What Coe said in 1973
Michael D. Coe was a Mesoamerican archaeologist. In his 1973 Dialogue article, he said he knew of no professionally trained archaeologist outside the Church who saw scientific justification for the historical claims he had described. He added that some Latter-day Saint archaeologists shared his assessment. The passage gives his assessment of the research and his profession in 1973. Its immediate context also discusses claims about Egyptian writing and the Kinderhook plates. In his conclusion, Coe specifically says the New World excavations then available did not support identifying the Book of Mormon as a history of early migrants to the Americas. Coe’s article, pp. 42–43 and 46–47
Coe also named material problems. He pointed to horses, chariots, wheat, barley, and metallurgy. Each involves a different question about the English text, the region, the date, and the archaeological record. For instance, an ancient horse find outside the proposed region or well outside the period of Lamoni’s story would leave the main question open. Coe’s individual dates should be checked against later research. Coe’s list · Horses and chariots case · Steel case
What the foundation found
Coe praised the New World Archaeological Foundation for establishing a sequence of archaeological periods in Chiapas and credited both the researchers and the Church’s financial support. Ferguson had hoped excavation would corroborate Book of Mormon geography. The fieldwork advanced the study of Mesoamerica without supplying the identification he hoped to find. Coe evaluates the excavations as an outside archaeologist. Ferguson’s later conclusion about the geography is a separate historical record. Coe’s account, pp. 46–47 · Foundation field reports · Ferguson case
What LiDAR changed
In a 2018 interview, Coe was asked whether the LiDAR images he had seen supported claims about the Nephites. He said they did not. The interviewer invoked Mosiah 27:6, which describes large cities and villages. Coe questioned whether the settlement pattern matched the dense cities he understood the claim to predict. The verse itself gives no population density. Coe interview, starting at 23:23 · Mosiah 27:6
Later that year, Marcello Canuto and colleagues reported 61,480 structures in their northern Guatemala survey, including features they could compare with field observations. Their population estimates address the Late Classic period, about AD 650–800. The structures span multiple periods. The survey gives much better evidence of Maya settlement, agriculture, and infrastructure. Using it to identify a people or event in Mosiah would require dating the relevant features and finding something specific that ties them to the text. Canuto et al., Science, 2018 · Research summary from a participating university
How to weigh a missing find
Start with a proposal specific enough to test. If a model identifies a particular site as an occupied city at a particular date, reliable evidence that the site was unoccupied then would count against that model. If it predicts abundant durable artifacts, systematic excavation that can recover those artifacts also makes a repeated absence meaningful. The same absence carries less weight if the proposed place, period, or expected materials are unclear.
The Church affirms that the events took place in the ancient Americas and takes no position on specific locations. That leaves individual geography models open to testing on their own terms. It also means a finding that counts against one candidate location has a narrower reach than a finding that would contradict something every historical reading requires. Latter-day Saints can believe the book preserves an ancient record while being candid about the archaeological case. Church statement on Book of Mormon geography · The broader archaeology question
A reply you could give
Coe took the fieldwork seriously. He credited its results for Mesoamerican archaeology and said it had not identified Book of Mormon peoples. New scans give us a much better map of Maya settlements. If we want to connect a place to the book, show me a dated site and a feature that points specifically to that identification. If we want to rule a place out, show me what the model predicted and what the excavation actually tested.