T homas Stuart Ferguson lay in his hammock, certain that he had found the promised land. It had been raining for 5 hours in his camp in tropical Mexico on this late January evening in 1948, and his three campmates had long since drifted off to sleep. But Ferguson was vibrating with excitement. Eager to tell someone what he had seen, he dashed through the downpour to retrieve paper from his supply bag. Ensconced in his hammock’s cocoon of mosquito netting, he clicked on his flashlight and began to write a letter home. “We have discovered a very great city here in the heart of ‘Bountiful’ land,” Ferguson wrote. According to the Book of Mormon, Bountiful was one of the first areas settled by the Nephites, ancient people who supposedly sailed from Israel to the Americas around 600 B.C.E. Centuries later, according to the scripture, Jesus appeared to the Nephites in the same region after his resurrection. Mormons like Ferguson were certain that these events had happened in the ancient Americas, but debates raged over exactly how their sacred lands mapped onto real-world geography. The Book of Mormon gave only scattered clues, speaking of a narrow isthmus, a river called Sidon, and lands to the north and south occupied by the Nephites and their enemies, the Lamanites. After years of studying maps, Mormon scripture, and Spanish chronicles, Ferguson had concluded that the Book of Mormon took place around the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the narrowest part of Mexico (see map, p. 266). He had come to the jungles of Campeche, northeast of the isthmus, to find proof. As the group’s local guide hacked a path through the undergrowth with his machete, that proof seemed to materialize before Ferguson’s eyes. “We have explored four days and have found eight pyramids and many lesser structures and there are more at every turn,” he wrote of the ruins he and his companions found on the western shore of Laguna de Términos. “Hundreds and possibly several thousand people must have lived here anciently. This site has never been explored before.” Ferguson, a lawyer by training, did go on to open an important new window on Mesoamerica’s past. His quest eventually spurred expeditions that transformed Mesoamerican archaeology by unearthing traces of the region’s earliest complex societies and exploring an unstudied area that turned out to be a crucial cultural crossroads. Even today, the institute he founded hums with research. But proof of Mormon beliefs eluded him. His mission led him further and further from his faith, eventually sapping him of religious conviction entirely. Ferguson placed his faith in the hands of science, not NEWS

中文翻译：

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信徒

托马斯·斯图尔特·弗格森躺在吊床上，确信自己找到了应许之地。1948 年 1 月下旬的这个晚上，他在热带墨西哥的营地里下雨了 5 个小时，他的三个营地伙伴早就开始入睡了。但弗格森兴奋地颤抖着。他急切地想告诉别人他所看到的，他冲过倾盆大雨，从他的补给袋里取出纸。他躲在吊床的蚊帐茧里，打开手电筒，开始写信回家。“我们在‘富饶’土地的中心发现了一座非常伟大的城市，”弗格森写道。根据摩尔门经，邦蒂富是尼腓人最早定居的地区之一，这些古代人据说在公元前 600 世纪后从以色列航行到美洲，根据经文，耶稣复活后在同一地区向尼腓人显现。像弗格森这样的摩门教徒确信这些事件发生在古代美洲，但关于他们的圣地究竟是如何映射到现实世界地理上的争论激烈。摩尔门经只提供了零星的线索，谈到狭窄的地峡、一条名为西顿的河流，以及被尼腓人和他们的敌人拉曼人占领的南北土地。经过多年研究地图、摩门教经文和西班牙编年史，弗格森得出结论，摩尔门经发生在墨西哥最狭窄的特万特佩克地峡附近（参见地图，第 266 页）。他来到地峡东北部的坎佩切丛林寻找证据。当小组的当地向导用他的大砍刀在灌木丛中砍出一条小路时，这个证据似乎在弗格森的眼前实现了。“我们已经探索了四天，发现了八座金字塔和许多较小的结构，而且每一个角落都有更多，”他写道，他和他的同伴在拉古纳德特尔米诺斯 (Laguna de Términos) 西岸发现了废墟。“古代一定有数百甚至数千人居住在这里。这个网站以前从未被探索过。” 弗格森是一名律师，他确实为了解中美洲的过去打开了一扇重要的新窗口。他的探索最终激发了探险队，通过发掘该地区最早复杂社会的痕迹并探索一个未经研究的地区，该地区被证明是一个重要的文化十字路口，从而改变了中美洲考古学。即使在今天，他创立的研究所仍然充满研究。但摩门教信仰的证据让他望而却步。他的使命使他离自己的信仰越来越远，最终完全削弱了他的宗教信仰。弗格森把他的信仰放在科学手中，而不是新闻