Conference tecrus::mormonism

In chapter 7 of his book, "An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon",
John L. Sorenson discusses animals in the Book of Mormon.  In several replies
to this note I will give highlights of his discussion.  I'm including his
numerical footnotes but not the references themselves.  Persons interested in
more detail can refer to his book.

First, an introduction to the topic.

    Just as the Book of Mormon's statements about metals require precise
    reading and extensive comparison with scientific and historical
    information if we are to appreciate their significance, so the things
    about fauna in Nephite territory have to be carefully analyzed and compared
    in full awareness of what is known and not known about nature in
    Mesoamerica as well as the principles known to govern the labeling of
    natural categories in various cultures.

    What sorts of animals are there to consider?  Twelve creatures are specified
    in the Book of Mormon: ass, cow, dog, goat, wild goat, horse, sheep, ox,
    swine, elephant, "curelom," and "cumom."  Some other expressions--calf,
    cattle, fowl, lamb, fatling--are special cases of the animals just named,
    we can suppose.  (pp. 288-289)

Sorenson comments that this topic is a difficult one.

    It is easy enough to list these names, but what do they signify?  The
    answer is not obvious.  (p. 289)

He goes on to discuss examples of why our understanding of animals in the
Book of Mormon is not easy, but I'm omitting that.  Then he concludes

    Considering all we now know about animal use in Mesoamerican cultures,
    it is fair to state that most of what the Book of Mormon says about
    animals is plausible.  Some of the book's statements remain hard to
    square with present knowledge, but the picture is considerably more
    acceptable to scientists than a few years ago.  (p. 292)

    The terms 'flocks' and 'herds' are easy to account for.  Deer and pigs 
    (peccary) could have fallen under those terms.  Fowls in flocks were
    common.  The turkey (Meleagris sp. and Agriocharis sp.) was, after all,
    an American native.  Other domesticated, tamed, or at least caged fowls
    included the Muscovy duck, Tinamou duck, quail, "pheasant," "partridge,"
    "dove," curassow, cotinga, roseate spoonbill, macaw, chachalaca, and
    parrot.  The term flocks could have included such smaller animals much
    used by native peoples in Mesoamerica as hares, rabbits, and the paca
    and agouti (both rodents the size of small pigs). (pp. 292-293)

    Dogs are mentioned at five places in the Book of Mormon, but nothing
    is said of their use. Two types (perhaps two species) were common in
    Mesoamerica.  The large, white, humped mastiff (Nahuatl itzcinteportzotli)
    was the creature whose noisy descendants plague Mexican villages today.
    A smaller, hairless sort (Nahuatl xoloitzcuintli) was fattened and eaten
    as a delicacy.  The Spaniards relished the flesh of these animals at the 
    time of the conquest, although they would have been offended, as most of
    us would be, at being offered the flesh of the bigger dog.  Perhaps
    Nephite "flocks" included fattened dogs. (p. 293)

Concerning the "cow" of the Book of Mormon.  Sorenson discusses the confusion
that existed between the Indians and the Spaniards about the naming of animals,
both in North and South America.  He observed that after the Indians saw
European cows they used the word "cow" to refer to the American bison, to deer,
and to sheep.  Then he commented

    But isn't it obvious that the "cow" of the Book of Mormon was our familiar
    bovine, straight out without all this hedging?  No it is not at all
    obvious.  First, we are trying to find out what the Book of Mormon really
    means by the words we have in English translation; we are not trying
    either to simplify or to complicate the matter, but only to be correct.  In
    the effort to learn the truth, nothing can be assumed obvious.  Second,
    there is a lack of reliable evidence-historical, archaeological,
    zoological, or linguistic--that Old World cows were present in the Americas
    in pre-Columbian times.  The same is true of some of the other creatures
    mentioned in the Nephite record, where modern readers may feel they are
    already familiar with the animals on the basis of the translated names.  In
    these cases we have to find another way to read the text in order to make
    sense of it.

