In Mayan history where ever the jaguars roamed, they became important to their diet and icons of power and status in the ancient civilizations of the Central and South America. In the land of the ancient Mayan, the OWJ expedition to the Yucatan Peninsula, a people who particularly venerated the jaguar, capturing its essence  art, building temples to this lord of the underworld, and wearing its skins in battle; now a days others continue to believe that shamans can shape-shift into jaguars. The old Maya made advanced systems of astronomy and mathematics, a perfect calendar system, extensive trade routs, and a religion captured by blood sacrifices. Without tools not even the wheel they are still masters of architecture, building elaborate pyramids and sprawling cities. Why the Mayan cities collapse is still a mystery only now being explained, but the now a day Maya remain tenacious survivors, like the jaguar itself, at the dawn of this new Millennium.