Alma 49:13 mentions the fact that "Moroni had fortified, or had built forts of security, for every city in all the land round about." According to Glenn Scott, in 1934, an expedition funded by the Carnegie Institution explored a site named Becan in the southeast corner of the state of Campeche Mexico, about 90 miles north of the great Maya site of Tikal. That expedition was followed by another three year project, cosponsored by Tulane University and the National Geographic Society.
Becan is significant because it refuted the archaeologists who had believed that the Lowland Maya were a peaceful people, passing their time raising maize, building temple complexes, and studying the stars. Becan proved to be a strongly fortified city. Though modest in size (about 46 acres), it was completely surrounded by a dry moat more than a mile and a quarter in length, fifty feet wide and seventeen feet deep. It was calculated to have required moving more than four million cubic feet of earth down to bedrock. The earthen wall inside the moat contained about 2.8 million cubic feet. Such a project would require the labor of 5,000 men working steadily for seventy days.
More recently the enormous Preclassic Maya site of El Mirador (The Lookout) in northern Guatemala, the largest Maya city discovered so far and dating to 150 B.C., was found to be bounded on the south and east by a moat and wall about a mile long. The moat averaged twenty feet wide by eight feet deep. The wall was from thirteen to twenty feet high. The moat did not extend all the way around that city. It was protected on the north and west by a steep natural declivity and beyond that on three sides by swampy bajos.
It has been confirmed that the great Maya site of Tikal was also once surrounded by a moat and wall. Though the moat was not as deep or the wall as high as that at Becan, it was almost six miles long. Rio Azul, a significant site in the northeast corner of Guatemala from 250 B.C. to A.D. 300, also had a moat and earthen wall. It was evidently one of a chain of fortified cities whose role was to defend the eastern frontier against Lamanites coming up the Caribbean coast.
Other sites showing evidences of fortifications include the site of Punta de Chemine, described as one of the most heavily fortified in the Maya world with towering walls and surrounded by a dry moat. These fortified sites provide detailed archaeological support to the Book of Mormon description of Moroni's military preparations. [Glenn A. Scott, Voices from the Dust, pp. 170-171]
Alma 49:13 Moroni . . . had built forts of security, for every city in all the land ([Illustration]): Fortified Cities. (1) "Moroni had . . . built forts of security for every city in all the land round about" (Alma 49:13). Becan is typical of fortified cities in the Maya Lowlands. (2) Reconstruction of fortifications. (3) Comparative cross-sections of fortifications: Moat and wall at Tikal; Moat and wall at Becan. [Glenn A. Scott, Voices from the Dust, p. 169]