The following comes from the Interpreter Foundation.

This post begins a series of blog posts in which I will compare two proposed locations for the Book of Mormon. An important caveat is that I have published on the Mesoamerican model and prefer it. Having stated that I do begin with bias, I will nevertheless attempt to deal with evidence more than prejudice. I will attempt to represent comparable aspects of both the Heartland and Mesoamerican models. Also important is the declaration that I present this information as my own studied opinion and intend no implication that my ideas represent The Interpreter Foundation or the Interpreter journal.

The very first point of comparison is that it is going to be difficult to make the comparison. The reason is that the two geographic models are built on completely different concepts of how one should arrive at a solution to the question of where the Book of Mormon took place. Although both models produce maps that reflect the locations of Book of Mormon named places, there is an extreme difference in how the models are created.

John L. Sorenson highlights what he considers the foundation for searching for a real-world location of the Book of Mormon:

The first place to seek for knowledge of the Book of Mormon context is in the book itself. Going back to the original is the basis of sound scholarship whenever anyone works with an ancient text. . . .

Building an internally consistent map is but the first step. Next we must match up Book of Mormon lands and rivers and mountains with actual places, location for location, as scholars have done for much of the information in the Bible.[1]

Although Sorenson’s model has become the most widely accepted of the Mesoamerican models for the Book of Mormon, Sorenson was not the only one who created an internal model. Some of those who created internal models never attempted the elaboration of attempting to place that model on a real-world location. The variation in the internal maps echoes the wide variation of the real-world models that have been proposed (covering, apart from the Heartland or Mesoamerican models, a Great Lakes Model, a Delmarva Peninsula model, a Baja model, South American models, and Hemispheric models).

The following are different models created to demonstrate the relationships of Book of Mormon internal locations:

Historic internal geography maps of the Book of Mormon showing the 1922 model by Jeremiah A. Gunsolley and the 1938 model by Lynn C. Layton, each proposing relationships between key scriptural locations based on textual analysis.

Two more modern examples:

Side-by-side comparison of modern internal Book of Mormon geography maps from the 2018 Book of Mormon Student Manual and the Virtual Scriptures project, illustrating possible land relationships based solely on the scriptural text.

There are others, but these four are representative. Notice that while different, they all propose general similarities. Although the one published in the Improvement Era does not have the overall hourglass shape of the other three, it nevertheless places a narrow neck on the northern end of the Nephite lands.[2]

Note how different the shape of the map becomes when the conceptual map, based on the Book of Mormon text, is compared to the two Heartland maps:

To read the full post on the Interpreter Foundation, CLICK HERE.