1491

I just finished the book 1491. It was a pretty good book, thought not as interesting as many I have gotten through. It is basically a book about the state of the Indians (which term the book uses, though at the beginning something along the lines of “Obviously, this term is incorrect, but, I use it because it is what the overwhelming majority of native people call themselves.”) It was about their cultures and religions and all sorts of other things. One would assume that, being a member of a church that has canonized scripture that is based here in the Americas, one would hope to gather a lot of useful information about the Indians that might help ones faith. Such was not really the case. There was really no information about the Indians that would support the Book of Mormon. However, the general theme and feeling of the book is very useful to what we believe. In large part, the book is a review of academic articles, summarizing their more interesting parts for a general audience. The book would often talk about what is generally believed about the Indians by the public, what the academic literature says that disagrees with that, and then how there are still many other academics who sharply agree with the general consensus of academics. The general message I got from the article is that scholars really have no idea what pre Columbus America, and are constantly shifting ideas as new evidence arises. Thus, anyone who seeks to discredit the Book of Mormon using archeological evidence probably stands on shaky ground, as that same evidence may very well be interpreted differently by scholars in 10 years. The book even outlines several DNA studies done to discern the ancestry of the Indians, and they all reach different results. The most important thing I got from the book is a special case of Thomas Kuhn’s general thesis in his book “The History of Scientific Revolutions” – that science changes and that what we know now may be overturned in the future. I would like to add to that that the only things we can really know, the only Truth we can be sure of, is revealed truth.