[Aztlan] Man-eating jaguars

[Justin Kerr]

On a number of small carved vases there are scenes of a hunt and the animal
seem to be the jaguar. However my favorite image is K6070, a vase from the
Southern area. As I read it, the scene portrays a hunter wearing a jaguar
skin with atl-atl between his teeth. He seems to be stalking the jaguar and
will not likely be eaten.
As far as the older imagery, has anyone mentioned the concept of
transformation? 
The images of rulers dancing in jaguar skins, K633, as well as the very
famous Altar vase as well as K791 with the dancer wearing jaguar skin as
well seem to suggest that the Maya did very well hunting and slaying these
animals.
Justin


-----Original Message-----
From: aztlan-bounces at lists.famsi.org [mailto:aztlan-bounces at lists.famsi.org]
On Behalf Of nhopkins at mailer.fsu.edu
Sent: Friday, June 01, 2007 11:58 AM
To: aztlan at lists.famsi.org
Subject: [Aztlan] Man-eating jaguars

Sorry to jump in late to the discussion, but I've been on the road.  In 
some 40 years of field work in Mesoamerica, I  don't think I have ever 
heard an account of a jaguar attack on a human, altho I have certainly 
been in the right places to hear about it.  On the other hand, there 
are many stories that involve non-empirical jaguars eating people.  
Bear in mind that in the Maya area (and to some extent elsewhere) 
jaguars are the most powerful animal counterparts of humans and share 
the souls of powerful humans, so the depictions of jaguars eating 
humans could very well be metaphorical, i.e., the jaguar nagual of 
someone acting against another person.  There are at least two Chol 
folktales that involve jaguars eating people and taking on their human 
forms (see the Josserand/Hopkins FAMSI report on Story Cycles).  One 
involves a jaguar who eats a man on his way home, then shows up at his 
house in the form of the man, but when he goes to sleep his jaguar hair 
begins to come back out and he is discovered.  The other involves a 
jaguar that eats a woman and then shows up at her comadres' house and 
they go out to collect snails.  But the jaguar is seen to collect rocks 
instead of snails (he doesn't understand what is going on), and when he 
leans over, his tail sticks out from under his skirt, and he is 
detected.  Both stories then go on to describe the chase and ultimate 
escape of the humans, who live to tell the tale.

In other words, I have never heard of an "actual" jaguar attack on 
humans, but there are plenty of folktales about jaguars devouring 
people.        Nick Hopkins


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