Were-jaguar

A name scholars gave to a face that recurs in Olmec art, part human infant and part feline, with a downturned, snarling mouth and often a cleft head. What it showed is debated, and the Olmec left no texts that explain it.

Olmec symbols. Also called olmec jaguar baby, olmec were jaguar.

Meaning

The were-jaguar is the scholars’ name, not the Olmec’s, for a face found on Olmec jades, axes, figurines and monuments from about 1200 to 400 BC. Encyclopaedia Britannica describes the baby-faced figures with a round face, thick features, heavy-lidded eyes and down-turned mouths that are “sometimes referred to as were-jaguars”. The Metropolitan Museum of Art describes La Venta jade axes carved with supernatural figures “with downturned mouths, almond eyes, and cleft heads”. In Nicholas Saunders’s account the face is the first feline image in Mexico: a strange creature, part cat and part human, whose drooping lips seem to snarl. An axe from La Venta in the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City shows it. Other features scholars connect with the jaguar are a flame-like eyebrow, paw and X-shaped motifs and the turned-down corners of the mouth.

Origin and history

The face was one of the first things that made the Olmec known. Britannica’s entry calls the were-jaguar the hallmark of Olmec art, and says it was the unity of objects in this style that first suggested to scholars they were dealing with an unknown civilisation; it describes the figures as gods, each a hybrid of jaguar and human infant, “often crying or snarling with open mouth”. The Met adds that potters at San Lorenzo made ceramic figures known as “babies”, named for their infant looks, and that La Venta reliefs show rulers who “wrangle infant deities”.

In a chart first published in 1946, Miguel Covarrubias drew what he called the evolution of the Olmec “jaguar mask” into the later rain gods of Mexico: the Aztec Tlaloc, the Zapotec Cocijo and the Maya Chaac. Karl Taube judges the scheme essentially sound. The Olmec rain god, he writes, has fangs and a snarling mouth that Covarrubias related to the jaguar, a frowning brow and slanting eyes shaped like an L on its side, as on San Lorenzo Monument 10 in the Museo de Antropología de Xalapa. The jaguar may be on the colossal heads too: Ann Cyphers reads the abstract emblem on the helmet of San Lorenzo Head 1 as a stylised feline paw, four toes and a pad.

A name, and a debate

The term and its meaning are scholars’ work, and they do not agree. Saunders sets out the readings: for some scholars these “impossible creatures” are supernatural offspring of Olmec rulers and mythical jaguars; examples that seem to be children have been called “rain babies”; some small figures are read as shamans caught halfway through turning into jaguars; and some may simply be shamans or priests in feline masks. Anna Di Castro, writing on the Atlihuayán figure in Mexico City’s Museo Nacional de Antropología, a man wearing an animal skin, says the question of which animal is the main one in Olmec art has caused “an enormous controversy among archaeologists and historians”. She traces it to the art itself: Covarrubias saw that each feature of the jaguar image took on a meaning of its own, until the designs became abstract and hard to read.

The cleft head and maize

Peter Joralemon, cataloguing Olmec images, read the cleft at the top of the head as the place where maize grows. He identified a maize deity he called God II whose six variants all show maize signs sprouting from the cleft head, or printed on the forehead. The Maya Maize God carries the plant on his head too: in the Maya codices its leaves sprout from the head of a young-faced god.

Rain and the jaguar today

Taube points to a living practice that recalls the old link between the jaguar and rain: in Zitlala and other communities in the mountains of Guerrero, young men dressed as jaguars, with leather helmets, still fight with their fists on a sacred mountain to bring the rain.

Sources

Olmec (Encyclopaedia Britannica), Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Olmec” (Internet Archive copy, 25 September 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article text
Were-jaguar (Encyclopaedia Britannica), Encyclopaedia Britannica, “were-jaguar” (Internet Archive copy, 5 August 2016), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article summary
Olmec Art (James Doyle, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History), James Doyle, “Olmec Art”, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Internet Archive copy, 22 February 2026), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, essay text
El jaguar entre los olmecas (Nicholas J. Saunders, Arqueología Mexicana), Nicholas J. Saunders, “El icono felino en México: fauces, garras y uñas”, Arqueología Mexicana no. 72, pp. 20–27, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), article text and caption
El Sacerdote de Atlihuayán, Morelos (Anna Di Castro, Arqueología Mexicana), Anna Di Castro, “El sacerdote de Atlihuayán”, Arqueología Mexicana no. 44, pp. 66–67, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), article text
El dios de la lluvia olmeca (Karl A. Taube, Arqueología Mexicana), Karl A. Taube, “El dios de la lluvia olmeca”, Arqueología Mexicana no. 96, pp. 26–29, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), article text
Miguel Covarrubias y la cultura “olmeca” (Renato González Mello, Arqueología Mexicana), Renato González Mello, “Miguel Covarrubias”, Arqueología Mexicana edición especial no. 105, pp. 54–59, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), caption
El dios del maíz en Mesoamérica (Tomás Pérez Suárez, Arqueología Mexicana), Tomás Pérez Suárez, “El dios del maíz en Mesoamérica”, Arqueología Mexicana no. 25, pp. 44–55, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), article text
Cabezas colosales. Insignias en el tocado (Ann Cyphers, Arqueología Mexicana), Ann Cyphers, “Expresiones de poder”, Arqueología Mexicana edición especial no. 94, pp. 24–32, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), article text

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Last reviewed October 2, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research

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