The presence of the terms cureloms and cumoms is frequently presented as a contrast to the oxen, cows, sheep, and swine. Obviously we know what oxen, cows, sheep, and swine are, but we have no idea what a curelom and cumom are. Robert K. Thomas presents a summation of the argument:
“Incidental but very interesting evidence concerning the possible age of the language from which Joseph Smith is translating occurs when we come across a word like “ziff” in Mosiah 11:3. Together with “neas and sheum” of Mosiah 9:9 and “cureloms and cumoms” of Ether 9:19, we have some very convincing examples of what are technically known as hapax legomena. Linguistically, such terms are a part of almost all ancient records. Indeed they become a check on their age. Hapax legomena are terms which cannot be translated, only transliterated-that is, put into the sounds of a language. Epics such as Beowolf, an ancient Anglo-Saxon epic poem, display them often, as does the Bible in a term like selah. No one knows what selah means. As a child I thought it must mean “Amen,” because it came at the end of things. Now our best guess is that it is amusical notation because it is only retired in Biblical lyrics.
Similarly the examples cited from the Book of Mormon are still unknown. Since the significance of hapax legomena in establishing the authenticity of ancient records is a relatively recent development, actually given most of its impetus by Germanic higher criticism of the last part of the 19th century, their occurrence in the Book of Mormon is persuasive internal evidence of its claims. (Robert K. Thomas. “A Literary Critic Looks at the Book of Mormon.” Richard H. Cracroft and Neal E. Lambert, comps. A Believing People: Literature of the Latter-day Saints [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1979], 143.)
Everything Thomas says about cureloms and cumoms as hapax legomena is correct. The problem is that these “untranslated” terms appear right after the “translated” terms that cannot represent the food-animals of the New World. There is currently no good explanation for why we have the mislabeling of some animals (the non-existent Old World domesticates) with the “untranslated” curelom and cumom. Perhaps Joseph’s mode of translation keyed on the edibility of the catalog, and the curelom and cumom are useful (“more especially useful” is the text’s term) but not for food. Hence there was not a convenient category for the translation.
The presence of elephants is a little more interesting, because there is a possibility that there might have been elephants in the region. The elephant would not be the Asian type, but rather a lingering Mammoth or Mastodon.
“Most researchers would not care to explore the subject of the elephant in ancient America because many scientists ared of the opinion that there were no elephants in the Americas during this period (approximately 2500 B.C.) they do acknowledge, however, that mastodons and mammoths lived on the western hemisphere thousands of years before this time.
Some scholars have moved up the date to 3000 B.C. Nor does the date of circa 2500 B.C. appear so unreasonable after we examine a little fo the mounting evidence about the elephant in pre-Columbian – not prehistoric – times.” (Diane Wirth. A Challenge to the Critics. Horizon Publishers and Distributors, 1986, p. 50).
The most interesting suggestion of the pre-Columbian presence of elephants comes from an artistic representation:
“Dr. Verrill, a well-known archaeologist who did fieldwork for the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, has not been afraid to express his opinions about this delicate subject. He describes a figure from Cocle, Panama, as follows:
‘The most astonishing of the idols is one bearing a figure which is so strikingly and obviously elephantine that it cannot be explained away by any of the ordinary theories of being a conventionalized or exaggerated tapir, ant-eater or macaw. Not only does this figure show a trunk, but in addition it has the big leaf-like ears and the forward-bending knees peculiar to the elephants. Moreover, it shows a load or burden strapped upon its back. It is inconceivable that any man could have imagined a creature with the flapping ears and peculiar hind knees of an elephant, or that any human being could have conventionalized a tapir to this extent.” (Diane Wirth. A Challenge to the Critics. Horizon Publishers and Distributors, 1986, p. 51).
Nibley further notes:
“The mention in the Book of Mormon of certain domesticated animals not found in the New World at the time of Columbus has always been taken as irrefutable proof of Smith’s folly. Elephants head the list. What happened to the elephants? The Jaredites used them, we are told, but there is no mention of the Nephites having them. They disappear in between the two cultures. When? The Book of Mormon does not say, and the guesses of scientists range all the way from hundreds of thousands to mere hundreds of years ago. Elephants have strange ways of disappearing. If it were not for the written accounts of unquestionable authenticity, no one would ever have guessed that the Pharaohs of the XVIII Dynasty hunted elephants in Syria—where are their remains? Prof. Mallowan says that the wonderful Birs Nimrud ivories which he discovered were made from the tusks of a now-extinct breed of elephant that was being hunted in Mesopotamia as recently as the eighth century B.C. Who would have guessed that ten years ago? (Hugh Nibley, Since Cumorah, Salt Lake City and Provo: Deseret Book Co, 1970, 226-7).
Although these suggestions indicate the plausibility of some elephants remaining in the New World, the dates Wirth is using only have to move speculation from 3000 B.C. to 2500 B.C. According to the timeline used in this chronology, the time difference is not 500 years, but 1500 years. The evidence is suggestive, but not conclusive. There is plausibility that future archaeological research might alter the dates of elephant/human interaction in the Mesoamerican area.