[Aztlan] Mormons, Mayans and Mystery

[Michael Carrasco]

DWirth8851 at aol.com wrote:            Among Mormon Mesoamerican scholars are: John  Clark, Allen Christenson, Garth Norman, John Fox, and Richard Hansen. They do  not believe they "put their faith in fantasy" as Michael stated.

I never said that they did. However, it is really none of my business if they were to do so --many people do in all kinds of things--as long as scientific methods were followed and published arguments were adequately supported. This is not an issue of belief, it is about methodology and the influence that dogma from any number of different sources has on the study of history, or scientific investigation more generally and how this information is then presented to the public at large.
     The Tribune article states that "Sorenson belongs  to a renegade group of anthropologists known as "diffusionist," who believe  numerous voyages carried people and animals to the New World." So I gather  Michael would consider Michael Coe a "renegade" because he sees a  similarity in Mesoamerican iconography and rituals with Ankor and  Southeast Asia. 


Yes, well this isn't exactly all that Sorenson believes. However as for Michael Coe, if he were to claim that people from Ankor and Southeast Asia peopled the Americas based on supposed stylistic similarities than, yes, I would say he is mistaken. Just as Betty Meggers was mistaken to claim that Jomon pottery was the source for early ceramics at Valdivia. I would not frame the issue in terms of renegade versus orthodoxy--again it is a methodological issue.

There's also David Kelley who is a diffusionist, and  Arthur Demarest said:
  
 "Within orthodox academics there are a lot of people who simply dismiss the  argument out of hand on the ground that the mechanics of overseas diffusion  themselves are too difficult. But there are others--and I put myself in that  group--who don't doubt there's been contact. I don't think that the transport  problems are such that they prevented people from moving between continents."  (Quoted by Mark K. Stengel, "The Diffusionist Have Landed," The Atlantic  Monthly 285/1, 2000, p. 47.) 



Frankly, I see the study of the peopling of the Americas as separate from claims which ascribe ethnicity and original homelands to America's first peoples prior to obtaining actual data from the study of this issue. The methodological problem here is that people state first that X people came from site B and then look for the data to prove this a priori assumption. This is not how science works. If the evidence points to multiple locations for the peopling of the Americas (as I personally think it does or is beginning to) than it is the strength of that evidence which should be given the most weight, not the desire for this fact to be true.

In past posts I think we have gone into the problems with the evidence marshaled in support for the Old World influence on specific Mesoamerican cultures. I personally have seen no evidence in the language, iconography, or epigraphy that would allow one to tie the Maya, for instance, to any particular Old World culture. 

Best,
Michael