According to research by Robert F. Smith, shortly after the appearance of the Liahona at the door of Lehi’s tent, Laman began complaining that Nephi “worketh many things by his cunning arts, that he may deceive our eyes, thinking, perhaps, that he may lead us away into some strange wilderness” (1 Nephi 16:38). While the Book of Mormon does not tell us whether the Liahona functioned partly on geomagnetic principles, Nephi did say that it contained two spindles, one of which functioned as a directional pointer, and that the body was made of “fine brass” (1 Nephi 16:10, 28). Brass is an excellent noncorroding and nonmagnetic case for a compass. Those who are familiar with modern compasses might naturally ask whether the Liahona worked on a similar principle, with a magnetic function for one spindle, and a possible azimuth setting for the other. Perhaps part of Laman’s skepticism was based on some familiarity with just such a technology.
But what sort of “cunning artifice" did Laman imagine Nephi employed in order to transmit divine messages to the surface of the ball-shaped Liahona (1 Nephi 16:28-29)? …
Although we do not know specifically what Laman had in mind, it is worth noting that the function of magnetic hematite was well understood in both the Old and New Worlds before Lehi left Jerusalem. Magnetite, or lodestone is, of course naturally magnetic iron (Fe3O4), and the word magnetite comes from the name of a place in which it was mined in Asia Minor by at least the seventh century B.C., namely Magnesia. Parenthetically, Professor Michael Coe of Yale University, a top authority on ancient Mesoamerica, has suggested that the Olmecs of Veracruz, Mexico, were using magnetite compasses already in the second millennium B.C. This is based on Coe’s discovery during excavations at San Lorenzo-Tenochtitlan of a magnetite “pointer” which appeared to have been “machined” and which Coe placed on a cork mat in a bowl of water in a successful test of its function as a true floater-compass.
Whatever the nature of the Liahona, it is intriguing to note that certain properties of compasses might have been familiar to those who were blessed with its guiding functions, and that those who were skeptical of Nephi and the Liahona might have logically turned to those characteristics in seeking to find a plausible rationalization. [Robert F. Smith, “Lodestone and the Liahona,” in John W. Welch ed., Reexploring the Book of Mormon, F.A.R.M.S., pp. 44-46]