Geography: The Nephites came “out of the land Desolation,” which lies north of the narrow passage but which had not been Nephite territory at least as late as 3 Nephi. Evidently, the Nephites had expanded northward in the three hundred years after the Messiah’s visitation. A larger number of actions will occur in this land immediately north of the narrow neck. This is old Jaredite land along the Gulf Coast of Veracruz.
Desolation was named because the Nephites found the remains of Jaredites there, a people who lived in the time and location associated archaeologically with the Olmec. “The land which they called Bountiful… bordered upon the land which they called Desolation, it being so far northward that it came into the land which had been peopled and been destroyed, of whose bones we have spoken, which was discovered by the people of Zarahemla, it being the place of their first landing” (Alma 22:29–30). Desolation was the original homeland of the Zarahemlaites/Mulekites. By the Early Classic, A.D. 250–600, this region, in the words of archaeologist Susan Toby Evans, “once the proud heartland of Olmec culture, was, by the Early Classic, a backwater with few settlements.” The Nephites didn’t have much competition in this area and did not make a significant impact. Their presence in the land seems to have been one of refuge rather than city building.
Desolation was also the homeland of the Jaredites and, in the correlation this commentary uses, the Olmec homeland. The Olmec will receive greater attention in the commentary on the book of Ether. The important point here is that the Nephites have moved into ancestral Jaredite lands, and their own civilization will end in the same general geographic area. This irony was not lost on Mormon.
Chronology: The 363rd year is A.D. 353.