Coincidence? I Think Not!

So this post is a little different from my normal stuff, but interesting, nonetheless.

When dealing with the Book of Mormon, a lot of people I've known have said that it's fake and that Joseph Smith made it all up. Sometimes it's hard to try to find ways to convince them that it's not just some big hoax that was completely made up. However, I love finding little things that just fit with the Book of Mormon histories that help to provide evidences of its truthfulness.

Some examples of these little things are:

•  the way that things are phrased in the Book of Mormon, which fits the style of ancient hebrew poetry, which Joseph Smith wouldn't have known unless he devoted a lot of time to the study of ancient hebrew poetry
• the Aztec God, Quetzalcoatl, who, according to wikipedia, was "the patron god of the Aztec priesthood, of learning and knowledge." Although in many Aztec descriptions, Quetzalcoatl is represented as a snake type figure and not all the descriptions match up with Christ's visit to the Americas, there are many similarities. Part of the reason that Cortés was able to conquer the Aztecs so easily was because they believed him to be Quetzalcoatl returning to the earth, as he said he would before he left. So, it may be kind of a stretch, but this bears many similarities to Christ's visit to the Nephites; establishing priesthood, promising to return after he has left.
• there's some stuff with word selection and translation, but I don't remember which words, and I'm too lazy to go back and look that up
• Other stuff that I'm too lazy to look up, because mainly I just want to get to the fantastic story that my geology professor told my class today

And here's the fantastic story!

So in the Book of Mormon, in the beginning,  before Lehi's family has started their journey across the ocean, there is a land they stay in called Bountiful. This is where they stay after they have left Jerusalem, and before making the boat. It is described as east of Nahom, where Ishmael was buried. Well, Nahom is a real place that has been discovered on the Arabian peninsula. It is a place that already had a name, so Lehi did not name it, and archaeologists have discovered a place called NHM (in semitic languages the vowels are spoken and not written) which seems to match up pretty well with where the Book of Mormon describes it to be. So that seemed to match up, but people wondered about the land Bountiful, where it is written that there was much fruit and honey, and also plenty of wood to build a ship, and iron ore to make tools. To many people it seemed that a place like this could not exist somewhere on the Arabian peninsula where Lehi's family traveled. Well, my geology teacher was asked to travel over there, because he had previously worked in that part of the world and had good connections, to see if he could find a place that fit the description of where Bountiful was described to be that contained iron ore. Also, this iron ore was molded with wood fire and bellows, which normally cannot reach a temperature high enough to melt iron. 

Anyways, my geology teacher was off on this expedition, and was looking for a place that would make sense. What he found was this place called Dhofar. It is this little area by the ocean that is green and beautiful. Everywhere around it is desert, but this area receives monsoon rains which are stopped by the mountains surrounding this place, so all of the rain is dumped in this area, causing it to be green and lush, with waterfalls and springs. There is plenty of vegetation, so here is where Nephi could have gotten his wood to build his ship! 

However, there was still the problem of iron ore. In order to have iron ore, it is necessary to have igneous rock formations. Most of the Arabian peninsula is not igneous rock, except for a section right by the Gulf of Oman, and one more tiny, little section, in Dhofar. Well, my teacher was investigating this and found a strange mixture of minerals in a rock one day. There seemed to be calcite along with iron. He found this because of the rusty color of the iron, but it didn't appear to be anything that iron usually mixed with. Anyways, he took a sample of this rock to perform some tests on it. In order to hold true with what the Book of Mormon said, this iron had to be malleable by being heated to temperatures that could be produced by a wood fire and bellows, a task that seemed impossible to do because of the high heat necessary to melt iron. However, when tests were performed on the rock samples, it turns out that with this mixture of calcite and iron, the calcite acted as a catalyst that lowered the melting point of the iron, so it was indeed able to be melted at temperatures that could be reached by a large wood fire and bellows!

I thought that this was pretty amazing. Even though it is not solid proof that the Book of Mormon is true, it is definitely something. Joseph Smith wouldn't have known much about the geography of the Arabian peninsula or about the one tiny little place with vegetation, or the fact that it contains a very rare mixture of minerals that could do what the Book of Mormon says. 

Anyways, that's just some thoughts I had. I thought it was really interesting :) I'm not saying that you have to believe it, or that this definitely means that it's true, because the only way to know that is to pray about it, but it's fun to think about.