INTRODUCTION

Some very exciting and faith-rewarding news for Book of Mormon believers, the first discovery of barley in the New World, has been reported in the December issue of Science 83, pp. 28-37, under the title “Last Ditch Archaeology”, by Daniel B. Adams, a graduate student in paleontology at the University of California, Berkeley.

This discovery constitutes one of the most important archaeological breakthroughs ever in support of the Book of Mormon. If this identification of barley is valid, and it appears to be, it will cause a major shift in the thinking of New World archaeologists, a shift which will be a giant step toward the ever growing physical validation of Book of Mormon history. The following analogy will help us to appreciate the importance of this discovery: Consider the Book of Mormon as a great reservoir of truth. Then envision a gigantic dam erected by tradition and unbelief to hold back this truth. As we shall see, the foundations of this dam have been weakening for some time. Taken in this context, the discovery of barley in the New World is the equivalent of an actual crack at the base of the dam sufficiently wide to allow water to start trickling through. Now that the trickle has started, it is only a matter of time before the complete collapse of the dam, which will allow the truth of the Book of Mormon to cover the earth as a flood.

BARLEY DISCOVERED

The barley was discovered in Hohokam deposits in Phoenix, Arizona as a result of excavations carried out by Arizona State University. The Hohokam Indians were present in the Phoenix area from about 300 B.C. to about A.D. 1450. They may have come from Mesoamerica since a number of Mesoamerican traits were present in their culture such as similar figurine styles, the use of cotton, their textile techniques, ball courts, platform mounds and copper bells. The Hohokam culture is famous in the Southwest for a number of things including the construction of a massive system of irrigation canals. Over 1000 miles of canals as large as 30 feet wide and seven feet deep were built by these industrious ancient people.

Adams states in Science 83:

Perhaps the most startling evidence of Hohokam agricultural sophistication came last year when salvage archaeologists found preserved grains of what looks like domesticated barley, the first ever found in the New World. Wild barleys have a fibrous husk over each grain. Domestic barley lacks this. So does the Hohokam barley. “It’s debatable whether this is genetic or some extreme skill in processing,” says Vorsila Bohrer, an ethnobotanist at Eastern New Mexico University. Nearly half of the samples from one site yielded barley. (page 32)