Book of Mormon Parellels

I’m reading a book called The Barbarous Years about the settlement of North America.  Its description of the very earliest scene sounds eerily like the Bo0k of Mormon in the Zarahemla days.

The description is a tribal land that is massively wrenched deep into the interior by the introduction of new trade goods. In response, it turns into the cockpit of war.  Fortifications appear where there hadn’t been any before.  Small warring tribes combine or are conquered into a primitive state form where you have a supreme chief ruling over lesser chiefs, much like Lamoni and his ‘father.’    They envy, admire, ape, emulate, and hate the newcomers.

This isn’t proof of the Book of Mormon.  You can say that Joseph Smith may have had access to that early American history from a couple of hundred years before, and that he was a clever enough writer to ape the history but to do it subtly without hanging a lantern on his cleverness.

But for me, it is striking.