In Ether 9:19 we find mention of “cureloms and cumoms.” Apparently, these animals were unknown to the Nephites, and so Moroni leaves the words untranslated, or else though known to the Nephites, these words were out of the experience of Joseph Smith, so that he had no words to even call them by.
“Elephants Were Useful Unto Them”
John Hedengren notes that recently, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. had a display of ice age mammal skeletons, including a mammoth and a mastodon. Reflecting current evidence, a display sign states that the mastodon “may have survived until 2000 years ago.” This is clearly within the time period of the Jaredites. Thus we have animals properly called elephants living around the probable time and in the proposed place of the Jaredites. [John Hedengren, The Land of Lehi: Further Evidence of the Book of Mormon, p. 106]
“The Elephants Were Especially Useful Unto Them ”
According to Diane Wirth, the eminent Austrian ethnologist, Dr. Robert Heine-Geldern, reported to one Dr. Clyde Keeler that there were five elephant effigies found in Mexico, but because they were not found by bonafide archaeologists, professionals continue to disregard this controversial subject.
Dr. Verrill, a well-known archaeologist who did fieldwork for the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, 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.”
According to Diane Wirth, the rain god of the Maya, referred to as “the long-nosed rain god,” is often endowed with a pronounced elephantine proboscis. It is well known that the elephant can fill its trunk with water and spew it out. Was this Maya design of the rain god, so often portrayed in their codices (books), an accident? [Diane E. Wirth, A Challenge to the Critics, pp. 51-52]
Ether 9:19 Elephants (Illustration): Chac, the long-nosed rain god, Codex Tro-Cortesiano. From Codices Maya by Villacorta & Villacorta, Guatemala City: Tipografia Nacional (1930). [Diane E. Wirth, A Challenge to the Critics, p. 52]
“There Were Elephants”
According to Hugh Nibley, it is quite significant that the Book of Mormon associates elephants only with the Jaredites (see Ether 9:19), since there is no apparent reason why they should not have been as common in the fifth as in the fifteenth century B.C. All we know is that they became extinct in large parts of Asia somewhere between those dates, as they did likewise in the New World, to follow the Book of Mormon, leaving only the written records of men to testify of their existence. [Hugh Nibley, The World of the Jaredites, p. 220]
According to Glenn Scott, until recently paleontologists said elephants were extinct by 10,000 B.C., but a National Geographic report says small mammoths survived as late as 1700 B.C., well into Jaredite times. [Glenn A. Scott, Voices from the Dust, p. 51]
Ether 9:19 There were Elephants ([Illustration] Elephants in Ancient America. A) The skeleton of an American Imperial Elephant (Mammuthus imperator) was dug from the tar pits at La Brea, California. It is on display at the Los Angeles Museum of History and Science. These beasts ranged form west of the Mississippi to as far south as central Mexico. B) The author photographed this elephant skull at La Venta Park Villahermosa, Mexico. It was dug up at La Venta Island, Mexico. C) Remains of Dwarf Mammoths have been found on islands off the coast of Siberia and California. Named Mammuthus exilis, they were about 70% the size of their larger relatives. Some of them survived until at least 3700 years ago (1700 B.C.) [Glenn A. Scott, Voices from the Dust, p. 50]
Ether 9:19 There were Elephants ([Illustration] Petroglyph of an elephant done by some ancient artist on a canyon wall of the Colorado river near Moab, Utah. Clair Weldon and Roy Weldon in picture. [Roy E. Weldon, The Book of Mormon Evidences Joseph Smith a Prophet, p. 13]
“There Were All Manner of Animals Such as The Elephants”
According to Matthew Brown, although the Jaredites immigrated to the New World around 2,500 B.C., the majority of paleontologists believe that elephants (Ether 9:19) became extinct about 25,000 years ago. However, there are three types of evidence to support the claim that elephants lived alongside man in the pre-Columbian New World.
The first type of evidence consists of the traditions of the native Americans. Widely separated native American tribes had similar traditions of seeing and hunting a huge animal that had a big head, large ears, and “teeth” long enough to pierce seven men. This creature fed upon the leaves of trees, slept by leaning against upright objects, and left behind large round tracks as it walked. The most interesting detail in the description of this beast is that it had “a fifth leg rooted between its shoulders,” a “sort of arm which comes out of [its] shoulder;” a “long nose with which [it] hit people.” This appendage was referred to among some of the Indian tribes as “a lip as long as seven paces.” This creature, said the Indians, could use its “long nose” to uproot trees.
The second type of evidence consists of archaeological remains. Archaeological digs that pair New World elephants and human artifacts are not uncommon. By 1950 Macgowan had listed no less than 27 instances. In this category we have the complete mastodon skeleton found in 1928 in Quito, Ecuador that had lesions on its skull that could only have been inflicted by men who were attacking or butchering it. This skeleton had also been burned in several areas by fire. Man-made tools were found close to this mastodon’s body and about 150 pieces of pottery surrounded it. The finer pieces of pottery were like “the fine Maya pots of the oldest Cuenca culture” and one had a design painted upon it “in Mayoid style.” The pottery pieces dated to between 150 and 350 years after the time of Jesus Christ. Mammoth bones uncovered in 1887 in Attica, New York, were also found in association with a few fragments of charcoal. These artifacts were discovered twelve inches higher than many other pieces of charcoal and a fragment of pottery. “The associated human evidence found with or beneath the Attica mastodon bones,” say Charles Schuchert, “is a positive hint that should open our minds to the possibility that man was associated in America with Mammut Americanum.” We cannot fail to mention that a Carbon-14 date for mastodon remains in Richmond, Indiana, has been set at 3344 B.C., 400 years. This is very close, geologically speaking, to the time frame of the Jaredite elephants. Finally, we will note that it was the considered opinion of Professor William B. Scott, “the doyen of American paleontologists,” that mammoths may have still been living in the interior of the New World when the first Spanish explorers arrived.
The third type of evidence for the contemporary existence of men and elephants in the pre-Columbian New World consists of artistic representations. Some “sculptures and paintings of Mayan and Aztec origin” have long thin noses that curve either up or down and “they appear to portray elephants.” In most cases,“ notes John Thompson, ”these supposed elephants’ trunks are the snouts of the long-nosed rain gods [or Chacs], and are clearly of ophidian origin, but in one or two cases the trunks are clearly very elephantine. The explanation is probably to be found … in a half-forgotten tradition of the mastodon. Recent discoveries have now shown that the mastodon lingered on for many centuries as a contemporary of man in the New World, and there is some evidence that in Ecuador one was slain by man not more than 3000 years ago, as the polychrome pottery associated with it attests." An art-work that may be relevant to this discussion can be found among the eighth century A.D. Mayan murals from the Temple of the Frescoes in Bonampak, Chiapas. A color reconstruction of these murals, in Mexico City’s National Museum of Anthropology, shows an animal head that some observers take to be an elephant since it has a long trunk and a thin, white protrusion beneath the trunk that resembles a tusk. [Matthew B. Brown, All Things Restored: Confirming the Authenticity of LDS Beliefs, pp. 216-218]