    So what might the Nephite term translated by Joseph Smith as cow actually
    have signified?  When Cortez's party crossed the base of the Yucatan
    peninsula during their conquest, they observed herds of docile deer that
    some scholars think were semi-domesticated(54).  Perhaps they were "cows."
    Moreover, the Mazahua Indians of El Salvador at the time of the conquest
    were described as a "pastoral people" who "owned and cared for" herds
    of deer(55).  (Any kind of herding of animals in pre-Spanish America
    surprises most cultural historians, who have generally supposed total
    absence of that practice.  Only recently have scientists demonstrated
    that a full pastoral tradition based on domesticated llamas existed in
    pre-Columbian Peru for thousands of years.(56)  But if deer do not seem
    satisfactory as cows, then how about bison?  They were present as far
    south as Nicaragua in direct association with inhabitants of the period of
    the early Nephites.  Or, we might consider the llama or alpaca--American
    cameloids--as cows.  They carried loads and provided food and fiber for
    the people in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and beyond.  They are not attested
    by zoologists for Mesoamerica in recent times. (Much earlier, in the
    Pleistocene, one type of llama definitely lived in North America.)  But
    a Costa Rican archaeologist has discovered an effigy pot in the form of a
    cameloid, and other such vessels are known there(58).  A pre-Spanish 
    figurine from Guatemala looks like a laden cameloid.  And on the Isthmus
    of Tehuantepec in the middle of the last century, alpaca were reported
    living wild.(60)  A few miles away were the Huave Indians, whose tradition
    says their ancestors had come anciently from South America, the home of
    the alpaca and llama.(61)  (pp. 294-295)

    Perhaps we have identified enough candidates for the Nephite cow, but what
    about the horse?  True horses (Equus sp.) were present in the western
    hemisphere long ago, but it has been assumed that they did not survive to
    the time when settled peoples inhabited the New world.  I recently
    summarized evidence suggesting that the issue is not settled.  Actual horse
    bones have been found in a number of archaeological sites on the Yucatan
    Peninsula, in one case with artifacts six feet beneath the surface under
    circumstances that rule out their coming from Spanish horses.  Still, other
    large animals might have functioned or looked enough like a horse that one
    of them was referred to by 'horse'.  A prehispanic figure modeled on the
    cover of an incense burner from Poptun, Guatemala, shows a man sitting on
    the back of a deer holding its ears or horns(64), and a stone monument
    dating to around A.D. 700 represents a woman astride the neck of a deer,
    grasping its horns(65).  Then there is another figurine of a person riding
    an animal, this one from central Mexico(66).  Possibly, then, the deer 
    served as a sort of "horse" for riding.  (That was a practice in Siberia
    until recently, so the idea is not as odd as moderns might think.  Besides,
    in the Quiche languages of highland Guatemala we have expressions like
    'keh', deer or horse, 'keheh', mount or ride, and so on.(67))  As for
    pulling a vehicle, there are no data to suggest such a function in ancient
    America (northern Asiatic people did use reindeer in that manner).  Thus,
    we simply do not understand what might have been the nature of the "chariot"
    mentioned in the Book of Mormon in connection with "horses." (alma 18 and
    20;3 Nephi 3:22).  Anyway, this horse and chariot combination is mentioned
    in the record in connection with only two geographical locations (part of
    the land of Nephi, and at a point between Zarahemla and Bountiful).
    Whatever was involved in the way of animal and vehicle, it may not have
    been widely used.  Obviously, we will want to search for further sound
    information on "horses".  Just a few years ago, nobody could document for
    Mesoamerican cultures that humans rode on any animal, that burdens were 
    carried by animals,(68) or that cameloids were present.  Discoveries may
    yet clarify remaining obscurities.  At the same time, we need to study
    the Book of Mormon text with extreme care to be clear about what it does
    and does not say.  For example, the way "horses" are referred to in
    3 Nephi 4:4 suggests that their major use was as food, not to carry
    things.  We need constantly to be clarifying our reading of the scripture.

    The case of the horse bones, found years ago but ignored by all the
    archaeologists, tells us that we must constantly scrutinize the adequacy
    of "current" scientific beliefs.  The Eurasian sheep is not supposed to
    have been in pre-Columbian America either, yet real sheep's wool was
    found in a burial site at Cholula, :Puebla, Mexico, in an archaeological
    setting that gave no other indication of dating after the Spaniards
    arrived.(69)  This lone specimen doesn't take us far toward a literal 
    reading of the Book of Mormon term sheep, but perhaps we should keep this
    door too ajar a little.

