An Alternative Hypothesis
Book of Mormon record keepers drew upon the natural world thousands of times to enrich their speaking and writing. Their many references to beasts, fruit, seashores, stones, trees, vineyards, and wildernesses provide amazing insights into how and where those record keepers lived.
A near consensus among Latter-day Saint scholars is that Mesoamerica is the land of the Book of Mormon. Drawing on his understanding of crop physiology, Crookston researches an alternate hypothesis—that Lehi's party landed in a Jerusalem-like Mediterranean eco-region of the Americas, and that the record keepers from Nephi to Moroni stayed and lived in such a region.
Crookston evaluates the usage of 107 ecology-related Book of Mormon words including plants, animals and lands in all their spiritual and temporal contexts. He considers subjects such as Nephi's words about how remarkably their Jerusalem-gathe
