Werejaguar

The term is derived from Old English were, meaning "man", and jaguar, a large member of the cat family in the Olmec heartland, on analogy with werewolf.

The basic werejaguar motif combines a cleft head, slanting almond-shaped eyes with round irises, and a downturned open mouth with a flared upper lip and toothless gums.

In this latter book, Indian Art of Mexico & Central America, Covarrubias included a family tree showing the "jaguar mask" as ancestral to all (later) Mesoamerican rain gods.

This paradigm was undermined, however, by the discovery that same year of Las Limas Monument 1, a greenstone sculpture that displayed not only a werejaguar baby, but four other supernaturals, each of whom had a cleft head.

Based on analyses of this sculpture, in 1976, Peter David Joralemon proposed definitions for eight Olmec supernaturals, each characterised by specific iconographic combinations.

[9] Some researchers have therefore refined the werejaguar supernatural, specifically equating it with the Olmec rain deity,[10] a proposition that artist, archaeologist, and ethnographer Miguel Covarrubias had made as early as 1946 in Mexico South.

[13] In addition to, or often as an extension of, the headdress, the supernatural also sports earbars (often pleated) running down the sides of its face, and a "crossed-bars" icon on the chest and/or navel.

Two-dimensional representations of the werejaguar were incised onto greenstone celts, painted on pottery, and even carved onto four multi-tonne monoliths at Teopantecuanitlan (see drawing).

According to archaeologist Peter Furst, werejaguar figurines were likely used as household gods for many people and as spirit helpers or familiars for priests or shamans, aiding in transformative acts and other rituals.

Further analysis of these sculptures by scholars including Whitney Davis, Carolyn Tate, Carson Murdy, and Peter Furst, however, have cast doubt on this hypothesis, instead proposing alternatives to explain the jaguar characteristics.

Most of the figures in the reliefs and monuments are clothed in loincloths, which would negate copulation, and Davis believes those that are naked appear dead or dying rather than in a sexual posture.

Even before Davis questioned the idea of a belief system centering on human-jaguar copulation, scholars such as Michael Coe[20] looked for biological causes for the fleshy lips, cleft head, and toothless mouths that make up the werejaguar motif.

A stone Olmec werejaguar, showing common werejaguar characteristics including a downturned mouth, almond-shaped eyes, pleated ears, a headdress with headband, and a crossed-bars icon on the chest
Las Limas Monument 1 , showing an adolescent "presenting" a werejaguar infant. Profiles of four other supernaturals are incised on the adolescent's shoulders and knees.
Monument 52 from San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan , showing a classic werejaguar figure. The long deep groove carved into the back of this sculpture indicates it was part of the drainage system, associating the werejaguar with rain and water.
The "presentation" of an inert werejaguar baby is a common theme in Olmec art. Compare this with Las Limas Monument 1 above.
Two lively werejaguar babies on the left side of La Venta Altar 5 . The two werejaguars depicted on Altar 5 at La Venta as being carried out from a niche or cave—places often associated with the emergence of human beings—may be mythic hero twins essential to Olmec mythology [ 23 ] and perhaps forerunners of the Maya Hero Twins .