Editing Zarahemla (section)

=== Speculating locations ===
Responding to their belief in the Book of Mormon's ancient historicity, Latter-day Saints throughout the nineteenth century believed archaeological evidence would emerge to corroborate the Book of Mormon; many regarded scholarship on the ancient Americas as vindication of the book.<ref name=":0">{{Harvtxt|Jones|2016|p=200}}.</ref> There has been no actual archaeological discovery of Zarahemla.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Stoker|Derengowski|2018|loc="The Book of Mormon's alleged authority over the content of the Bible", second paragraph}}.</ref>

In 1842, Latter-day Saint newspaper the ''[[Times and Seasons]]'' associated Zarahemla with the ruins of [[Quiriguá]].<ref>{{Harvtxt|Nash|2017|pp=87, 91}}.</ref> Artist [[George M. Ottinger]] opined that the Maya city-state [[Palenque]] was one and the same as Zarahemla.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Robertson|2022|p=7}}.</ref>  In an elaborate geography constructed from the Book of Mormon's text, Latter-day Saints [[George Reynolds (Mormon)|George Reynolds]] and [[Janne M. Sjödahl]] supposed Zarahemla was located along the [[Magdalena River]] in [[Colombia]].<ref name=":0" /> Classically trained,<ref>{{Harvtxt|Givens|2002|p=106}}.</ref> Sjödahl followed the "signature style of biblical archaeology", in the words of religious studies scholar Matthew Bowman, trying to corroborate Book of Mormon text with archaeological data, to draw his conclusions for associating Zarahemla with the Maya.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Bowman|2021|p=83}}.</ref>{{efn|In a retrospective on Book of Mormon historicity apologetics, Brant Gardner states that anthropological evidence indicates that "any facile equation of the Nephites with the Maya (or claim that the Nephites influenced the Maya) cannot work".<ref>{{harvtxt|Gardner|2021|pp=144, 155}}.</ref>}}

[[Benjamin Cluff]], then president of Brigham Young Academy, from 1900 to 1901 led an expedition, mostly comprising students, to try to discover evidence of the city of Zarahemla in Colombia, in accord with Reynolds and Sjödahl's proposed geography.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Givens|2002|p=107}}; {{Harvtxt|Jones|2016|pp=199–201}}; {{Harvtxt|Bowman|2021|p=72}}.</ref> Six of the group reached the Magdalena, but they turned back after learning that civil conflict had destabilized the region, ending their expedition.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Jones|2016|pp=203, 235}}.</ref>

[[Margarito Bautista]] in his 1936 ''La evolución de Mexico: sus verdaderos progenitores y su origen: el destino de America y Europa'' expressed his belief that Book of Mormon peoples were the ancestors of indigenous Mexicans, and he superimposed Zarahemla onto the region north of Panama, somewhere in Guatemala, Honduras, or southern Mexico.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Pulido|2020|pp=108–110, 227}}.</ref>

In 2021, a group of Mormons called the Heartland Research Group believed they had found the location of Zarahemla outside [[Montrose, Iowa]] and searched the soil for evidence of human habitation using [[lidar]].<ref>{{Harvtxt|Rushing|2021}}.</ref> They also took core samples with the aim of using carbon dating to identify evidence of fires.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Noyce|2021|loc="Digging deep into the Book of Mormon"}}.</ref> The Heartland Research Group holds to what has been called the "Heartland model", a belief among certain Mormons that the events of the Book of Mormon took place specifically in the Heartland of the United States, the emergence of which coincided with growth in LDS Church membership in Central and South America.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Seriac|2021|loc=second paragraph–third paragraph}}.</ref> ''Religion Dispatches'' reports that the Heartland model movement rests on American nationalism and espouses white supremacy and Euro-American colonialism.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Seriac|2021|loc=sixth paragraph–tenth paragraph}}.</ref>
[[File:Destruction of Zarahemla, by George Ottinger, 1888.png|thumb|''Destruction of Zarahemla'' (1888) by George M. Ottinger]]