Company Name
{enter Description 2}
{enter Description 3}
{enter Description 4}
Simulated view of what the sea the Jaredites say divided the land in Ether 10:20, and the narrow neck, or pass, may have
looked like before Lake Tonawanda dried up a thousand years ago.
Two of the most mysterious landmarks in the Book of Mormon are the sea that divides the land mentioned in
Ether 10:20, and a narrow neck of land which appears to have run right through its waters providing dry passage from side of
the sea to the other. After tracing all the landmarks mentioned in the scriptures, andlinking them all together, we are led right
to the Batavia Moraine, a ridge of glacial debris created during the last Ice Age, as was old Lake Tonawanda - the ancient inland
sea the moraine ran through. It seems that as the Wisconsin Ice Age drew to a close and the land was finally freed
from the weight of the ice, the land began rebound which caused a number of dramatic changes in the size and
drainage patterns of the Great Lakes. With each new shift, the lakes spilled out in a number of new directions. Thus, the Great
Lakes experienced a number of changes during their long history.
During such changes, a small inland sea called
Lake Tonawanda was left ponded in the flat plains of western New York between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. Radiocarbon samples of the
sediment in the vicinity of Niagara Falls in 1978, led Calkin and Brett of the State University of New York’s Department of Geological
Sciences to conclude that Lake Tonawanda was still in existence until about 1,000 years ago, which is many centuries after the close
of the Nephite era.1 Thus, we must concede that Lake Tonawanda was a prominent feature of northwestern New York during Book of
Mormon times, and long after. Of particular interest to our study of the Book of Mormon is the uncanny similarities between this long
inland sea and the sea that divided the lands mentioned in the Jaredite account.- "And they built a great city by the narrow neck
of land, by the placce where the sea divdes the land." (Ether 10:20-21.) The sea itself was 58 miles long, and five
miles wide at its widest, much larger than the Sea of Glailee.
Although the Batavia Moraine is not very high, it was apparantly high enough to create a dam across
the shallow end of old Lake Tonawanda, creating a natural passageway from one side of the lake to the other. Such natural causeways
can be found in many of the old lakes, passageways which became highways of commerce and travel during ancient times.
Nephite-type forts found to either side of this ancient pass helps solidify its importance during
primitive times, and the liklihood that it was the narrow neck mentioned in the scriptures. E.G. Squire found an unbroken chain of
no fewer than twenty ancient fortifications which stretched from the lake ridge southward to the Buffalo River, (the proposed river
Sidon), a distance of 50 miles, the reason undoubtedly being the need to protect and facilitate those crossing the narrow neck into
the land northward.
One can see from the accompanying illustrations just how easy it was for Teancum to head Morianton’s men off at
the narrow pass mentioned in Alma 50:34, for it was small enough that all he had to do was position his men across the neck at any
given point, for seas barred the way to both the east and the west, just as described in the scriptures. Had it been miles and miles
wide it would have taken an army of thousands to successfully block their path.
For those who may look to to the Niagara
Peninsula as the narrow neck, the Niagara Pennisula is 21 miles wide, with the raging waters of the the modern Niagara River far too
swifit to cross in any attempt to defend it. Most anaimals who try are swept over the falls. however, it is important
to remember that Lake Tonawanda filled much of northwestern New York until around a thousand years ago. In fact it
was the discharge from lake Tonawanda which initited the falls at Niagara. The falls would have prevented a crossing in regions to
the north of the lake, and to the south of the lake one would have encountered the rushing waters of the out-flowing
waters of all the Great Lakes as they discharged north from Lake Erie into Lake Tonawanda and the early Niagara River. An
army could have portaged over the 250 foot Niagara escarpment and crossed the calmer waters of the lower river, but transporting
an army large enough to protect a 21 mile stretch of land in such a way seems highly unlikely. Yet a small army such as
Teanucm's could easily block the passage of an enemy and keep them from entering the land northward by simply positioning the men
across the Batavia Moraine.
And it came to pass that they did not head them until they had come to the borders of the land Desolation; and there
they did head them, by the narrow pass which led by the sea into the land northward, yea, by the sea, on the west and on the east.
(Alma 50:34.)
From such illustrated views one has to wonder what better word the ancients could have used to describe this feature of their landscape other
than a narrow neck of land, a small neck of land, a narrow pass or passageway, all of which refer to the same narrow passageway which
led from the lands to the south of the lake into New York’s northern frontier. Nothing could fit better. From a ground position, the
21 miles wide Niagara Peninsula would not have looked so narrow to the Nephites. We gain that perspective from our modern maps
and satelilte pictures. Once the lake dried up, the peninsula would have appeared more neck-like than it did in ancient
times.
1-GSA Bulletin: Aug 1978: v. 89; no. 8. pp. 1140-1154.-web site, Ancestral Niagara River Drainage:Stratigraphic and Paleontological
Setting.
Modified Google Earth View of the Batavia Moraiine as it cuts through the lakebed of
old Tonawanda- copyright Google Earth.
The Narrow Neck & the Sea that Divides the Land