The “it” in this verse describes the land of Bountiful—a region and not a city. It extends far enough north to border Desolation, the location where the people of Zarahemla and Limhi’s search party found the Jaredite plates and remnants. In terms of Mesoamerican cultural areas, the Nephite lands would stretch from the southernmost boundary between the Maya and the Epi-Olmec cultures and into the Olmec heartland on the north. In other words, Zarahemla held a crucial location between the two great culture areas of the Olmec and the Maya, serving as a cultural buffer zone between the two. The evidence of the Book of Mormon is that the cultural connections should be stronger downstream on the Sidon while the southern borders are near the Sidon’s headwaters. The land Bountiful was closer to the Sidon’s mouth, where it emptied into the ocean.
This area, the Grijalva River Valley, is now linguistically Zoque, which is a language descended from the ancestral Mixe-Zoque of the Olmec but not related to the Maya on the south. This linguistic evidence continues to fit the geographical and cultural descriptions of the Book of Mormon for this area. In Book of Mormon terms, the Mulekites migrated from Jaredite lands into the Sidon River Valley and founded Zarahemla, having “forgotten” their language and culture. At Zarahemla they meet Nephites coming up from the south. Translated into Mesoamerican terms, the Zoque-speakers migrated from the Olmec region into the Grijalva River basin and founded several cities, including Santa Rosa (Sorenson’s candidate for Zarahemla). At that location, evidence suggests cultural contact with Maya speakers (and culture) from the south. (See commentary accompanying Alma 2:8–9.)