Another Look at Elephants in Ancient South America – Part II

Continuing from the last post, several finds have been located over the past 100 years, showing numerous indications of elephants living in the Americas between the so-called “extinction” dates and the coming of the Spanish conquistadors. However, these have not been widely circulated and, for the most part, ridiculed by those who 1) do not want to accept what is found because it flies against their personal and career beliefs, and 2) hate the idea of anything that shows there is a God or that a people were directed to the Western Hemisphere based upon a God-directed principle, such as found in the Book of Mormon.

While numerous writings appear on the internet and teachings in schools to the contrary, elephants have been found in the Americas during the period of time the Jaredites and Nephites lived here. This information is suppressed because scientists and others simply do not want to accept the fact that God directed the Jaredites and later the Lehi Colony in coming to the Western Hemisphere. Yet, despite their efforts, and the numerous writings found to the contrary stating opinions against this idea and what is written in the Book of Mormon, the facts stand for themselves.   Elephant remains have actually been found in North, Central and South America dating from the Book of Mormon period and since. Take for instance:

Ecuador: In 1929 the skeleton of a mastodon was found in Ecuador. Evidently killed by Indians, a circle of fires had been built around the body for convenient roasting of the flesh. A landslide covered the site, which also included broken painted pottery and artifacts. This remarkable find was dated to the beginning of the Christian era (Scott, 1962, p.261).

Stone carvings discovered in Ecuador and now in the Salesian School at Cuenca, one of the largest museums in Ecuador, shows (left) a horse in the first block and an elephant in the second (top middle) box; and (right) engraven on a gold plate, a pyramid land below a llama and elephant. Both date to before the Spanish arrived

Mexico: “An ancient city located near the present town of Paredon, in the state of Coahuila, about 500 miles north of Mexico City, was suddenly destroyed in some past age by an overflow of water and mud, and that its remains are still existent on the spot. Many massive walls have been found covered with a mass of deposited earth, sixty feet in thickness. Mingled in this earth are human skeletons, etc., along with the tusks of elephants, distributed in a way which indicates that the overflow of water and mud was sudden, giving no time for escape, with all the inhabitants and animals killed suddenly, their skeletons strewn all through the debris, from three feet from the surface to a depth of sixty feet, showing that all the debris was deposited almost at once.
“Most remarkable of the minor finds that have been made at Paredon is the remains of elephants, which were as much in evidence in cities as horses. Never before in the history of Mexico has it been ascertained positively that elephants were ever in the service of the ancient inhabitants. The remains of the elephants that have been found in Paredon show plainly that the people of the buried cities made elephants work for them. Upon many of the tusks that have been found were rings of silver. Most of the tusks encountered so far have an average length for grown elephants, of three feet, and an average diameter at the roots of six inches. Judging from the remains of the elephants so far unearthed, the animals were about ten feet in height and sixteen to eighteen feet in length, differing very little from those at present in existence. (Dr. Nicholas Leon, archaeologist of the National Museum of Mexico, “Elephant Remains In Mexico,” American Antiquarian, Vol 25:395-397, 1903).

Central America: In 1928 a Mayan workshop was uncovered in Central America. The archaeologist concluded that the owner of the shop, dated from the second to the fourth century A.D., must have kept a mastodon, perhaps even as a pet, for the bones of the animal were found among smashed bowls and jars (Wendt, 1956, p.524-525).

Colombia. Near Concordia, Colombia, a complete skeleton of a mastodon was found in an artificial salt pond, which had been constructed by Indians. The pond, with its bottom of paved stones together with the animal, had been entombed by a sudden landslide (Victoria Institute, 1886, 22:151).

Eastern U.S. The tusks and bones of mastodons have frequently been found in the swamps of Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana. In fact, “Arguments which favor a recent date for elephants are: first, the presence of the bones in the peat swamps of Ohio and Michigan; second the drawing on the Mercer tablet of an elephant attacked by Indians; third, the figure of an elephant on a pottery pitcher from the Cliffside dwellings,” Editor Rev. Stephen Denison Peet, Ph.D, Editor, The American Antiquarian and Oriental Journal, Vol 25, January-November 1903, Chicago, pp396-397.

