. . .When the Nephites reached the promised land, they discovered many animals (1 Ne. 18:25) and sometime between 588 and 570 B.C. they began to raise their own “flocks and herds, and animals of every kind” (2 Ne. 5:11). Later, Enos reported that the Nephites raised “flocks of herds, and flocks of all manner of cattle of every kind, and goats, and wild goats, and also many horses” (Enos 1:21; between 544 and 421 B.C.).

Problems emerge when one tries to identify animals in the Book of Mormon with North American or Mesoamerican animals. At present there is not enough evidence to conclusively demonstrate the presence of some of the animals mentioned in the Book of Mormon in North American or Mesoamerica during the Book of Mormon periods. But the cases of the horse and the elephant are instructive. For many years scholars maintained that the horse became extinct in the western hemisphere long before the time when the Jaredites or the Nephites arrived in the Americas. But recently, several discoveries have been made of what appears to be pre-Columbian horses (Sorenson, Ancient, 295-96; Welch, 98-100). Likewise, the elephant mentioned in Jaredite times (Ether 9:19) may be a reference to the mastodon. Long believe to be extinct before the period o the Jaredites, evidence has emerged that the mastodon was still to be found in Mexico around 2500 B.C. (Sorenson, Ancient, 297-98). In time the evidence will vindicate the claims of the Book of Mormon.

A noted Book of Mormon scholar, John Sorenson, working on the model of Mesoamerica as the primary geographical location for much of the Book of Mormon, has postulated that part of the puzzle may be the terminology used in the Book of Mormon. Tracing the development of terminology for animals through the ages he noted, the “terminology the Nephite volume uses to discuss animals follows a different logic than the scheme familiar to most of us whose ancestors came out of western Europe” (Sorenson, Ancient, 289). For instance, Sorenson pointed out, several early Mesoamerican figures show individuals riding deer and postulates that the deer may have served as a “short of ‘horse’ for riding.” (Ancient, 295-6). The Jaredite term “elephant” seems to square well with the terms “mastodon” and “mammoth” (Sorenson, Ancient, 297-98). And the terms “flocks and herds” usually applied to sheep an goats in the ancient Near East can easily be equated with deer and pigs that were commonly used for food in Mesoamerica.

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