The Lord would not allow Jared's group to stop "beyond the sea in the wilderness" (Ether 2:7). According to Hugh Nibley, they had to cross the Caspian Sea, which was a vast sea at that time, twice as large, at least 2,000 miles long. It was huge, and after they'd crossed it, the Lord said that they had to keep going. [Hugh W. Nibley, Teachings of the Book of Mormon, Semester 4, p. 254]
According to Randall Spackman, the Jaredites, having entered "that quarter where there never had man been," first traveled through "wilderness," and then built "barges" and crossed "many waters," including a body of water large enough to be referred to as "the sea in the wilderness" (Ether 2:7). A northeasterly journey up the Murat River valley would have led the Jaredites into the depopulated region near Lake Van, past Mount Nimrod, and onto the vast empty plain at the foot of Mount Ararat. Not far from this plain, there was a passable route leading southeast toward the Caspian Sea and another route leading northward toward the Black Sea. Because of the ease of the water route using barges, the journey to "the sea in the wilderness" probably would have led toward the Caspian Sea, although a route to the Black Sea cannot be ruled out. . . . Hugh Nibley stated that his own "guess" was that the Caspian Sea was the Jaredite "sea in the wilderness." Upon reaching the Caspian Sea, the Jaredites would have encountered the largest landlocked body of water in the world, a great salt lake lying below sea level. Virtually surrounded by desert areas, the Caspian Sea's major sources of water were the Volga and Ural rivers (see illustration). The sea may have been shrinking because of the diminished flow from the rivers, creating salt flats near the shoreline. [Randall P. Spackman, The Jaredite Journey to America, pp. 41,45, unpublished]
Ether 2:7 The sea in the wilderness ([Illustration]): Map IV, Possible Jaredite routes near the sea in the wilderness. [Randall P. Spackman, The Jaredite Journey to America, p. 47, unpublished]
“The Lord Would Not Suffer That They Should Stop Beyond the Sea in the Wilderness”
According to Randall Spackman, there were a number of alternative routes that the Jaredites may have taken "that they should come forth" (Ether 2:7) and reach the borders of East Asia. The northern routes assume that the nomadic community traveled via the broad highway of the steppes of inner Asia. Based on the available information, this steppe highway would have been the most traveled and, therefore, most likely route. Whether they reached this highway through the Black Sea or the Caspian Sea, they would have moved eastward along a well-traveled trade route, through hospitable grasslands and across the "many waters" of southern Siberia. Eventually, the Jaredites would have been required to choose whether they would follow the trade route that led into the mining areas of the Altai Mountains or the less traveled route that led to Lake Baikal. These northern routes eventually would have led the wanderers through the mountains north of the Mongolian plateau and into the river valleys and grasslands of the plateau (see illustration).
It is interesting to note that several modern communities in northern Mongolia are named Moron, the same name given by the Jaredites to the first land they settled when they reached America. In Mongolian the word moron means river, and it would not seem unlikely that the steppe valleys of the Mongolian plateau were known as the land of rivers. It is certainly too bold to assert that the name given by the Jaredites to their American land of Moron (Ether 7:5) may have been taken originally from the beautiful river valleys of Mongolia where they attempted to stop; however, the exact correspondence of the names is intriguing. [Randall P. Spackman, The Jaredite Journey to America, pp. 50-52, 62, unpublished]
Ether 2:7 The Lord would not suffer that they should stop beyond the sea in the wilderness, but He would that they should come forth ([Illustration]): Map V, Possible Jaredite routes from the "sea in the wilderness" toward the "great sea which divideth the lands." [Randall P. Spackman, The Jaredite Journey to America,, p. 51, unpublished]
Ether 2:7 The Lord did bring Jared and his brethren forth even to that great sea which divideth the lands ([Illustration]): Map VI Three probable routes of the Jaredites into East Asia from the Mongolian Plateau] [Randall P. Spackman, The Jaredite Journey to America, p. 56, unpublished]
“The Lord Would Not Suffer That They Should Stop Beyond the Sea in the Wilderness”
According to Scott Glenn, from a study of the physical characteristics of the terrain which the Jaredites traveled and from records brought back by later travelers through Asia, the only practical route for them must have been very close to one which, centuries later, was named the "Silk Road"[73] (see illustration).
Of course, that famous route over which were carried spices and silk from China (mentioned as early as 302 B.C. by the Greek historian Megasthenes) did not yet exist in Jared's time. So the Jaredites had to break the trail (led by the Lord) from oasis to oasis.
History records that from 206 B.C. to A.D. 220, there were more than forty intermediate caravan stops along that famous road. It is worth noting that many of those still bear the same or similar names which have come down to our time after more than 2,200 years.
Where the steppe (grassland) and the mountains meet is the ancient Silk Road caravan stop named Alma Ata, one of the most beautiful sites in Kazakhstan, with meadows in the foothills and snowcapped mountains beyond. From there, the Jaredites would have entered the region named by the Chinese, Xinjiang (New Marches), a vast empty land of steppes, desert, and mountains, which seem to have been designed by nature as a barrier between east and west.
According to Scott, recent archaeological evidences confirm that East Asia was indeed a land through which the Jaredites might have migrated. This evidence appears in reports by Dr. Nobuhiro Yoshida, vice president of the Japanese Petrograph Society, in which he describes petroglyphs found in north central China and southwest Japan which indicate that early Chinese ideograms evolved out of proto-Sumerian glyphs. About 200 of these petroglyphs have been found in China on Mount Garan (Sacred Horse) in the Quwu mountain range (less than ninety miles from the Huang Ho River and the ancient Silk Road site of Lanzhou). The most remarkable thing about these inscriptions is that they can be deciphered by using proto-Sumerian glyph codes very similar to those in use at the ancient Mesopotamian cities of Ur and Uruk about 50,000 years ago and to others found along routes where Sumerian peoples are known to have traveled. Dr. Yoshida's reports were printed in the Japanese science magazine, The Moo, for March 1990. [Glenn A. Scott, Voices from the Dust, pp. 29,32]
Ether 2:7 The Lord would not suffer that they should stop beyond the Sea in the wilderness, but he would that they should come forth ([Illustration]): The Most Probable Route Taken By the Jaredites Across Central Asia. The proposed route of the Jaredites shown on this map, stretching from the Great Tower to camp Moriancumer, is the most likely of the very few practical routes across central Asia. That route is basically the same as the one which, centuries later, became known as the "Silk Road," over which silks and spices were brought from the Far East to Europe. [Scott A. Glenn, Voices from the Dust, pp. 30-31]