Divergence: 600 B.C.E.
What If: Every historical event in the Book of Mormon can be verified by archeological evidence, and the contributions of the Nephite culture were available to Amerind -- excuse me, Lamanite -- societies at the time of Columbus.
The Consequences Are:
Excerpt from Columbus' Report to Isabella & Ferdinand: "The natives have sea-going galleys and trade on the islands and coasts of a huge salt-water gulf. . . . large steel smithies, producing keen-edged scimitars, several of which I have purchased for Your Majesties. ...Melech Mordechi, the King of Cuba, makes you gifts of several horses of a breed not known in Europe. He would have given Your Majesties an Elephant (which has a shovel like jaw unlike any other breed of Elephant I have seen), but I lacked the space to transport it back home.
"King Mordechi knows of Israel, the ancient homeland of his ancestors & of Babylon. Yet he knows no Latin or Greek, nor do his scholars . . Perhaps the Jews might be sent here to facilitate conversation as the native speech is some variety of Hebrew . . . .
" . . . . difficulties of translation allow me only a meagre knowledge of the history of the Laman people. The original settlers of this land, the Jaredites, had mostly died out when sea-going ships on God's instruction left Israel many centuries ago. Lehi was the leader of that 2nd expedition. Tragically when Lehi grew old and feeble in mind, Lehi's son Nephi manipulated the old man in order to make himself a tyrant over his own kin. A brave man named Laman resisted Nephi's evil ways, and King Mordechi counts Laman and his followers as the remote ancestors of his people . . . The evil empire of Nephi lasted for generations, but was finally overthrown by the freedom-loving descendents of Laman, the Hebrew Brutus."
Spain establishes a mutually valuable commerce with the sailor's kingdom of Cuba and the Mexica Empire (which has conquered, thanks to coast-going galleys, the city states of the Mayan coast). As their ancestors were only isolated from Europe for two thousand years, there are no great epidemics aside from the 1510-1540 Measles epidemic which may have killed as many as 10% of the Lamanites. Potatoes from the Incan Empire, chlili peppers and the meat of giant sloth become common fare on European tables.
To the anger of the Pope, the Lamanite nations, though monotheists, are appalled at Christianity and refer to folk myths and ancient scrolls to the effect that the infamous Nephite Empire also believed in a Jesus Christ, the Son of God, thus giving the sons of Laman yet another reason to destroy them. Jews throughout Europe, even in Poland, begin the "voluntary Diaspora" in the 16th Century, away from intolerant Christendom and to their co-religionists among the Lamanite nations.
Protestantism spreads like wildfire through Europe. No Catholic monarch, not even Habsburg Emperor-Spanish King Charles, has the assets to fight the Protestant movement.
When the Catholic Crusade to the Lamanites is evicted from war-torn Cuba in 1536, the Mexica have bought gunpowder technology from their Protestant Allies in Holland and the Germanies.
When Sir Walter Raleigh establishes the first permanent English Colony in the New World, he finds the ruined cities, buried roads, broken bridges, statues and graveyards of an ancient steel-useing race. After more than a millenium the Lamanites in the ruins recognize the builders of the old works as the Neffi, Nefay, Knee, etc. In _Discovery of the Nephite Homeland_, Sir Walter announces that the north continent of the New World was the center of the Nephite Empire.
By the end of the 16th Century, the Catholic church has had terrific setbacks. Henry IV, the first Bourbon King of France, sees no point in fidelity to a religious leader whose authority has dwindled to Italy and Spain, so France offically becomes a Protestant nation, though the Edict of Nantes 1598 gives toleration to Roman Catholics. The Twelve Year War (1618-1630) ends with the protestant Palatine emperors firmly in control of the Holy Roman Empire (which lost its possessions in Italy). The sole bright spot in Catholism's long confrontation with European Protestants, African Muslims and Jewish Lamanites was the eviction of the Mexica and English pirates from the Azores and Canary Islands in 1640-45.
Charles the Great maintained cordial relations with the declining Catholic powers. "Why fret over the customs of a dying patient in a sickbed?" Charles asked his Parliaments in England (London), Scotland (Edinburgh), Ireland (Dublin) and North Lamania (Roanoke). Though Charles kept executive control of finance, foreign affairs and diplomacy, he allowed his several parliaments to make laws "peculiar for the life and well-being of one part of our several domains." Many years later, Blackstone would identify Charles the Great as the founder of the Federal Kingdoms of Great Britain and Northern Lamania.
In the middle of the 18th century, the Holy Roman Empire was torn apart by civil wars when a Polish King gathered significant support for the Holy Roman throne after the last of the Palatine Emerors died childless in Vienna. After two decades, the ultimate winner was Frederick Hohenzollern, who established the independence of his Prussian kingdom with the help of his Russian ally's attacks on Poland's eastern border.
Meanwhile, France was evicting its Portuguese, Dutch and English rivals from India. In exchange for leaving India, Charles III of the Federal Kingdoms was given all title to French settlements and discoveries in North Lamania.
So it was in 1827, when Joseph Smith, a North Lamander living near Palmyra, Erie Province, was diggng in a Nephite mound, alledgedly at the request of an angel. There he found golden plates, indisputably of Nephite origin, which (when translated by Professor Charles Anthon of Columbia College, an expert in Nephite Hebrew) turned out to be the long-awaited Nephite version of their history and culture.
++++++++++++++++
What happens next? Does everyone in North Laman turn Mormon? Or is the Book of Mormon taken as the relic of a byegone age, much as we read the Greek myths?
Please tell me . . . .