Mammoths are a fascinating topic. First, they appear to have been driven to extinction more than 10,000 years ago by a combination of global warming and human hunting, both hot topics today. But this was way before Book of Mormon times. Second, they lived in frozen climates, yet snow is never mentioned in the Book of Mormon and most local geographies are in the tropics. Many years ago the skeleton of a large mammoth with an arrowhead in the ribs was on display at BYU, lending plausibility to the Book of Mormon story. But I heard it has a less visible presence now and if anything raises more questions.

Finally a horse is a horse and a mammoth is mammoth. The Book of Mormon mentions elephants, not mammoths. Forgive me but I am one of those who has a hard time visualizing Alma saddling up his deer or his tapir. If this is feasible, then I suggest that BYU organize races with people riding deer or tapirs as annual events. Perhaps President Monson could ride a tapir in the Pioneer day parade. The finding of mammoth bones does not help support the existance of elephants in Book of Mormon times. Such theories make us look ridiculous to our critics, although they can make a Sunday school class laugh uncomfortably.

I think we used to imagine that we had some wiggle room for dating in this era. That science could confuse 12,000 BC with 2,000 BC. But my limited understanding is that there are now multiple independent methods of dating organic items in that age range and they are much more accurate. One that is hard for me to argue with is the field of dendrology, or counting of tree rings. Each year the tree ring grows slightly thicker or thinner giving a sensitive indicator of the overall favorability of the climate for that tree species during that year. This results in complex patterns over the decades that are more specific than bar codes and exlude the problem of two or three trees growing together and appearing to be much older. Apparently there are bristlecone pine trees high in the mountains (of what was once Mormon country) that are older than the Biblical chronology and preserved dead logs of the same that overlap with living trees that push this method of dating beyond 10,000 BC. It can be used as a sort of control of other methods.

Mammoths have been frozen and preserved in Siberia. When I was young and somewhat of a dreamer, back in the ’70′s, I had this idea that fertility specialists could harvest frozen mammoth eggs and sperm and inpregnate a few modern elephants and thereby resurrect this species from extinction. If the DNA was broken up too much they could somehow compare it with modern elephant DNA and create polymerases that would correct it.

But I have never thought of any unique or clever scientific findings to go looking for that would significantly advance the cause of the Book of Mormon.

“And now it came to pass after some years had passed away, there came a man among the people of Nephi, whose name was Sherem.”

Where did Sherem come from? He seems to have been a stranger in Jacob’s community, and his name sounds like a Jaredite name rather than a Semitic name.