Market Systems

Markets in the Book of Mormon

During a time of wickedness and political turmoil, the prophet Nephi (son of Helaman) went and prayed “upon a tower, which was in the garden of Nephi, which was by the highway which led to the chief market, which was in the city of Zarahemla” (Helaman 7:10). The description of this market as the “chief market” implies that less prominent markets existed in surrounding locations and that a market system was likely integral to the Nephite economy.

Markets in Ancient Mesoamerica

According to Kenneth G. Hirth, “At the time of the Spanish conquest a network of rotating marketplaces extended across the Mexican highlands.”¹ These markets were coordinated so that “Lower level marketplaces on longer marketplace rotations (e.g. 13-day, 20-day etc.) were held on schedules that dovetailed rather than competed with large markets on a five-day rotation.”²

Despite clear evidence for market systems at the time of the Spanish conquest, scholars for many years doubted that developed market institutions existed during earlier periods among the ancient Maya.³ Yet more recent research has largely overturned this view. Various lines of evidence now “provide a compelling case for the existence of a widespread and extensive Maya marketing system going back to the Classic period … and even earlier.”⁴ 

 

It has been proposed that a number of ancient Maya cities had a central market as well as subsidiary or outlying markets,⁵ which were often connected together by highways. For instance, an elaborate “causeway system” at Caracol, Belize links what several researchers have referred to as a “constellation of solar markets.”⁶ As defined by one scholar, “Solar market systems consist of a market center serviced by small subsidiary markets located within a single political entity.”⁷ Of the fifteen lowland Maya marketplaces tentatively identified in one study, “All of them are accessible by sacbeob [highways] or other transportation networks” and all but two of those highways “have paved surfaces.”⁸ 

Conclusion

The Book of Mormon’s description of a highway leading to a chief market is at home in ancient Mesoamerica. Markets themselves are not a particularly unique concept. Many ancient and modern societies have created designated locations for commerce and trade. Nevertheless, it is notable that scholars have only fairly recently begun to recognize the existence and importance of pre-Columbian market systems throughout ancient Mesoamerica. Their presence isn't a given, especially not based on Native American economic practices that would have been familiar to Joseph Smith in the early 19th century. As expressed by John L. Sorenson in the early 1990s, “These things once seemed problematic in the book of Helaman’s casual description of Nephi’s neighborhood. They turn out instead to have substance beyond what was known only a few years ago.”⁹

Richard Terry, “The Dirt on the Ancient Inhabitants of Mesoamerica,” 2019 FairMormon Presentation, online at fairmormon.org.

Book of Mormon Central, “Why Did Nephi Prophesy Near ‘the Highway Which Led to the Chief Market’? (Helaman 7:10),” KnoWhy 178 (September 1, 2016).

Wallace E. Hunt, Jr., “The Marketplace,” in Pressing Forward with the Book of Mormon: The FARMS Updates of the 1990s, ed. John W. Welch and Melvin J. Thorne (Provo UT: FARMS, 1999), 196–200.

John L. Sorenson, “Nephi’s Garden and Chief Market,” in Reexploring the Book of Mormon: A Decade of New Research, ed. John W. Welch (Salt Lake City and Provo, UT: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1992) 236–238.

Helaman 7:10

Helaman 7:10