1. For comments on the scarcity of iron, see “Decorative Iron in Early Israel,” in Reexploring the Book of Mormon, ed. John W. Welch (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1992), 133–34.

2. Michael D. Coe, Mexico, Ancient Peoples and Places, no. 29 (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1962), 83.

3. George E. Stuart and Gene S. Stuart, The Mysterious Maya (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1977), 24–25.

4. John E. Clark, Los Olmecas en Mesoamérica (Mexico: El Equilibrista/Turner Books, 1994), 61.

5. Michael D. Coe, America’s First Civilization (New York: American Heritage, 1968), 67, quoted in David A. Palmer, In Search of Cumorah: New Evidences for the Book of Mormon from Ancient Mexico (Bountiful, Utah: Horizon, 1981), 142–43.

6. Michael D. Coe and Richard A. Diehl, In the Land of the Olmec (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980), 324.

7. Coe and Diehl, Land of the Olmec, 23, 324.

8. Clark, Los Olmecas en Mesoamérica, 61.

9. Philip J. Arnold III, “Ethnicity, Pottery, and the Gulf Olmec of Ancient Veracruz, Mexico,” Biblical Archaeologist 58 (December 1995): 195.

10. Pierre Agrinier, The Early Olmec Horizon at Mirador, Chiapas, Mexico, Papers of the New World Archaeological Foundation, no. 48, ed. Susanna M. Ekholm (Provo, Utah: New World Archaeological Foundation, 1984), 4–5, 75–81.

11. Parallelepipeds are objects whose six sides are all parallelograms.

12. Jeffrey Keith, telephone conversation with Samuel T. Jones, summer 1995.

13. Edwin G. Paulson, “Mineralogy and Origin of the Titaniferous Deposit at Pluma Hidalgo, Oaxaca, Mexico,” Economic Geology 59 (1964): 758–59.

14. We should note that an external beam of protons from the BYU Van de Graaf accelerator will soon make it possible to do proton-induced x-ray emission (PIXE) analysis without destructive cutting of specimens.

15. Keith, telephone conversation.

16. Donald H. Lindsley, in Oxide Minerals, Reviews in Mineralogy, vol. 3, ed. Douglas Rumble III (Blacksburg, Va.: Southern Printing, 1976; reprint, Chelsea, Mich.: Bookcrafters, 1981), L-40.

17. Keith, telephone conversation.

18. Jane W. Pires-Ferreira, Formative Mesoamerican Exchange Networks with Special Reference to the Valley of Oaxaca, Memoirs of the Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, no. 7: Prehistory and Human Ecology of the Valley of Oaxaca, vol. 3, ed. Kent V. Flannery (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1975), 51, 56–57; Jane W. Pires-Ferreira, “Shell and Iron-Ore Mirror Exchange in Formative Mesoamerica, with Comments on Other Commodities,” in The Early Mesoamerican Village, ed. Kent V. Flannery (New York: Academic Press, 1976), 317–23.

19. Paulson, “Mineralogy,” 758–59.

20. W. K. Hamblin and J. D. Howard, Exercises in Physical Geology (Edina, Minn.: Burgess, 1986), 10.

21. Clark, Los Olmecas en Mesoamérica, 61.

22. See Clark, Los Olmecas en Mesoamérica, 61.

23. Douglas Chabries, conversation with Steven E. Jones, May 1996.

24. Coe and Diehl, Land of the Olmec, 242.

25. John Clark, telephone conversation with Steven E. Jones, June 1997; see also Clark, Los Olmecas en Mesoamérica, 61.

26. John Sorenson, telephone conversation with Steven E. Jones, May 1997.

Steven E. Jones

BYU Studies Publications