Wheat, barley, silk, linen, wine and the Columbian Exchange
The crops and textiles named are Old World; one partial exception (little barley) grew in the wrong region for the leading apologetic geography.
What the Church claims
Nephites grew wheat and barley, made wine, and wore silk and fine-twined linen.
Once the evidence is in, this claim: Weak. Wheat, flocks and herds remain without evidence; barley is a partial and geographically awkward exception.
The record
- Roper scores wheat unconfirmed.
- Little barley (Hordeum pusillum) was cultivated in the Eastern Agricultural Complex and by the Hohokam; earliest at Gast Spring, Iowa, about 2,800-3,000 years ago. Scripture Central names no Mesoamerican site.
- Silk, linen, grapes and wine are scored confirmed on the basis of silk-like and flax-like fibres, native Vitis, and fermented drinks the Spanish called wine.
- The text does not mention maize-beans-squash agriculture beyond 'corn', nor cacao, turkeys, jaguars or any distinctively Mesoamerican item.
The moving target
No official statement has ever addressed the wheat, barley, silk, linen or wine of the Book of Mormon. The barley answer that apologists lead with came from a 1983 archaeological find and from writers outside the Church; the Church has never adopted it, repeated it, or acknowledged the problem it was built to solve.
The exchange
Clark (2005); Scripture Central (2020); Roper (2025)
Barley was called an anachronism until domesticated native barley was found in 1983.
The answer: A fair point against the absolute form of the criticism. But it is a different species, a minor seed crop, in Arizona and the Mississippi valley. Apologists who place the Nephites in Mesoamerica cannot claim it without also claiming long-distance crop transfer for which there is no evidence; Heartland advocates cite the same find against the Mesoamerican model.
What they get right: Critics should stop saying 'there was no barley in ancient America' without qualification.
Sorenson; Gardner; Roper
Other terms are loan-shifts or translator's equivalents.
The answer: Possible for textiles. For wheat no candidate is even proposed with evidence.
Both cases at full strength
The skeptics' case
The agricultural package in the book is that of upstate New York and the King James Bible, not of any American civilization. The one botanical hit is real but regionally misplaced, and the chart scores it without that caveat.
The apologetic case
Translators render unfamiliar staples with familiar words; the Spanish did the same. Barley shows that a confident negative can be overturned by a single excavation.
What would change this
Pre-Columbian wheat or Old World barley remains, or little barley in a Preclassic Mesoamerican context.
Sources
- Anachronisms ... Chapter 4: Ancient Culture
- Archaeological Trends and the Book of Mormon Origins
- Book of Mormon Overview: Anachronisms and What Isn't in the Book of Mormon
- Book of Mormon Evidence: Barley
- Hordeum pusillum (tertiary finder)
- Anachronisms in the Book of Mormon (in A Reason for Faith)
- Barley in Iowa; Not in Mesoamerica
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