Some critics have pointed to the presence of horses and some other animals mentioned here as evidence of the book’s nineteenth-century creation. In the Book of Mormon, horses are recorded as already being present in the New World, when most scholars believe that they were unknown in the Americas until the time of Columbus. It is certainly possible that evidence of pre-Columbian horses does exist but has simply not been discovered yet; Mormon apologists have pursued a few promising leads in that area. But it seems more likely that, as some have suggested, “horse” refers to another kind of quadruped that was ridden by humans. We always have to remember that the Book of Mormon is a translated text—a book translated from an ancient document, at that—and so there are undoubtedly going to be some issues arising from that. Perhaps this is the kind of thing that the late prophet Moroni was referring to when he mentions the fact that the Book of Mormon contains some “imperfections” (see Mormon 8:12 and 9:31).