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)
Jerry Grover, author the excellent Geology of the Book of Mormon, has recently answered the following question on the Quora Website:
What are the leading theories on what the cureloms and cumoms are that are mentioned in The Book of Mormon, in the Book of Ether?
Here is Jerry’s answer:
Curelom
A search for curelom in Sumerian presented a fairly straightforward definitional compound word etymology. The word kur or kurra, meaning “mountain(s)”, is attested to in Sumerian during the ED IIIa, ED IIIb, Old Akkadian, Lagash II, Ur III, Early Old Babylonian, and Old Babylonian periods (The Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary 2006). This would indicate the presence of this word from 2600 BC to 1600 BC. The word e3-li-um (a form of the word e), meaning “sheep” or "a description of ewes or lambs", is attested to in the ED IIIb period (The Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary 2006). This would indicate the presence of this word from prior to or during 2500 BC to 2230 BC. There is some disagreement among chronological dates for the various periods, so the longest possible chronology was considered for each element of the word. A similar word kura is also found in Sumerian, meaning “a designation of looms” (The Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary 2006), so would be indicative of an animal that provides the source material for weaving.
One issue involving the construction of this word is that it was not found as an attested compound word in the Sumerian script. The typical construction of this word in Sumerian script (also in Egyptian, Akkadian, and other Semitic languages) would place the adjective (kur) behind the noun, not in front of the noun. However, as has been discussed, the syntax and grammar of early spoken Sumerian cannot be accurately constructed from the Sumerian logograms. In addition, the translation of the Caractors Document
(Grover 2015) indicated that one of the changes in the reformed Egyptian was that the adjectives were located in front of the nouns. Mormon indicated that modification in the Egyptian syntax was to be expected:
Mormon 9:32
32 And now, behold, we have written this record according to our knowledge, in the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, being handed down and altered by us, according to our manner of speech.
Mormon 9:33
33 And if our plates had been sufficiently large we should have written in Hebrew; but the Hebrew hath been altered by us also; and if we could have written in Hebrew, behold, ye would have had no imperfection in our record.
This method of compounding or agglutinizing different words to make a name is found in Mesoamerica. For example, the typical way to form an Aztec place name is to combine nouns, typically by dropping a portion of one or more of the nouns, and also sometimes adding a place particle at the end. Book of Mormon place names do not appear to have a place particle included, but this may be an artifact of translation where the particle is replaced by the English form or word such as “city” or “land”. For example, the Aztec place name Acamilixtlahuacan is translated as “Where are level fields of rushes.” The name is a compound of aca(tl) (reed); mil(li) (field); ixtlahua(ca) (level expanse); and can (place particle). The letters in parentheses are the letters that are dropped from each word when it is compounded (Starr 1920). An example of a Aztec place name that doesn’t have a definitive place particle is Teocalhueyac translated as “in the high or upreared temple” consisting of teocal(li) (temple) and hueyac (high, prolonged). Personal names in Nahuatl (language of the Aztecs) are typically compound names as well. For example, the Nahuatl name Kozkakuahtli consists of Kozka(tl) (necklace) and Kuauhtli (eagle).
Many Mayan names are compound names as well. For example the Mayan name Sachihiro, consists of ‘sachi, which means “happiness”, and ‘hiro which means “vast”. Zoque place names are typically compound names, some also have place suffixes like the Aztec (Wonderly 1946). Mixe names are also compound names such as the name of a Mixe god, Naaxwiiñ, which consists of naax (earth) and wiiñ (face, surface).
Interestingly, the two languages whose proto language has been determined as that most likely spoken by the Olmec is Mixe and Zoque (Campbell et al 1976). Both of these languages generally place the adjective (or adjective equivalent) in front of the noun (Faarlund 2012; Romero-Mendez 2008). The Nahuatl and the Mayan languages exhibit this same feature. This may be indicative that the word curelom was constructed by the Jaredite recordkeepers sometime after arrival and linguistic assimilation into the existing Mesoamerican population. According to the calculated chronology, the word curelom (and cumom) appears at the time of Emer, approximately 300 years after the Jaredite arrival.
Strictly speaking, based on the etymology of word curelom, meaning “mountain sheep”, the departure of the Jaredites would have been between or prior to 2500 BC and 2230 BC. It must be recognized that there is some give and take for that time frame, as the data is based on what has been found archaeologically, so there may be some earlier or later examples of the word that have not yet been unearthed.
