History: Jacob notes that his record is necessarily incomplete. He has already confessed to incompleteness in recording his own sermons. Here he declares that his record of historical information is also incomplete. However, he acknowledges four categories of historical information: population increases, wars, contentions, and several kings.
1. Population Increases. Jacob’s description of his people becoming “numerous” must refer to a time after Nephi’s death. If his village began with around three hundred households (see commentary accompanying Jacob 1:9), how many more would be added? Let us suppose that a third of the households have children who mature to marrying age while Jacob is keeping the plates (perhaps twenty years by this point). The Nephites apparently practice patrilocal marriage; that is, the women join the households/cities of their husbands. In the Mesoamerican pattern, the new household would be added to the parental cluster. Other households would be established in the rural areas that support the center village. If no marriages occurred outside the community, we might hypothesize a possible gain of fifty households; but this scenario seems unlikely given the details I have teased out of his polygamy sermon. Nor does this scenario seem adequate to account for a people who “began to be numerous.” Was it just a figure of speech to indicate normal growth? I don’t think so. Later figures for the Nephite community suggest a higher than normal growth rate. It seems most likely, therefore, that while Nephite women were sent to other villages, women from other villages were being brought into the city of Nephi. If for no other reason than avoiding marriages within prohibited degrees of kinship, such a practice would seem necessary.
However, an exchange of women would simply maintain the same numbers. It would be understandable at this point for an emerging trading power to attract dependant hamlets as its wealth grew. Given what seems to be trading wealth and probable reasons for a trade advantage, proximate villages would have ample cause to make the city of Nephi their political and cultural center. Therefore, I hypothesize that, by the end of Jacob’s life, a conservative population estimate may be a village of 450 to 500 households, with perhaps some dependant hamlets. Each household would normally include slightly more than two adults per household (father, mother, and at times an adult child prior to marriage), yielding a population of over a thousand people. A less conservative estimate would give perhaps even double that number.
2. Wars. Jacob spends no record space on wars, following Nephi’s example on the small plates. Nevertheless, with a village in existence only forty to fifty years, it seems that warfare was a fairly frequent occurrence. For years, Mesoamericanists depicted the Maya as a nation of peaceful, star-gazing priests; but recent work underlines the continuous nature of Maya warfare. David Webster, professor of anthropology at Pennsylvania State University, indicates that “both archaeological research and inscriptions have since demonstrated that war in fact began at least as early as Middle Preclassic times [1000–400 B.C.].” Simon Martin, honorary research fellow at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, likewise reports: “The earliest representations of captured prisoners date to the Late Preclassic, [500 B.C.–A.D. 250] and we can take it that conflict played a role in the creation of the huge political centers of this era, cities such as El Mirador and Nakbe.”
Formalized warfare assumes a development process that justifies interpreting the frequent wars against the Nephites as indicative of intersite relationships at this period. Schele and Mathews suggest a phenomenon with a possible Nephite parallel that wars might have actually had some benefits. In the context of a series of wars between two major Maya polities, they observe:
One result of the competition for territory, resources, and tribute was a cataclysmic series of wars between the competing alliances led by Tikal and Kalak’mul that began in the sixth century. In the archaeology, kingdoms that won wars during these conflicts show enormous growth in population, in wealth at all social levels, in access to foreign goods, and in extensive building programs. Losers usually show the reverse, but being a winner or loser was rarely permanent. Reversals of fortunes and the resulting change in economic status were commonplace.
If this later pattern were projected backward, perhaps victory would have increased Nephite prestige, accompanied by an increase in wealth through tribute as well as trade. Because wealth increased “at all social levels,” of itself it would not explain Nephite social divisions. The last piece of information is that the attached peoples also become more numerous. Even though the “Nephis” might be called “kings,” it is doubtful that there was a much of a state at this time period, and certainly none is known archaeologically. Joyce Marcus suggests that the largest populations that could be sustained as communities before the development of the state would be about a thousand or two thousand people, with about five people per household, making cities of four hundred households very large communities for this period.
3. Contentions. Why does Jacob list both “wars” and “contentions”? Wars are external affairs, but the Book of Mormon typically uses “contentions” for internal affairs: divisions of opinion, culture, or politics that cause discord in the community. The very fact that this summary comes on the heels of a sermon about community discord strengthens this distinction. We may understand the forces leading to such internal contentions better if we picture this incipient Nephite nation as a conglomerate people, built on a small core of Old World people with desirable talents and incorporating large numbers of “others” who willingly form social, political, and religious alliances but who have very different expectations. The coexistence of these competing ideas fuels social contentions.
4. Several Kings. Jacob says that he has seen “the reigns of their kings.” Although he does not give a number, the generalization confirms more than two. A society engaged in warfare in which kings take to the field in person raises the risk for rulers so engaged. Schele and Freidel note: “There were many hazards to challenge kings—wars, intrigues, and natural catastrophes. A king was literally at risk all his life; and more than one king ended his rule, not by dying of peaceful old age but by being taken captive in a war he was too old to fight.”