Why are so few metal artifacts found in the ancient tombs from Mesoamerica?
John L. Sorenson offers these comments: The number of known tombs of that age [Olmec era] is very limited, and those that have been dug typically contain few artifacts, for whatever reason. If we are going to speculate, and we are all forced to do so at present for lack of concrete information, it is at least as reasonable that valuable metal objects would have been passed carefully down to heirs rather than being stuck into tombs where, experience would have shown, they would in short order “canker with rust” like the sword blades of the Jaredites did after less than 400 years. Anyway, the linguistic data going back to the Olmec period assures that metal was in use, whatever the tombs show. (Review of Books on the Book of Mormon, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1994, p.
