The historicity of the Book of Mormon, the claim that the book is ancient record of historic events, is an article of faith for most, but not all, members of the Latter Day Saint movement. Non-Mormon sources, in contrast, universally accept that the Book of Mormon is a 19th-century creation, not an ancient record of pre-Columbian America. The narrative of the Book of Mormon has been disproven by a variety of archaeological, historical, and scientific facts.

In the early 19th-century United States, settlers encountered the remnants of ancient mounds, or earthenworks. Locals speculated about who had constructed the mounds, how they arrived in the Americas, and their relationship to contemporary indigenous populations.

Joseph Smith, a young folk magic practitioner, reported a vision of treasures buried by ancient Mound Builders near his family home in New York. In subsequent years, Smith claimed he had obtained the treasure, including a set of golden plates containing historical records and artifacts allowing the plates to be miraculously translated. Smith published an English-language volume titled "The Book of Mormon" which purported to be a historic record of the ancient Americas.

The Book of Mormon proposed to answer the questions of the day, explaining the transit of peoples to the Americas as a miraculous ocean voyage and narrating the destruction of mound builders at the hands of dark-skinned Americans. The Book of Mormon claims that shortly after God's miraculous confusion of tongues as punishment for the Tower of Babel, a group called the Jaredites undertook a miraculous transoceanic voyage to the Americas. The book further claims to describe the events in America after the fall of Jerusalem around 600 BCE, describing the righteous light-skinned Nephites who ultimately die at the hand of the Lamanites, a people cursed with dark skin by God for their wickedness. Archaeology has since concluded the mounds were constructive by a diverse set of ancient Native Americans, not a distinct culture or people.

Founding a church and becoming its "Prophet, Seer, and Revelatory", Smith later began issuing statements he claimed were authored directly by God, without relying on claims of plates or artifacts.

Though purportedly a translation of ancient records, the Book of Mormon is regarded as a 19th-century work dictated, edited, and published by Joseph Smith. Archaeologist Michael D. Coe wrote:

I know there is not one professionally trained archaeologist, who is not a Mormon, who sees any scientific justification for believing the foregoing to be true [...] nothing, absolutely nothing, has ever shown up in any New World excavation which would suggest to a dispassionate observer that the Book of Mormon, as claimed by Joseph Smith, is a historical document relating to the history of early migrants to our hemisphere.

The Book of Mormon contains extensive verbatim content taken from the 1769 edition of the King James Bible, even replicating translation errors found in that specific edition.