    No systematic research has been done comparing the names of animals in
    the Near East and Mesoamerica.  Just as we saw with the metals, perhaps
    also with beasts: clarifying links may appear through linguistic studies.
    A hint of the possibilities derives from work on the Yuman language
    group (located around the lower Colorado River, near the U.S.-Mexican
    boarder).  Reconstructing the protoculture associated with the ancestral
    Yuman language by comparing the descendant tongues, an investigator
    reconstructed a word for "horse" on strong evidence.(70)  That is, the
    indications are that a term for horse was shared by those people long
    before European horses arrived.  The evidence is not foolproof, of course,
    but it does demand some alternative explanation if we are not to suppose
    early knowledge of the horse.  (pp. 295-297)

    "Swine" and "sow" are mentioned in the Nephite portion of the Book
    of Mormon with a tone of disgust (3 Nephi 7:8; 14:6).  That's what we
    would expect among people who even nominally followed the constraints
    of the law of Moses on eating pork.  But the non-Israelite Jaredites
    reveal no sensitivity about using "swine" as food (Ether 9:18).  The
    peccary or wild pig was abundantly present throughout most of Mesoamerica,
    being valued both for its flesh and because it kills snakes in the wild.
    (p. 297)

    What about the Book of Ether's "elephant"?  Mastodons and mammoths once
    lived throughout North America and part of South America.  They are
    unquestionably elephants in the eyes of zoologists.  The question is how
    late they lived.  Most experts assume they failed to survive down to the
    time of the Jaredites.  The only place they are mentioned in the Book of
    Mormon is in the Book of Ether, near the beginning of that record (by my
    calculations of Jaredite chronology, the date must have been before 2500
    B.C.).  Experts agree that the mammoth, and the mastodon could have survived
    in favored spots much later than the time normally assigned for their
    extinction.  The mastodon has already been dated as late as 5000 B.C. at
    Devil's Den, Florida(71), and around the Great Lakes to 4000 B.C.(72).
    Then there is the remarkable discovery of the remains of a butchered
    mastodon in Ecuador; pottery associated with the find is said to date to
    after the time of Christ(73).  In its light, the radiocarbon date around
    100 B.C. of horse, mammoth and mastodon remains at St. Petersburg, Florida,
    does not seem impossible(74).  The Jaredite mention of the elephant a single
    time--very early in their lineage history--hints that the creature became
    extinct in their area soon thereafter.  Perhaps the Jaredites themselves
    killed off the last of the beasts within their zone.  But the Jaredites
    might not have been the only people to record the presence of the big
    animal.  Some North American Indians have recounted legends of  "great
    stiff-legged beasts who could not lie down" and of an animal with a fifth
    appendage, which came out of its head(75).  Possibly, tribes transmitted
    through oral tradition some vague remembrance of encounters with these
    "elephants."  The later the beasts survived, the easier it is to accept the
    reliability of the tradition.  In any case, it is possible that the mammoth
    or mastodon hung on in Mexico at least as late as 2500 B.C.

    Without going into further detail, we may note that other Pleistocene
    period  animals also might have lasted down into times of Jaredite
    inhabitation. Perhaps the "cummom" and "curelom" were such.  The failure of
    Moroni, the Nephite translator of the Book of Ether, to translate these
    names from the original tongue of the Jaredites indicates that the animals
    were probably extinct by his day.  A humanly worked bone of a giant sloth,
    found in Guatemala, hints at one candidate for such a creature(76).
    (pp. 297-298)

Sorenson concludes his discussion of Book of Mormon animals with the following
observation.

    But the purpose [of trying to match Book of Mormon animals with animals
    known to us] is not to finalize identifications. Instead it is to show that 
    there are plausible creatures to match each scriptural term....Scientific
    research, as well as closer study of the Book of Mormon, may yet shed
    further light on these matters.  In any case, the remaining problems are
    more modest than a few years ago.  Dogmatic dismissal of the Book of
    Mormon on the ground that its statements about fauna are unsupportable will 
    not do anymore. (p. 299)