An important religious symbol of ancient America, just as of the Old World, was that of the “Tree of Life.”

Some years ago a new representation of this symbol was discovered in ancient American art, in a carving on a large stone monument unearthed at the ruin site of Izapa in southern Mexico. (See photograph and map. This monument is the fifth of the numbered stelae or carved stone slabs that once stood in the temple courts of the ancient city of Izapa; and it is the largest monument so far discovered at that site, measuring approximately eight feet high, five feet wide, and two feet thick.)

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Here, in fact, we have what appears to be no less than an ancient portrayal in stone of the very episode of the Tree of Life found in the Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi 8—the ancient Hebrew prophet Lehi narrating his vision of the Tree of Life to his family gathered around (evidently his wife Sariah and the four sons who came with them into the wilderness—altogether six persons in this episode, counting Lehi himself, the same number as shown here); his words being recorded on a plate by one of his sons, a young man named Nephi, described as “large in stature” (1 Nephi 4:31); and one of the features of the vision itself being a river of water coming by the tree!

In 1958 an expedition of the archaeology department of Brigham Young University to southern Mexico obtained a latex mold of this remarkable carving. Careful study of the mold, in comparison with the monument itself and an excellent photograph of the latter obtained by an expedition of the Smithsonian Institution in 1941 before serious weathering had occurred, verified the existence also in the sculpture of hieroglyphs above two of the six persons seated around the tree, i.e., symbols which undoubtedly record the actual names of these two persons! This important discovery, of course, opened the possibility of a definite decision as to whether the six persons portrayed here are, in fact, to be identified with the six persons of the Tree of Life episode of the Book of Mormon.

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These two name-glyphs, therefore, practically establish the six persons in the Izapa carving as the six of the Book of Mormon episode, and consequently this carving itself as a portrayal of that episode—apparently the first actual occurrence of Book of Mormon names and the first actual portrayal of a Book of Mormon event so far discovered on an ancient monument. In other words, this carving constitutes the most important external evidence for the authenticity of the Book of Mormon yet to come forth.