The Book of Mormon and Mound Builder Myth

The Book of Mormon and Mound Builder Myth: How a Misunderstanding of American Archaeology Shaped Religious History

When Joseph Smith published the Book of Mormon in 1830, nineteenth-century Americans were fascinated by massive earthen mounds scattered across the Ohio Valley and Mississippi River region. These structures, some covering acres and rising over 100 feet, represented one of the continent's greatest archaeological mysteries. For Smith and his contemporaries, the mounds seemed to offer tangible evidence for the Book of Mormon's narrative of ancient American civilizations. Yet this archaeological enthusiasm rested on a fundamentally flawed premise that shaped both popular belief and religious doctrine. Understanding how the mound builder myth influenced early Mormon thought reveals important lessons about the intersection of faith, pseudoarchaeology, and the historical record.

What Is the Mound Builder Myth?

The mound builder myth emerged from a particular form of nineteenth-century racial thinking. When European Americans encountered these monumental structures, many concluded that contemporary Native Americans could not possibly have constructed them. The reasoning was explicit and troubling: indigenous peoples were deemed too "degraded" or intellectually inferior to accomplish such engineering feats. Rather than accept Native American achievement, scholars and enthusiasts invented an alternative explanation, a lost, superior race that had inhabited North America in antiquity.

This wasn't mere speculation. The theory became mainstream among educated Americans. It appeared in academic publications, museum exhibits, and popular literature. It was, in essence, pseudoarchaeology dressed in the language of scholarship.

How Did the Mound Builder Myth Connect to Mormon Theology?