Other Sumerian etymological units found within the word curelom are:
u: sheep or ewe
(2600 – 1000 BC)
u8-ra (form of u)
(1950 – 1530 BC)
ur: harness
(2600 – 2450 BC) (1950 – 1530 BC)
ur: to roam around
(1950 – 1530 BC)
re: that
(2112 – 2004 BC)(1950 – 1530 BC)
lah: to full (cloth, wool)
(unknown)
When listing a “Constructed Compound Word” for each name or word in this book, letters or equivalent sounds that are shared by the combining of Sumerian words are shown in bold. Where letters are dropped, the letters are indicated by parentheses. Some letters or sounds may be shared more than twice, for example the “u” in Kur-e-li-um is actually shared by the words “kur”, “u”, “ur” (harness), and “ur” (to roam around). This multiple superposition of words phonetically gives rise to the ability to ‘pack’ a lot of meaning into a few letters. This concept is shown in the reformed Egyptian glyphs and will be discussed later. Following the identification of etymological units and analysis, a constructed compound word close to the Book of Mormon equivalent is proposed for each name or term, with bold font showing letters and/or words potentially used more than once with overlapping words. This construction presumes that the name is metonymic, and so it only uses etymological units consistent with the meaning in the Book of Mormon context. Letter(s) in parenthesis are those that are dropped to form the compound name or word. This is not an indication of all of the potential constructs from the Sumerian etymological units, just the one(s) that are closest to the Book of Mormon spellings and meanings. If one assumes that a name is not metonymic, then it is probably possible to construct nearly all Book of Mormon names without dropping letters.
Constructed Compound Word: Kur-e-li-um
Cumom
Like curelom, cumom is also found as an animal comprised of a compound word in Sumerian with the adjective preceding the noun. The first part of the word, KU, means “plough” or “plow” and is attested to in Sumerian during the ED IIIb, Ur III, Early Old Babylonian, and Old Babylonian periods (2500 -- 2350 BC, 2112 -- 2004 BC, 1950 -- 1600 BC) (The Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary 2006). By way of note, when transcribing Sumerian syllabic signs into English, archaeologists use subscripts to mark different signs that have the same phonetic value. So for example, gu is "flax", gu is "neck", gu is "voice". When transcribing logograms, capital letters are used, such as MUSHEN for "bird", or as just mentioned, KU for “plow”. The roots *ku- / *k(u)- are also found in Indo-European, and in Semitic languages.
The second part of the word is the Sumerian word u2-ma-am (form of the word umamu), meaning “beasts”, and is found attested to in the Old Babylonian period (1950 BC to 1530 BC). While not a perfect match it has attestation variants of the word dating potentially back to 2120 BC (The Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary 2006).
Based on the etymology of word cumom, meaning “plow beast”, the departure of the Jaredites would have been between or prior to 2500 BC to 2230 BC. Like curelom, it must be recognized that there is some give and take for that time frame.
Other Sumerian etymological units found within the word cumom are:
u: sheep or ewe
(2600 – 1000 BC)
u8-am3 (form of u)
(1950 – 1530 BC)
mah: milk producing (of cows)
(2600 – 1530 BC)
Constructed Compound Word: KU-ma-am
What Actual Animals were Cureloms and Cumoms?
Before determining the meaning of these words, it is important to point out that the divine translator of the Book of Mormon appears to have made little attempt to preserve the language phonetics (pronunciation) of the spoken source language of the peoples in the Book of Mormon located in Mesoamerica for the transliterated words in the Book of Mormon, as they appear to be very straightforward phonetically with the Sumerian source language. So far, none of the names or words appear to have a strong phonetic basis in a native Mesoamerican language, although some derivative forms may perhaps be found.
All of these Book of Mormon words appear to be have been formed from their original linguistic phonetics in Hebrew, Egyptian, or Sumerian and approximated into Early Modern English. Dr. Royal Skousen determined that the translation target language of the Book of Mormon has been managed to King James Bible English and Early Modern English. Similarly, there has also been some management of the Jaredite source language, which is not unexpected as the plates would have contained different languages (Egyptian and reformed Egyptian) as well as some Jaredite transliterations and meanings in the form of Jaredite geographic and personal names. In addition, since the original script of the Jaredites appears to be a form of early Sumerian or Elamite, which are both highly logographic, and since the reformed Egyptian of the Nephites appears to be principally logographic (Grover 2015), the actual pronunciation of the ideogram would have changed over time. For example, many Chinese characters can be read in the Japanese language if the character does not consist of or contain phonetic elements. Our modern numbers can be read in a variety of languages, but the words for those numbers are entirely different in the various languages. In order for a translator to attempt to transliterate an ancient and longstanding logographic word, the translator must necessarily pick a point in time and place from which to create the transliteration, since the pronunciation varies over time, from place to place, and from language to language.
There is also a clue here indicating that the method of naming animals and other items was not a phonetic representation of an approximation of the Mesoamerican name. As the recorded language (reformed Egyptian and perhaps early Sumerian) is heavily logographic, the assignment of a logographic name to a particular animal or crop likely contains no phonetic element related to the actual Mesoamerican name of that animal or crop. The translation of the Caractors Document
did not indicate glyph origination from any formerly unknown Egyptian glyphs; the non-Egyptian glyphs were either Paleo-Hebrew, Sumerian/Elamite proto-cuneiform, or derived from Mesoamerican glyphs. This is indicative that the language used for recordkeeping was not a “live” language in the sense that it was responding to new vocabulary by the creation of completely new glyphs. It appears that it utilized existing Old World glyphs in various ways (such as the compounding of curelom). This is why some of the animals and/or plants and metals that some believe to be anachronisms in the Book of Mormon are not anachronisms at all. The authors of the Book of Mormon are just utilizing and assigning available Old World glyphs to the item being described, and the English translation of the Book of Mormon remained true to the original glyph form and original language.