Arizona.  Rock carvings of the mastodon was found in Hava Supai Canyon, Arizona, and were believed to date back to 10,000 B.C. In the same location, however, utensils were found made out of live, not fossil, ivory, which could lower the date considerably (Santesson, 1970, p.39)

North America. David Ingram, a 16^th century English sailor and explorer claimed to have walked across the interior of the North American continent from Mexico to Nova Scotia in 1568. Ingram signed on with English privateer John Hawkins in 1567 to raid and trade off the coasts of Portuguese Africa and Spanish Mexico (The Defeat of John Hawkins: A Biography of His Third Slaving Voyage (London, 1960). In November 1567, he was marooned with some 100 of his shipmates near Tampico on the coast of Mexico, about 200 miles south of the present Texas/Mexico border. Ingram and two dozen of his party struck out northward into the interior to avoid capture and eleven months later, in October 1568, he and two others (Twide and Browne) of his original party were picked up from the coast of Nova Scotia by French traders, and in return for helping negotiate with the locals, the French captain gave the three Englishmen passage back to Europe. How Ingram and the other two got there is attested only by Ingram's own account, written down 13 years later in 1582 by Sir Francis Walsingham (Ingram himself was illiterate) and published in 1589 in Richard Hakluyt’s "The Principall Navigations, Voiges and Discoveries of the English Nationm made by Sea or ouer Land, to the most remote and farthest distant Quarters of the earth at any time within the colmpasse of these 1500 years," of 1589. 

Left: Privateer Captain John Hawkins who sailed under letters of Queen Elizabeth I; Right: Early map showing Ingram's course from Mexico through the U.S. to Nova Scotia

Ingram's account is potentially of considerable historical interest, since he was ostensibly the first European to traverse the North American interior, and his report is peppered with intriguing tidbits, including what may be the first recorded description of an American bison. Some scholars have questioned the entire story, on the grounds that it would have been physically impossible to walk over 3,000 miles through the wilderness in only 11 months, but in 1999 British writer Richard Nathan retraced Ingram's journey in reverse, walking from Nova Scotia to Tampico in just 9 months. In this report to the state secretary of Queen Elizabeth, he described precisely and drew accurate pictures of elephants as well as bison and other animals he and his companions had observed during the journey Charlton Ogburn "The Longest Walk: David Ingram's Amazing Journey," American Heritage Magazine, 1979, Vol 30 #3. 
Ingram could not have known that some centuries later, elephant bones (mastodons and mammoth) would be discovered all over the continent. It is also a curious fact that 200 years later President Thomas Jefferson was informed by a delegation of Indian chiefs that hunting in the interior lands included animals described as elephants. It is a matter of record that President Jefferson asked Lewis and Clark to be on the alert for elephant herds during their exploration of the West (Herbert Wendt, In Search of Adam, Houghton Mifflin, New York, 1956, p.525-526). Even as late as 1560 “the Italian cartographer Paula de Furlani drew a map, which is preserved in the British Museum, depicting elephants in the region of the Mississippi Valley. 
Some scholars have suggested that the elephant (mammoth or mastodon) lived later than hitherto believed. Ludwell Johnson, in an article entitled “Men and Elephants in America” published in Scientific Monthly, wrote that “Discoveries of associations of human and proboscidean remains [Elephantine mammals, including, elephants, mammoths, and mastodons] are by no means uncommon. As of 1950, MacCowan listed no less than twenty-seven” including, as noted by Hugo Gross, a “partly burned mastodon skeleton and numerous potsherds at Alangasi, Ecuador.” Johnson goes on to explain that “There can no longer be any doubt that man and elephant coexisted in America. Probably it is safe to say that American Proboscidea have been extinct for a minimum of 3000 years.” If the elephants had died off at least 3000 years ago, they would still have been well within range of the Jaredite era. And as noted above, some evidence indicates that the elephant may have survived in limited numbers for centuries later.

Left: Stone carving showing an elephant at the top, and (right), a metal engraving showing a llama and an elephant on the right side. Both were found in Ecuador and date to before the Spanish arrived

While critics can make this claim or that, the fact is that there have been too many occurrences of elephants reported in the Americas during the time from about 2000 B.C. to when the Spanish arrived, that trying to criticize this report or that, as critics of the Book of Mormon so adamantly do, does not reduce the overall knowledge of what has been found here by so numerous a list of people and occurrences. Obviously, there were elephants in the Americas during the time of the Book of Mormon, and since, even up to the time of the Spanish arrival, that it is no longer a point of debate. Elephants were here and the Jaredites brought them as the Book of Mormon states.