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From the book: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith
by Michael R. Ash
Barley was considered to be unknown in the New World when discovered by the Europeans. However, scientists have discovered that is entirely possible that this grain had disappeared not long after Book of Mormon times. In an article in Science 83, Daniel B. Adams wrote of the archaeological research of the Hohokam Indians –a pre-Columbian culture that lived in Arizona from about 300 BC to AD 1450 and had been influenced by Mesoamerica. According to Adams: “The most startling evidence of Hohokam agricultural sophistication came when archaeologists found preserved grain of what looks like domesticated barley, the first ever found in the New World. Wild barleys have fibrous husk over each grain. Domesticated barley lack this. So does the Hohokam barley. Nearly half the samples from one site yielded barley”. Scholars now report that other examples of what may be “domesticated” barley have been tound in Eastern Oklahoma and southern Illinois dating from AD 1 to AD 900.
Michael R. Ash is the author of: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting The Prophet Joseph Smith. He is the owner and operator of MormonFortress.com and is on the management team for FairMormon. He has been published in Sunstone, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt. He and his wife live in Ogden, Utah, and have three daughters.
Julianne Dehlin Hatton has worked as a News Director at an NPR affiliate, Television Host, News Anchor, and Airborne Traffic Reporter. She graduated with an MSSc from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2008. Julianne and her husband Thomas are the parents of four children.
Music for Faith and Reason is provided by Arthur Hatton.
