Alvin R.
Dyer (1903-1977) was an apostle of the Church and served as a member of the
First Presidency from 1968-1970. In the following from his 1965 book, The Age of Confusion, he writes the
following, showing that he believed the Book of Mormon took place in South
America and did not take place at all in the "Heartland" of North
America:
The Prophet Joseph Smith in translating the
Book of Mormon learned from the plates of Nephi that one of the ships built by
Hagoth, which was exceedingly large according to their reckoning and which
carried many women, and children, set
out northward to North America
from South America. The
land of departure was referred to then as the “land Bountiful by the land Desolation”
. . . a thesis prepared by John Leon
Sorenson was presented to the Brigham Young University, July, 1952, on the “Evidence
of Culture Contacts Between Polynesia and the Americas in Pre-Columbian Times.”
The subject material of the thesis represents
exhaustive research in the living trait and characteristics of peoples,
producing strong evidence of the cultural contact between Polynesia and South
America. (Alvin R. Dyer, This
Age of Confusion [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1965], 76-77, emphasis in bold and underlining added)
Note that,
according to Dyer, Hagoth et al., sailed from the lands of the Book of Mormon to North America—this shows that,
according to Dyer, the peoples of the Book of Mormon did not dwell there—instead,
it was largely centralised in South America, and such is bolstered by
then-recent scholarship. This is another torn in the side of Heartland
supporters.
Note that I
disagree with Dyer that the Book of Mormon took place in South America;
instead, the best model seems to be that of Mesoamerica. Interestingly, the
same John Leon Sorenson whose thesis Dyer enthusiastically endorsed would later
many fine works on this, including An
Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon (FARMS and Deseret Book,
1985).
Speaking of the Heartland model, be sure to check out Stephen Smoot's reviews of Hocking and Meldrum, eds. Annotated Edition of the Book of Mormon.
