimbo, which is situated exactly along the 30º south latitude, in what is today the country of Chile. Several things work for this area being the landing site of the Lehi Colony."





Coastal view of Chile.


"There is impressive evidence that Joseph Smith identified the coast of Chile at about 30 degrees south latitude as the place where Lehi's group made landfall in the New World.11 From this southern extreme the Nephites and Lamanites eventually ranged at least 6,000 miles north to New York State, where Smith located the "Hill Cumorah," site of the epic Nephite-Lamanite battle of extinction, near his boyhood home of Palmyra, New York. LDS apostle Joseph Fielding Smith (latter 10th President of the LDS Church) affirmed that the location of Cumorah in Palmyra, New York was the unquestioned teaching of Joseph Smith and successive Mormon presidents and apostles."

"LEHI'S TRAVELS — Revelation to Joseph the Seer. The course that Lehi and his company traveled from Jerusalem to the place of their destination: They traveled nearly a south, southeast direction until they came to the nineteenth degree of north latitude; then, nearly east to the Sea of Arabia, then sailed in a southeast direction, and landed on the continent of South America, in Chili [sic], thirty degrees south latitude."

Peru - Ancient Megalithic Stonework

Mormon Seer Stones

The Anthon transcript of Book of Mormon characters copied from the gold plates by Joseph Smith Jr.


Daguerreotype of the Prophet Joseph Smith Jr.


The gold plates of the Book of Mormon.



1.Green seer stone owned by Utah pioneer Philo Dibble. Matches description of stone given to Joseph Smith by Jack Belcher in Pennsylvania in the 1820's. Dibble family folklore includes story of Philo receiving stone from Joseph.
According to the Princeton Library Curator of Rare Books, the stone is privately owned and was loaned to the Library in 1980 for an exhibition entitled "A Quorum Called Out of the Kingdom" (documented in Princeton University Library Chronicle XLII, 1 (Autumn, 1980) pp. 55-59.

2. Sandy colored seer stone apparently used by Joseph Smith. Smith's widow Emma passed it on to relatives of her second husband, Lewis Bidamon. (Wilford Wood Museum)
Below.





Whitmer stone.
3. Stone of David Whitmer, who was a special witness to the Book of Mormon.
(LDS Photo Archives)

4. Stone of Jacob Whitmer, son of David, and special witness to the Book of Mormon
(Rick Grunder - Books)

Seer Stones

The Seer Stone of Joseph Smith.


Joseph Smith Jr. using the Urim and Thummim set in spectacles and attached to the breastplate that was found with the gold plates.

Salt Lake City

Wilford Woodruff Journal, 11 December 1869
In his journal, Wilford Woodruff recounted what he had heard Brigham Young say about the cave:

President Young said in relation to Joseph Smith returning the Plates of the Book of Mormon that He did not return them to the box from wh[ence?] He had Received [them]. But He went [into] a Cave in the Hill Comoro with Oliver Cowdry & deposited those plates upon a table or shelf. In that room were deposited a large amount of gold plates Containing sacred records & when they first visited that Room the sword of Laban was Hanging upon the wall & when they last visited it the sword was drawn from the scabbard and [laid?] upon a table and a Messenger who was the keeper of the room informed them that that sword would never be returned to its scabbard untill the Kingdom of God was Esstablished upon the Earth & untill it reigned triumphant over Evry Enemy. Joseph Smith said that Cave Contained tons of Choice Treasures & records.

The LDS "Metal Library" is in a cave within the Hill Cumorah.

Onyx bowl from Tikal

Maya Scribe

The Chachapoyas

Llamas at Kuelap. "And there were cureloms and cumoms" - I Nephi.


The entrance to the mountain fortress of Kuelap. "At a hidden retreat in the wilderness called the waters of Mormon, Alma baptized his listeners and organized the church of Christ among them. In time, King Noah found out where Alma's congregation was meeting, and sent his army to destroy them. Being warned by God of the army's coming, Alma quickly led his band of approximately 450 converts into the wilderness for eight days, stopping in an uninhabited area which they named the land of Helam. The people of Alma established the city of Helam there and prospered for many years, remaining faithful to God's commandments."






Location of Kuelap (red dot).

Gocta Waterfall - Chachapoyas
Gocta waterfall, 3rd highest in world, 2 1/3 times higher than the Eiffel Tower.

Kuelap, the ancient fortress that is the largest building structure of the Americas with 400 buildings inside the fortress.


Kuelap. the fortress of the Chachapoyas.

The chronicler Pedro Cieza de León offers some picturesque notes about the Chachapoyas:
“ They are the whitest and most handsome of all the people that I have seen in Indies, and their wives were so beautiful that because of their gentleness, many of them deserved to be the Incas' wives and to also be taken to the Sun Temple (...) The women and their husbands always dressed in woolen clothes and in their heads they wear their llautos, which are a sign they wear to be known everywhere. ”
Cieza adds that, after their annexation to the Inca Empire, they adopted customs imposed by the Cuzco-based Inca.
The name Chachapoya is in fact the name that was given to this culture by the Inca; the name that these people may have actually used to refer to themselves is not known. The meaning of the word Chachapoyas may have been derived from sacha-p-collas, the equivalent of "colla people who live in the woods" (sacha = wild p = of the colla = nation in which Aymara is spoken). Some believe the word is a variant of the Quechua construction sacha puya, or People of the Clouds.

Origin of the ChachapoyasAccounts such as that of Cieza de León indicate that the Chachapoyas had lighter skin than other South American peoples and blond hair. This poses an enduring mystery for scholars of the region as to their ultimate origin.

According to the analysis of the Chachapoyas objects made by the Antisuyo expeditions of the Amazon Archaeology Institute, the Chachapoyas do not exhibit Amazon cultural tradition but one more closely resembling an Andean one.

Bonampak

Marguerite of Bonampak.


Warriors from the murals of Bonampak.

The Mound Builders

Cahokia.
"We have fully documented, reliable accounts of Smithsonian Institute personnel traveling to 1800's communities in middle-America to take possession of large skeletons exhumed from the mounds. In certain instances the handover of remains and artefacts was done with a degree of formal ceremony, with the town mayor, local minister or assorted dignitaries turning out, and the spectacle of speeches and handshakes reported in the local newspaper. Mound researchers like Patricia Mason of Newark, Ohio, in following up on these many reports, have applied to the Smithsonian Institute for information related to present-day whereabouts of those skeletons gifted to the museum's collection, only to be told that the Smithsonian never received any such item.

In many other recorded instances the large bone and heavy skull, remains, found in the mounds, were so old that they disintegrated quite quickly after being exposed to air and, within a few days, had crumbled to powder. This clearly shows that some of the remains were of very great-age."

"These giant skulls are stashed-away, somewhat "out-of-sight, out-of-mind", at the Humbolt Museum in Nevada. They are the remains of the last of the "Red Headed Giants"of the area, who were trapped inside Lovelock Cave by the Paiute Indians, then suffocated to death by smoke from fires lit at the mouth of the cave. Some skulls of the large boned & tall stature people, recovered from the cave, had red hair. These very big people fit the more general recorded descriptions given of the physical-type found interred within the North American mounds during excavations of the 19th century, when many full skeletons were gifted to the Smithsonian Institute."





Referring to the Jaredites it is said that they did not inhabit the Land Southward which was nearly entirely surrounded by water, they used this land for hunting only. Was the Land Southward in Florida? The Mound Builders did not build there, it was a land of snakes.

The Anton Manuscript

The writing of the Book of Mormon.