Iowa is known for its rich soil, and a group of Mormon researchers hope that same soil holds the secrets to a lost sacred city.
The Heartland Research Group thinks it may have found the site of Zarahemla—a notable city in the Book of Mormon—outside of Montrose, a small southeast Iowa town located on the banks of the Mississippi River.
John Lefgren of the Heartland Research Group said in his faith, Zarahemla would be comparable to Jerusalem for Christians. The exact location of Zarahemla has not been verified, so being able to pinpoint it would be a milestone.
“Iowa is an important place,” Lefgren said. “In the fourth century, Montrose, Iowa, had the largest city in North America.”
According to Lefgren, in its heyday of AD 320, Zarahemla had a population of about 100,000 and it was the largest city in the Americas.
“The Book of Mormon takes place at a time in ancient America; great civilizations and great armies are in the book,” Lefgren said. “The conclusion of the book, a nation, a great nation is destroyed. Mainly, it’s a cautionary tale, of course, because they did not keep God’s commandments and they do bad things and they are destroyed.”
The Book of Nephi in the Book of Mormon chronicles the destruction of Zarahemla and its eventual reconstruction. Zarahemla also was the namesake of a settlement founded by Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, in 1839. Smith’s version of Zarahemla would later be incorporated into Montrose.
Lefgren noted this project is not endorsed or supported by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the largest practitioners of the Mormon faith.
The Heartland Research Group is looking for evidence of ancient Zarahemla underground through Light Detection and Ranging (LiDar), a non-invasive remote sensing technology that can create 3D models and maps of objects and environments. The group is also using other technology including carbon dating, magnetometry, and more to scientifically verify the site.
“We have begun that effort and are not disappointed,” Lefgren said. “Not disappointed in the least, we’re amazed.”
One method they hope can help verify Zarahemla’s location is by finding fire pits. The group theorizes that with a population of about 100,000, there would be one fire pit for every 10 residents within a mile or so of the city center.
“We’ve gone down into the ground with core sampling to get charcoal/carbon from fires that are 1,700 years old,” Lefgren said. “It’s all serious stuff; all serious stuff right here in Iowa.”
The samples will be sent to the Vilnius Radiocarbon Laboratory in Lithuania for carbon-14 dating to determine the age of the recovered charcoal.
There have been multiple trips to Iowa as part of this process, most recently the group spent 10 days near Monstrose in November. About 40 people were involved in November’s expedition and they searched about 100 acres of fields with permission of the property owners. Landowners are compensated and part of the agreement is that if they find anything of value, the landowner retains ownership of the item.
The group, which is self-funded and made up of volunteers, is working with Russian scientists on the project including Larisa Golovko. She is the founder and CEO of the Texas-based Landviser which specializes in geophysical research and technology.
Golovko presented her findings from the expedition as part of a presentation for the Soil Science Faculty of Moscow State University on Dec. 1.
The search for Zarahemla began before Lefgren, who is 77, was born, but he thinks his group might be the ones to find enough evidence to bring it to a close.
“We are very close to being there,” he said. “We’ve moved a hundred times from where we were a year ago just because the technology has allowed us to do things that could have never have been done otherwise.
“We’ll soon have the best LiDar in all of Iowa. We already took the pictures, we paid for it. Thirty-four thousand acres in high-definition LiDar—you can see a beer can on the surface—that’s now being processed.”
Follow along:
- You can keep up with the Heartland Research Group’s effort to discover Zarahemla on the “Zarahemla – ‘That Great City’” Facebook page.
by Ty Rushing
Posted 12/6/21
10 Comments on "Archeological Search Underway In SE Iowa For Ancient Mormon City"
Funniest thing I’ve read all week. Thanks for the comedy gold.
Maybe the “journalist” here ought to mention that there is zero physical evidence of the Book of Mormon, that DNA evidence completely disproves any connection between native people and Israelites during BoM time periods, and that even a basic reading of the BoM would show that Z isn’t in Iowa. These are crazy people with money to burn to prove up an obvious fraud. How ridiculous.
You guys are dumb.
Anyone interested in some background on this story could skim the entry in Wikipedia called “Archaeology and the Book of Mormon.”
Well, I would never waste my time on trying to find ficticious cities, but feel free to go forward. It is your time wasted and you are free to do what you want with it.
This is a crock of shit! Its just another case of a White colonizer group trying to appropriate the history and cultural patrimony of Native Americans because of the European shallow history in the America’s. Always looking for and trying to inserf a lost White race were it doesn’t belong. There is zero evidence for any outside culture or race other than Native American here in the America’s and its just low self esteem and envy of the very rich Native civilizations and cultures found im the Americas before the invasion, colonization and mass immigration of the European hordes.
The reason this isn’t being funded by the trillion dollar LDS corporation is because the corporation knows that this is a waste of time and money (similar to the wasting of time and money for temples and so called work for,the dead” The DNA evidence proved that the native Americans came from Mongolia, not Jerusalem. They know it and they hide it from their members. I hate to see people wasting their resources and being caught up in a fairy tale.
Happy ro see the progress on the archeology. Sad to see so many supposedly learned people who r so ignorant. We love everyone. I wish people would so their homework before opening their mouth.
Happy to see the progress on the archeology. Sad to see so many supposedly learned people who r so ignorant. We love everyone. I wish people would so their homework before opening their mouth.
Haters gotta hate. Don’t pretend to think that you know everything just because of your bigotry toward a religion.