This style of protective armor may have appeared during Maya times. Dorie Reents-Budet, associate curator of pre-Columbian art at Duke University Museum of Art, describes a scene painted on a pot: “Lord Kan Xib Ahaw takes captives in battle. The victorious warriors are identified by their short-sleeved shirts, three of which are made from jaguar pelts. Perhaps these jaguar tops are a type of body protection stuffed with cotton or reinforced in some other manner, similar to the effective armor worn by the later Aztecs and adopted by the invading Spanish in the sixteenth century.”
While there is no evidence that the Nephites invented this type of armor, Mormon described it at a period before it had been widely accepted; thus, it could be a distinguishing difference between the Nephite and Lamanite forces. It is certainly interesting that, on the pot Reents-Budet describes, the victors are apparently wearing quilted shirts while the defeated warriors are bare-chested.
Aztec defensive items also included helmets and shields, though not the breastplate, for which there is no clear analog in artistic representations of battle. At this point, it is unknown what a Nephite breastplate would have been.