[Mormon Red Death]

Originally Posted by Solon

among others, is the numbers involved.

Mormon 3 describes a battle with 80,000+ combatants.

Mormon 6.10, 12-15 describes the loss of 230,000 Nephites. I assume the opposing army of Lamanites was the same size or bigger, since "And it came to pass that they came to battle against us, and every soul was filled with terror because of the greatness of their numbers." (Mormon 6.8)

The two bloodiest battles I can think of from ancient history are the battle of Cannae in 216 BC, and Arausio in 105. At Cannae, Rome probably lost somewhere between 50 and 70,000, and at Arausio, 100,000+ died in sum.

By 105, Rome controlled a large chunk of the Mediterranean Sea region.

But these battles are chump change compared with a quarter million Nephites eating iron, er. . . . stone.

With "limited geography" growing in popularity, has anyone come across an explanation for this issue?

Addendum: I suppose the obvious response will be "the numbers are inaccurate." Fair enough, but LDS seem inclined to take numbers in the BoM very literally (e.g. Lehi and 600 BC).

Weren't they just following in the tradition of bible and over exaggerating the number of people? Also we are talking about the extinction of a people. 230k doesn't seem that unreasonable