Thank you for com­ment­ing with these links. As you know, I’ve read some of your oth­er posts here on this site; I also went and read through some of these posts at the bookof​mor​monev​i​dence​.blogspot​.com loca­tion. You’ve accu­mu­lat­ed a lot of inter­est­ing evi­dence, and I think it’s fascinating. I know you aren’t unfa­mil­iar with these data, but here’s my gen­er­al response: A sub­stan­tial amount of the evi­dence we have on the Hopewells and a poten­tial con­nec­tion to Jew­ish cul­ture and/or the Mid­dle East was already known (and pop­u­lar­ized) dur­ing Joseph Smith’s time (pre 1830). Giv­en that there is a tremen­dous quan­ti­ty of 1800s thought present in the Book of Mor­mon, on what grounds can we argue that what is men­tioned about the ancient cul­tures in the Book of Mor­mon is not mere­ly a reflec­tion of an 1800s mind on the top­ic? Specif­i­cal­ly, what data from the Book of Mor­mon that is now asso­ci­at­ed with the Hopewells was­n’t already known or pos­tu­lat­ed dur­ing Joseph Smith’s time? And even more impor­tant­ly, what evi­dence exists that ancient Hopewells were (some­how?) famil­iar with numer­ous ear­ly 1800s the­o­log­i­cal debates and were con­vers­ing about them in a man­ner that would have been right at home in the ear­ly 1800s? Even the most gen­er­ous radio­car­bon date for Ken­newick man puts him well out of range of Nephite/Lamanite times, and genet­ic dat­ing of the X2a hap­lo­type diver­gence fails to sup­port a recent migra­tion event. Raff and Bol­nick point out the two dat­ing prob­lems (they don’t men­tion the one ear­ly Ken­newick… Read more »