Swahili can be written in either Roman or Arabic scripts. S. Kent Brown provides information about what was available from ancient writers about Arabia and the incense trail in his article, S. Kent Brown, "New Light from Arabia on Lehi's Trail," in Donald W. Parry et al., eds., Echoes and Evidences of the Book of Mormon (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 2002), 55-125, with pages 69-76 and 118-119 being especially relevant. And, as discussed elsewhere on this page, an excellent candidate location has been found for the Valley of Lemuel and the River of Laman--so excellent and amazing, that critics will be ignoring this issue for years to come. This ancient pattern for making a covenant between God and man or a king and his subjects is known as the "covenant formulary" and includes six major steps, though many ancient examples may only have a subset of the six: I won't get into the fascinating relationship to LDS temples here, but I will note that these patterns can be found as well in the temple-related sermon of King Benjamin in Mosiah 1-6, an episode where Benjamin speaks from the Nephite temple and brings his people into a covenant to follow Christ, the promised Messiah. Could you pick a route that would later comply with routes used by others in the area? Even acknowledging the archaeological advantages for determining the location and historical actuality of biblical lands, we find that only slightly more than half of all place names mentioned in the Bible have been located and positively identified.7 Most of these identifications are based on the preservation of the toponym. It shows, for example, that following Nephi's directions almost inevitably would lead one to encounter the oasis and the spring that is the source of the "River Laman" at the beginning of the Valley of Lemuel, and that this is just where the Book of Mormon says it is. In fact, Jim Gee has completed an extensive study on maps of Arabia, "The Nahom Maps". Their work is further supplemented by the photographic work of Maurine and Scot Proctor, reported in the article, "Where Did Nephi Build the Ship?" Was it this name that Nephi rendered Nahom in the record? Given the inherent advantages (cultural continuity, toponyms, etc.) (For related information, see "On NAHOM/NHM" by S. Kent Brown; see also "'The Place That Was Called Nahom': New Light from Ancient Yemen," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, 8/1 (1999): 66-68.). But the very fact that anything remotely close to a plausible candidate exists is in stark contrast to the oft-repeated claims of critics of the Book of Mormon. According to the critics, since something in the Book of Mormon has not (yet) been found, it must not exist, making the book false. This is not back pedaling in response to new DNA arguments, it's what serious LDS scholars were explaining decades before the DNA evidence came out. How He did it and how long it actually took remains unknown.