The mention of “cureloms and cumoms” is frequently presented as a contrast to the oxen, cows, sheep, and swine. Robert K. Thomas, an English professor, summarizes 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 Beowulf, 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 a musical notation.
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.
Everything Thomas says about cureloms and cumoms as hapax legomena is correct, though I would stop short of calling them “persuasive internal evidence of its claims.” The problem is that these “untranslated” terms appear right after “translated” terms that cannot represent domesticated animals of the New World because they were not present. There is currently no good explanation for why some animals are simply mislabeled (the nonexistent Old World domesticates) in the same sentence as the “untranslated” cureloms and cumoms. Perhaps Joseph’s translation focused on the edibility of animals on this list, and “cureloms and cumoms” were “more especially useful” but not for food. Hence, there was no convenient translation category for these beasts.
“Elephants” might be a reference to the prehistoric mammoths and mastodons, except that they were most likely extinct by Jaredite times. A kill site with the remains of eight mammoths dates to between 9000 B.C. and 7000 B.C. LDS researcher Diane Wirth believes there is evidence that would set the extinction between perhaps 3000 B.C. and 2500 B.C., but even were that to be confirmed, it is still well before the date I reconstruct for the Jaredite origins (1100 B.C.).
Daniel C. Peterson and Matthew Roper note: “Other scholars have discussed pictographic evidence of trunked animals found at several sites in North America and also in Mayan codices and other artistic representations found in Mesoamerica and Central America. Zoologist W. Stempel claimed on the basis of such a representation at Copán that these could not be tapirs, but that the images must represent mammoths.” The problem with this statement is that the artistic evidence is often difficult to read. This is particularly true of the baroque Maya style. In the specific case of Copán, I have examined the evidence cited for elephants and have determined, based on other representations, that they depict macaws. Particularly confusing is the image of a small human straddling the neck where mahouts conventionally ride elephants. Nevertheless, that image is still represents a macaw rather than an elephant. The Copán artwork cannot be used to support the pre-Columbian presence of elephants.
Since it is not possible to prove a negative, elephants may yet be found in Book of Mormon times. Nibley provides this historical caution:
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?
Possibly future discoveries will alter dates of elephant/human interaction in Mesoamerica; but at present, elephants cannot be identified by the archaeological record.