History: The Jaredites were in the New World at a time and place that corresponds to the Olmec, a people that, by Alma’s time, no longer had a separate cultural or political existence. However, Olmec ideas continued to survive in post-Olmec Mesoamerica. Their “destruction” was not genocide (despite the field of bones) but cultural assimilation and political disorganization. People who lived in the Olmec polity were absorbed into a new one. The people remained, but their organization and “nation” have dissolved.
Similarly, a perennial question is “Where did the Maya go?” They didn’t go anywhere. They are still here, still speak the traditional languages, still have the same genetic makeup. What was lost was the overarching cultural content of the Maya city-states that gave the Maya their distinctive identity. Similarly, the Jaredites were “destroyed,” but genetic Jaredites continued to exist, becoming part of the new civilizations that replaced the Olmec.