Cureloms and Cumoms

Some criticize the Book of Mormon for mentioning elephants and horses as well as two unknown species of animals referred to as cureloms and cumoms. At the time, critics says that the mention of elephants and horses in the Book of Mormon was absolute proof that the Book of Mormon was a fabrication by Joseph Smith because the elephant and the horse have never been found anywhere on the American Continent. Now that numberless examples of elephant and horse remains have been found, critics claim that according to the radio-carbon and other radio-isotope dating, which they criticize when it comes to the creationism/evolution debate, these North American elephants and horses lived in the American Continent longer than the Book of Mormon says they exist.

And what of Cureloms and Cumoms? Well, no one is for sure what they are. But the Book of Mormon suggests they are relatively large, able to be domesticated and useful. Early Mormon apostle Orson Pratt identified cureloms as mammoths in the Journal of Discourses (12:339-340).

But you say that Mammoths died out before the Jaredites arrived. According to history, the Mammoths and Mastodons and horses in America soon died upon the arrival of the first settlers in America in 10,000 BC (15,000-8,000BC). The Glaciers are said to have started to retreat in 16,000 BC. But the important thing here is that when ever the first Americans did arrive, the Elephants and horses disappeared. Why do we know this, because there are Mammoth and horse bones, human bones, and arrows and stone blades with mammoth and horse flesh on them in the same strata at multiple sites.

But what about the date of 10,000 BC? Can any Christian put any stock in this date as accurate? It denies that Adam was the first man who, according to the Bible, lived 4000 BC. Yes, there are 40 types of radio-isotope dating which all agree with each other, but all 40 scientific radio-dating techniques are based on a flawed assumption. And that flawed assumption is that radio/isotope dating assumes a constant rate of cosmic rays hitting the Earth which is what produces the radioactive isotopes or influences the ratio of radioactive isotopes and nonradioactive isotopes.

Thanks to all the global warming and environmental research that has been done, we know that the rate of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere sending all kinds of strange particles through the Earth and making the various isotopes is not constant but inversely proportional to extent of the solar wind. We also know that when there is a lot of cosmic rays hitting the Earth, there are no Sun spots, and the Earth gets very cold like happened during the Mini Ice Age in the 16-17th Centuries. There are also problems with acidified ground water dissolving certain minerals out of rock.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carbon-14_with_activity_labels.png Shows the variation in cosmic rays hitting the Earth by C14.

And what about genetic mtDNA dating techniques? These are flawed too because they do not account for non-random mating which a group at MIT did correct for in their models. Mitochondrial DNA is only inherited from the Mother and therefore only changes in response to DNA mutation which also depends on environmental factors and cosmic rays among other things. This MIT group published their data in Nature and said that the first common ancestor of all humans could have lived as early a couple thousand years before Christ.

5. Rohde, DLT , On the common ancestors of all living humans. Submitted to American Journal of Physical Anthropology. (2005)
6. Rohde DLT, Olson S, Chang JT (2004) "Modelling the recent common ancestry of all living humans". Nature 431: 562-566.

So, what do we know? We know that the appearance of humans in America coincided with the disappearance with several large mammal species in the Americas according to the Book of Mormon. And this is exactly what the archaeological record shows. Not so far fetched also seeing as how the arrival of the Europeans almost meant extinction for the North American Bison. While this isn't proof of the Book of Mormon, it is closer to evidence for the Book of Mormon rather than evidence against.

http://ldsdoctrine.blogspot.com/2008/08/more-on-haplogroup-x.html