Archaeology and the Book of Mormon hand, flourished in Mesoamerica during the Preclassic period, dating from 1200 BC to about 400 BC. The Olmec civilization suddenly disintegrated for unknown reasons, although archaeological evidence clearly indicates a definite Olmec influence within the Maya civilization that followed. Although the Olmec civilization ended, there are indications that some of the Olmec people survived and interacted with other cultures. While making allowance for the likelihood that Book of Mormon peoples migrated to Mexico and Central America, Joseph Smith nevertheless placed the arrival of the Jaredites in "the lake country of America", i.e., the region of the Great Lakes). No Central
Archaeology and the Book of Mormon the full extent of their learning and ritual was recorded, only four have survived to modern times (as though all that posterity knew of ourselves were to be based upon three prayer books and "Pilgrim's Progress"). The Maya civilization also left behind a vast corpus of inscriptions (upwards of ten thousand are known) written in the Maya script, the earliest of which date from around the 3rd century BC with the majority written in the Classic Period (c. 250–900 AD). Mayanist scholarship is now able to decipher a large number of these inscriptions. These inscriptions are mainly concerned with the