Mosiah 11:23 And they did awork in all manner of bore, and they did make gold, and silver, and ciron, and dbrass, and all manner of metals; and they did dig it out of the earth; wherefore, they did cast up mighty heaps of earth to get ore, of gold, and of silver, and of iron, and of copper. And they did ework all manner of fine work.

Per hypothesis, this is in the ‘historical’ section of the book.

If we are going to doubt the historicity of Nephi, et al, due to issues such as horses, then why should we believe Joseph Smith at all? Why do you believe that an angel Moroni appeared to him, yet that same being could not have lived 1600 years before? This seems to be a non sequitur. Either Moroni really visited Joseph and was a mortal back when he said he was, or he didn’t do any of this.

Even those of us who believe in the Documentary Hypothesis of the Bible believe in some historicity. Biblical minimalists have discounted King David for decades, even though the Merneptah Stele and other evidence is available (including current claims that his palace in Jerusalem has been located). The minimalists have a case because of little evidence for David’s existence, and some evidence that contradicts the Bible’s story. The Bible basically shows two ways in which Saul met David: 1) to be his musician, and 2) when he slew Goliath. Both stories cannot easily coincide and be true, at least not how the Bible places them. But that does not mean nothing happened, or that there is no historical person named David.

The Book of Mormon is not a history, but there are historical aspects in it. The evidences of ancient things inside it are impressive, and many were not known in Joseph Smith’s day or in the Post-Columbian era.

As for the Documentary Hypothesis, it does not necessarily state that Moses never wrote anything, but that the 5 books of Moses as we now have them were written and edited later by J, E, P, D, and R. John Sorensen suggested that the Plates of Laban may have been the source for E, and the original manuscript of the BoM only mentions the “book of Moses” not the “five books of Moses” as it was changed to later.

Unlike Adam, I do not think there’s much to talk about concerning this Post-Columbian concept, as there really isn’t any real evidence for a theory to emerge, just a hypothesis remains. We may as well adopt the inspired fiction hypothesis, as it is easier to swallow than this concept (IMO).

Popular works that receive major media attention do get noticed in associated academic fields. All I have access to at the moment is Google Scholar, but a quick search finds at least two relevant academic reviews:

Calloway, C. G. “Julian Granberry: The Americas That Might Have Been: Native American Social Systems through Time; Charles C. Mann: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus.” Ethnohistory 54 (2007): 195-196.

Johansen, B. E. “1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. By Charles C. Mann.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 29 (2005): 121-123.

I’m sure there are others. My point is that if you want to evaluate claims like Mann’s, published academic commentary of one form or another is going to be far more useful than Wikipedia or Amazon reviews.

There is a well-known solution to this conundrum. Someone with access to academic databases–I’m away from my office at the moment, unfortunately–should look up reviews of Mann’s book by competent scholars that were published in respectable journals. What do people who know what they’re talking about say about Mann in print?