For example, all of the animal names identified in the Book of Ether
associated with the cureloms and cumoms are terms found in pre-2500 BC Sumerian (cattle, oxen, cows, sheep, swine (pigs), goats, horses, asses, and elephants) (The Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary 2006), not Mesoamerican equivalents. Since the two most likely candidates for curelom and cumom are llamas and alpacas, one might wonder why either or both are not described as some form of camel, since they are camelids. The answer probably lies in the fact that camels were not introduced in to Sumer until much later (1500 BC) than the Jaredite departure and there is no early Sumerian word for camel.
Another clue that is helpful in narrowing down the identity of both cureloms and cumoms is that the description in Ether
9:18-19 does not place these animals in the primary category of “useful for the food of man”, but considers them simply “useful to man” and groups them with horses, asses, and elephants. The word for “sheep” had already been utilized for the description of another animal (Ether 9:18).
Since the etymological definitions for curelom and cumom are “mountain sheep” and “plow beast”, one can look to Mesoamerica to see what potential animals existed there that might be candidates. One also needs to consider other animals that had a reasonable potential to exist anciently (3rd millennium BC), even though evidence has not yet been found (for example, extinct animals or existing animals with a reduced habitat range). Various faunal works were consulted, and a liberal initial list of potential animals for evaluation is as follows:
Llama
Alpaca
Tapir
Pronghorn
Deer (various types)
Wapiti
Moose
Mastadon (extinct)
Mountain goat
Bighorn sheepNorth American bison/buffalo
Shrub-ox (extinct)
Woodland muskox (extinct)
Animals that were mentioned along with curelom and cumom in the book of Ether
were not included in the list (ie mammoth for elephant). Some of these animals are also candidates for some of the other classifications (ie bison for cattle or ox).
A principal criteria for the inclusion of a transliterated or constructed non-English word in the translation is that it was not an available word for the point in time chosen for the target language. In determining whether a word was present in English involving the Book of Mormon translation, it is important to note that the target language of the translation does not appear to be the language extant at the time of Joseph
Smith but is in fact an earlier form of English very close in time to the King James version of the Bible. Royal Skousen has asserted that the English in the Book of Mormon is principally from the 1500s and early 1600s (Skousen, 2005).
In order to further analyze the list, it is important to determine whether the English names of these animals were in common English use in the late 1500s or early 1600s. Two tools are useful for this analysis: the online Oxford English Dictionary (OED)(2015) and the Middle English Dictionary (MED)(University of Michigan 2015). The OED and MED identify the earliest attested English use of each word, which may be much earlier than the widespread accepted use of the word. For example the word for lama (llama) is found in the 1828 Webster’s dictionary, yet alpaca is not present though the OED shows a use of alpaca in 1747 AD (Webster 1828).
According to the OED and MED, the earliest use of these words prior to Joseph
Smith’s time is:
Llama (1600 AD)
Alpaca (1747 AD)
Tapir (1568 AD)
Pronghorn (1823 AD)
Deer (950 AD)
Red Brocket Deer (not found)
Wapiti (1817 AD)
Moose (1614 AD)
Mastadon (extinct) (1811 AD)
Mountain goat (1841 AD)
Bighorn sheep (1805 AD)
North American bison/buffalo (1635 AD)
Shrub-ox (extinct) not found
Woodland muskox (extinct) (1744 AD for “muskox”)
From this list, one can probably definitively eliminate the tapir and the generic word for deer from consideration as they occur earlier than 1600 AD.
Of the remainder, the best fit for curelom is probably the alpaca. As mentioned previously, the word kura in Sumerian is related to looms and the primary domesticated use of the alpaca is for its fiber, which is similar to wool. In addition, their habitat is in the mountains, and they have a long history of domestication in South America. Although it is not currently found in Mesoamerica, it was found there up until at least 1852 (Williams 1852, 204). The mountain goat and bighorn sheep would be secondary possibilities for cureloms.
The llama appears to be the best candidate for cumom, principally because it has a known ancient history of domestication as a beast of burden. Although use as a plow animal is not a modern common use, there are known examples of it. In 1614, according to Juan Ignacio Molina, the Dutch captain Joris van Spilbergen observed the use of chiliquenes (a llama type) by native Mapuches of Mocha Island in Chile as plow animals (Molina 1808, 15-16). Although the first appearance of the word in English literature occurs in 1600 AD, it was a Spanish word that is being used and referenced, which appears to have a first use is Spanish in 1535 and originates from the Quechua language of Peru (Online Etymology Dictionary 2015). The llama has been identified as existing in ancient Mesoamerica by a variety of archaeological evidences (Sorenson 1985, 295). There has been common conjecture that a cumom might be a llama, but without etymological evidence.