These verses give us some idea of the size of the Jaredite party. There appear to be forty-four adults. The males would be the twenty two counted souls (plus Jared and the brother of Jared), and each would likely have a wife. Prior to the departure for the New World, they had sons and daughters. Some would have been born prior to leaving the Tower area, and some probably born in the four years in the wilderness.
The brother of Jared has twelve children. If we assume that this is accurate, and perhaps typical, then we might also postulate that many of the men had more than one wife (although the numbers are suggestive that something else might be going on. See comments after verse 20 below. Note also that the count of twelve children for the brother of Jared comes after some time in the New World). Taking this information to give us a probable maximum number, we would have twenty-for adult males, perhaps forty-eight adult females, and two hundred and eighty eight children.
The total party would have a probable maximum of 360 people after arriving on the shores of the New World. That would constitute a reasonably large hamlet. These numbers, however, should be considered a maximum, and the actual party was probably less. For instance, it would be unlikely that every one of the twenty four adult males was able to afford or socially qualify for more than one wife, and that would reduce both the number of adults and the number of children. The high number of twelve children also comes from a count after they have been in the New World, so it would plausibly include children born after the transoceanic voyage.
Geography: An Atlantic crossing as proposed here would suggest a landing on the Gulf of Mexico. This is the location suggested by Hunter and Ferguson, who placed the landing near the Panuco River (Milton R. Hunter and Thomas Stuart Ferguson. Ancient America and the Book of Mormon. Kolob Book Company, 1950, p. 33-34). There are two reasons for seeing this general region as the landing place of the Jaredites. This is the homeland of the Olmec civilization, in which the Jaredites appear to have participated. The second reason, and one emphasized by Hunter and Ferguson, is that Mesoamerican legends have the Panuco as an origin place of some of the first peoples (Milton R. Hunter and Thomas Stuart Ferguson. Ancient America and the Book of Mormon. Kolob Book Company, 1950, p. 33-34). While there is some strength in the first argument, this second one is built upon a shallow reading of the historical documents, and should be discarded as evidence. All of the materials related to the Panuco origin stories are for peoples much later than the Olmec or the Jaredites.
While John L. Sorenson does not weigh in on a landing place (he simply notes that they land on the shore of the land northward, see John L. Sorenson. Mormon’s Map. FARMS, 2000, p. 22), he nevertheless places Jaredite lands firmly in Olmec territory, and associates the Jaredites with the Olmec (see John L. Sorenson. An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon. FARMS, 1985, pp. 108-121). Nevertheless, he also includes information on a Pacific crossing, so he appears to support that position, having the Jaredites land on the Pacific coast and then travel across the land to the Gulf Coast (John L. Sorenson. An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon. FARMS, 1985, pp. 110-11).
Regardless of the landing place, the geographic correlation between the Book of Mormon and Mesoamerica clearly points to the Gulf Coast region and the culture area of the Olmec as the Jaredite homeland.
Their first requirement was to til the earth, so they would likely stay in some area fairly close to each other, but spread out along the land so that they would have land to farm. As with the early years of the Nephites, nothing is said of meeting others in the land when they arrive.
History: As with the Lehites, when the Jaredites arrive in the New World they cannot find a land devoid of other human population. Archaeology is rather firm in its understanding that there were people in the Gulf Coast region by at least 2200 B.C., and that they are genetically related to the Asian immigration, not a Middle Eastern genetic heritage. (Richard A. Diehl and Michael D. Coe. “Olmec Archaeology.” The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership. The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1996, p. 11-12). The earliest settlements in this region are found along the now silted in stream called Rio Bari, near La Venta, Tabasco. From this beginning:
“Similar villages occurred along all the river valleys of the Olmec heartland in the following centuries. Although they appear to lack the monumental art and architecture, social hierarchies, and complex institutions that characterize Olmec culture, these villages clearly provided the local population base for later Olmec expansion. By the end of the Pre-Olmec period, San Lorenzo and La Venta were growing faster than other communities and fragments of basalt monuments in some of the deepest levels at San Lorenzo suggest that the Olmec sculptural tradition existed prior to 1200 B.C.” (Richard A. Diehl and Michael D. Coe. “Olmec Archaeology.” The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership. The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1996, p.12).
By the time of the close of the Olmec period, this cultural system had become influential over a very wide area of Mesoamerica, and fed foundational cultural and religious ideas to the later Mesoamerican civilizations. Nevertheless, this culture that we consider Olmec probably never thought of themselves as a single ethnic population. (Richard A. Diehl and Michael D. Coe. “Olmec Archaeology.” The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership. The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1996, p.11).
The connections between the Olmec and the Jaredites are completely circumstantial, but compelling within the larger scope of a Mesoamerican setting for the Book of Mormon. The Olmec culture flourishes and supports hierarchical societies with kings during the timeframe when the Jaredite record indicates that similar social institutions were among the Jaredites. The location of the Olmec lands is precisely in the appropriate geographic proximity to the plausible Nephite lands. The plausible linguistic and cultural connections of the people of Zarahemla also fit into the known archaeological and linguistic history of the area. This should not, however, be said to equate the Jaredites and the Olmec. There is an important distinction between saying that the Jaredites participated in Olmec culture and saying that the Olmec were the Jaredites. There is no indication of either a biological or cultural infusion from the Middle East. The Olmec culture is native to Mesoamerican soil. As with the later Lehites, the Jaredites would have been absorbed into the developing local culture, and their genetic contribution would have been early overwhelmed by the larger population into which they merged.