Curelom and cumom

The curelom and the cumom are working animals mentioned in the Book of Mormon. According to adherents of the Latter Day Saint movement, these animals are thought to have existed in North and/or South America. To non-adherents, these animals are fictional creatures of the Book of Mormon.

The exact intended identity of these animals is not known. Joseph Smith, Jr., who translated the Book of Mormon, is not known to have elaborated on the subject of these animals. However, the animals have been a subject for discussion and speculation by Mormon thinkers and apologists.

Reference in the Book of Mormon

The curelom and cumom are mentioned only once in the Book of Mormon. The reference occurs in the Book of Ether, which is ostensibly a history of a nation of early Americans called the Jaredites who left the Tower of Babel and traveled by boat to the Western Hemisphere. There, according to the book, they found a number of animals. The narrative reads as follows:

And they also had horses, and asses, and there were elephants and cureloms and cumoms; all of which were useful unto man, and more especially the elephants and cureloms and cumoms. (Ether 9:19)

Apologetic interpretation

According to Latter-day Saint belief, Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon from an ancient language. In this line of thinking, the words curelom and cumom were transliterated instead of translated, meaning that while the ancient word is roughly transmitted, the actual animal intended is ambiguous. The context may imply beasts of burden. Some Mormons have speculated about what the terms refer to, including:

• Mastodons, mammoths, or gomphotheres. Early Mormon apostle Orson Pratt identified cureloms as mammoths.^[1]
• An as yet undiscovered, probably extinct species.
• Some other South/Central American animal species with which Smith was unfamiliar such as the llama, alpaca, tapir, jaguar, or monkey.

Critical view

Paleontologists have demonstrated that mastodons and mammoths became extinct thousands of years before the time when the Book of Mormon is set, but according to the Book of Mormon, this section takes place in the time of the scattering from the Tower of Babel:

Which Jared came forth with his brother and their families, with some others and their families, from the great tower, at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people, and swore in his wrath that they should be scattered upon all the face of the earth; and according to the word of the Lord the people were scattered. (Ether 1:33)

Cureloms and cumoms in Mormon literature

The curelom and cumom have appeared in Mormon literature. For example, Chris Heimerdinger, a popular LDS novelist, chose to make cureloms mammoths in his time-traveling adventure Tennis Shoes and the Feathered Serpent. Similarly, Thom Duncan published an independent novel where an Indiana Jones-type character escapes from a curelom, described as a mammoth. In another book, titled Book of Mormon abc's on the third page it says, c is for curelom, and has a picture of a mammoth.

Notes

1. ^ Pratt (1868, pp. 339–340).

References

• Pratt, Orson (27 December 1868), Watt, G.D.; Sloan, E.L.; Evans, D.W., eds., "America a Choice Land—It's Aborigines", Journal of Discourses by President Brigham Young, His Two Counsellors, and the Twelve Apostles (Salt Lake City, Utah) 12: 338, http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Journal_of_Discourses/Volume_12/America_a_Choice_Land%E2%80%94Its_Aborigines .
• Miller, Wade E. (6 August 2009), Science and the Book of Mormon, http://www.fairlds.org/FAIR_Conferences/2009_Science_and_the_Book_of_Mormon.html .