In Mormon 4:23 Mormon notes that when he saw that the Lamanites were about to overthrow the land, he "did go to the hill Shim, and did take up all the records which Ammaron had hid up unto the Lord." It is fascinating that the custom of hiding up sacred records in a hill still persists in Guatemala to this day. Allen Christenson writes as follows:
While conducting research in Maya linguistics and ethnology in highland Guatemala in 1979 I was waiting for a friend along a road where buses pass. A small group of Maya elders (ranking officials of the Indian community) were standing nearby speaking in low tones in their native tongue. Not imagining that a gringo would speak their language, they talked openly about a cave in the nearby mountains where they had recently deposited a collection of books or papers. The word they used implied that these were ancient books, likely early Colonial transcriptions of their ancient records, although the same word may also refer to the folded screen hieroglyphic texts written prior to the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century. As far as is known, no example of such a hieroglyphic text survived the destruction of the Spanish conquest in which hundreds of Precolumbian records were burned.
From the description of the cave, I recognized the area as a high mountain valley nearby that I had recently visited. A sheer cliff of soft clay exists there covered with what looked to be crude drawings of ancient Maya glyphs. Because of the nature of the cliff, these glyphs could not have been more than a year or two old, suggesting that someone still had some knowledge of ancient Maya writing systems.
Eventually my friend appeared and greeted me loudly in Maya. This shocked the group of Indian leaders nearby and one of them came over and politely asked if my friend would mind if he spoke to me alone. He then asked if I spoke his language. I replied that I did. He asked if I had overheard his conversation with the other elders and I admitted that I had. He then asked if I understood the danger for the safety of the records as well as his fellow elders if such information were to come to the knowledge of the government which was then ruthlessly persecuting traditionalist Maya. I assured him that I would never reveal their identities or the location of the cave where the records were kept. He thanked me and bid me a pleasant journey. [Allen J. Christenson, "An Account of an Experience While Waiting for a Bus in 1979," Personal Communication]