Publisher's Synopsis
Patrick Simiskey worked for thirty-six years designing and building chemical plants around the world. He now applies his analytical skills to researching Book of Mormon geography. The Hill Cumorah in the Book of Mormon (2018) is the culmination of nineteen years of research and identifies the final battle-site of two ancient civilizations. Somewhere near this battle-site is a repository of artifacts from these civilizations that will eventually reveal things totally unknown to the world today. Many students of the Book of Mormon-maybe most-believe that the Hill Cumorah in New York is the same hill where the final battles of the Jaredites and Nephites took place. Readers of this book will quickly realize, however, that I share the opinion of most LDS scholars that the hill was actually located in Central America. This book not only communicates that point of view, but even introduces a specific candidate for the Hill Cumorah where the battles took place. It has taken me more than nineteen years of research to find this hill, but it has been well worth the effort. In 1998, Simiskey started a study of New World Book of Mormon geography that resulted in the publication of his first book titled The Zarahemla Puzzle Volume I: A Study in Nephite Geography, which analyzed more geographical references from the Book of Mormon than any book before it. That study led him to believe that Nephite lands were located in Panama, but he resolved at that time not to publish another book until he had proof of his hypothesis. In time, however, he determined that there could be no reasonable alternative to Panama as the narrow neck of land spoken of in the Book of Mormon; so he published his second book entitled The Narrow Neck of Land in the Book of Mormon. After that all that remained was to find a convincing candidate for either the city of Zarahemla or the Hill Cumorah. The problem with his proposed location for the city of Zarahemla, however, is that it is deep into the most dangerous part of Panama-the Darien province adjacent to Colombia. The governments of Panama and the United States both advise against going there. That left him to concentrate on the Hill Cumorah-a daunting task since there are thousands of hills to choose from in Panama. Over the years he made detailed studies of six different hills that seemed to match Book of Mormon criteria reasonably well, and he did several archaeological surveys around those hills. But it was not until his fourteenth trip to Panama that he found a seventh hill that appears to be the one and only perfect match. This book focuses on that hill and introduces it to the world as the Hill Cumorah in the Book of Mormon. If it truly is the hill where the final battles took place, as he believes it to be, it indeed establishes "an ancient American setting for the Book of Mormon" as John Sorenson tried so diligently to do in his excellent book on the subject. It will make clear the geography of the Book of Mormon and bring the text to life; and, more importantly, it will help build faith in the spiritual messages of the Book of Mormon. This discovery is very exciting, and hopefully the reader feels the same. This edition is labeled as "Preliminary," because Cerro Carbunco has not yet been authenticated; but once it is, chapters 12 and 13 will be completed. The book also includes ground-breaking studies on the Nephite calendar and the life of Jesus Christ that will surely open up new areas of Book of Mormon research.
