Another Look at Elephants in Ancient South America – Part I

Cuenca (Santa Ana de los cuatro ríos de Cuenca) is the capital of the Azuay Province in southeastern Ecuador, about 77 miles east of the city of Guayaquil, and about 45 miles east of Guayaquil Bay. In this highlands city, archaeologists claim the first inhabitants date from around 8000 B.C., but not until 2000 B.C. does the archaeological record show that a highly organized society was developed. This area was later the home of the Canari people, who settled the vicinity of Cuenca, which they called Guapondeleg, meaning a “land as big as heaven.”

Ecuador is the area of the Land Northward in the Book of Mormon Land of Promise, and the pre-Cañari culture would have been that of the Jaredites, whose landing would have been around 2000 B.C. when the archaeological record actually shows an advanced culture in the area. Lest we forget, the Jaredites brought with them from Mesopotamia: “horses, and asses, and there were elephants and cureloms and cumoms” (Ether 9:19).

Now cureloms and cumoms would be the llama and alpaca of the Andean highlands, an animal that has a long history in South America, and was even found in the La Brea Tar Pits of Southern California, along with numerous animals of the past (see earlier posts). And since llamas and alpacas are camelids, which are members of the biological family Camelidae, the only living family in the suborder Tylopoda, which include Dromedaries, Bactrian camels, llamas, alpacas, vicuñas, and guanacos—they are all animals “which were useful unto man, and more especially the elephants and cureloms and cumoms” (Ether 9:19).

Llamas can be used as pack animals, for guarding sheep and other flocks, for their wool, and for their meat

While cureloms and cumoms have been found in South America, one would think the elephant would have been found there, also. This is one of the major critiques of the Book of Mormon by LDS critics—where are the elephants?

Critics once assured us that the “elephant is not a native of America and never was its inhabitant,” but scientists and archaeologists now affirm that mammoths and mastadons (elephant family) inhabited the ancient Americas at one time. However, Mammoths and Mastadons are are believed to have gone extinct 11,000 years ago, though Mammoths actually are claimed to have died out 4,500 years ago, which actually puts them fairly close to the timeframe for the Jaredite civilization.

It is also interesting that modern-day DNA testing shows that the wooly mammoth is 98.55% to 99.4% identical with the present African elephant. They are also about the same size, and the thickness of their skin is the same. Consequently, there is nothing different between the two animals other than the length of tusks and the “wooly” covering (hair). All of this, of course, is forcing some scientists to reevaluate the extinction date of the elephant (or an elephantine animal) in America.

However, setting that aside, the elephant has been found in engravings on copper, silver and gold artifacts possessed by natives in the Ecuadorian area, specifically in and around Cuenca. These engravings are quite conclusive, and suggest, as archaeologists are wont to claim on matters of which they promote, that engravings (pictures) on ancient artifacts should be conclusive that the artists were drawing from things they had seen and knew about. These artifacts have been found all over North and South America.

Elephant engraved on silver artifact dating into pre-Columbian times in Ecuador

Engravings on pre-Columbian gold plates found in Ecuador. Note the elephants in the bottom corners, and the Paleo-Hebrew characters

Engravings on metal plate dating to B.C. times and found in Ecuador. Note the Elephant to the right of the figure’s head

Elephant headdress with curled tusks and large ears on stelea from Copan, Honduras, dated 756 A.D.

Elephant drawing on Maya mugs from Yalloch, Guatemala, 600-900 A.D.

Left: Drawing of a Mesoamerican sculpture depicting elephants. Note the distinct elephant drawing on left and compare with an elephant drawing from India on the right, and two live elephants further right

Left: Early pre-Columbian Mexico writing. Note the two elephants depicted along with birds. Right: Stone stelea from pre-Columbian Oaxaca, Mexico, showing an elephant with a massive headdress

It is not that examples of elephants cannot be found in the Americas dating from late B.C. to pre-Columbian times, it is that scientists and archaeologists are so convinced that elephants became extinct in the Americas 4,000 to 10,000 thousands years ago, that they cannot bring themselves to accept that any carvings, engravings or drawings represent elephants of the late B.C. and pre-Columbian period could possibly actually be elephants. It is also a matter of conscience to Mormon critics to debunk any and all evidence of the Book of Mormon in the Americas, from elephants to any and all artifacts, writings and evidence that the Nephites once existed here.

In fact, at least one paleontologist believed that mammoths still lived in the interior of the American continent at the time of the first Spanish explorers. He supported his belief by the fact that such bones are found under a few inches of peat. In addition, many accurate descriptions of the elephant have been collected from various Indian tribes in the Americas and Canada (Scientific Monthly , 75, Oct. 1952, pp215-221).

(See the next post, “Another Look at Elephants in Ancient South America – Part II,” for more information on elephants in the Americas and why these finds have not been widely published and remain relatively unknown)