The Elephant and the Book of Mormon
Compiled By Glen W. Chapman July 1996
Published Electronically By Benjamin G. Chapman
The Book of Mormon in referring to the Jaredites who came to the Americas from the Tower of Babel
states that they enjoyed a high standard of technology and utilized elephants in their civilization. Many
people have criticized The Book of Mormon over these statements.
Pictographs and drawings shown below show that the ancient Americans did portray the elephant
and often being utilized as beasts of burden.
Ether 10:
20 And they built a great city by the narrow neck of land, by the place where the sea divides the land.
21 And they did preserve the land southward for a wilderness, to get game. And the whole face of the land
northward was covered with inhabitants..
22 And they were exceedingly industrious, and they did buy and sell and traffic one with another, that
they might get gain...
25 And they did make all manner of tools to till the earth, both to plow and to sow, to reap and to hoe, and
also to thrash.
26 And they did make all manner of tools with which they did work their beasts..
Ether 9:
17 Having all manner of fruit, and of grain, and of silks, and of fine linen, and of gold, and of silver, and
of precious things;
18 And also all manner of cattle, of oxen, and cows, and of sheep, and of swine, and of goats, and also
many other kinds of animals which were useful for the food of man.
19 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.
ELEPHANT REMAINS IN MEXICO Anonymous; American Antiquarian, 25:395-397, 1903.
From the City of Mexico comes a statement bearing the signature of Dr. Nicholas Leon, archaeologist of
the National Museum of Mexico. The signature would justify the belief that proper investigation of the
facts related has been made. The one great fact is that an ancient city, which was located near the present
town of Paredon, in the state of Coahuila, some 500 miles north of the City of Mexico, 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, but they are covered with a mass of deposited earth, sixty feet
in thickness. And mingled in this earth are human skeletons, the tusks of elephants, etc. , are distributed
in a way which indicates that the overflow of water and mud was sudden, giving no time for escape...
According to the estimates of the scientists under whose directions the excavations are now being
made, the city in question had a population of least 50, 000.
"The destruction which was brought by the flood was complete. All the inhabitants of the cities were
killed, as well as all the animals. Skeletons of the human inhabitants of the cities and of the animals are
strewn all through the debris, from a depth of three feet from the surface to a depth of sixty feet, showing
that all the debris was deposited almost at once. Measurements show that the debris is on an average, sixty
feet deep where the largest of the cities stood.
"Most remarkable of the minor finds that have been made at Paredon is that of the remains of elephants.
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 inhabitants of the buried cities made elephants work for them. Elephants were as much in
evidence in cities as horses. 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.
THE RIDDLE OF AMERICA'S ELEPHANT SLABS
Harris, Neill J.; Science Digest, 69:74-77, March 1971.
THE MOAB MASTADON PICTOGRAPH
Anonymous; Scientific Monthly, 41:378-379,1935.
THE LENAPE STONE
Doylestown, Pennsylvania, Greene, Richard L.; NEARA Newsletter 71R~1R 1079
The Holly Oak pendant
Delaware, Kraft, John C., and Thomas, Ronald A.; Science, 192:756-761,1976
THE ELEPHANT PIPE
Farquharson, R. J.; American Antiquarian, 2:67-69, 1879.
Elephant pipe found in an Indian mound
Louisa County, lowa.
Painting of Mastodon in
Hava Supai Canyon, Arizona
.
Courtesy of Samuel Hubbard
PRECOLUMBIAN REPRESENTATIONS OF THE ELEPHANT IN AMERICA
Smith. G. Eliot; Nature, 96:340 341,1915.
Picture of Elephant from Michigan Mound Builders
The Mystic Symbol Mark of The Michigan Mound Builders
by Henrieta Mertz , Global Books , 1986
Another Institute Newsletter
(March 1988, Vol. IV, No.3) has a report on the inscribed Hammond Stone
found in 1922 near Taunton, Massachusetts. Of particular interest because
it had a scene of a mammoth and Indians portrayed.