Question From Someone New to the Church...

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I think the cultural depiction in this film is an educated guess on the part of the filmmakers.

I know this is VERY late, but here it goes:

A Brief Explanation About the Book of Mormon

The Book of Mormon is a sacred record of peoples in ancient America, and was engraved upon sheets of metal. Four kinds of metal record plates are spoken of in the book itself:

1. The Plates of Nephi, which were of two kinds: the Small Plates and the Large Plates. The former were more particularly devoted to the spiritual matters and the ministry and teachings of the prophets, while the latter were occupied mostly by a secular history of the peoples concerned (1 Nephi 9:2-4). From the time of Mosiah, however, the large plates also included items of major spiritual importance.
2. The Plates of Mormon, which consist of an abridgement by Mormon from the Large Plates of Nephi, with many commentaries. These plates also contained a continuation of the history by Mormon and additions by his son Moroni.
3. The Plates of Ether, which present a history of the Jaredites. This record was abridged by Moroni, who inserted comments of his own and incorporated the record with the general history under the title "Book of Ether".
4. The Plates of Brass brought by the people of Lehi from Jerusalem in 600 B.C. These contained "the five books of Moses,...And also a record of the Jews from the beginning,...down to the commencement of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah; And also the prophecies of the holy prophets" (1 Nephi 5:11-13). Many quotations from these plates, citing Isaiah and other biblical and nonbiblical prophets, appear in the Book of Mormon.

In the BoM, Christ leaves The Holy City of Jerusalem and visits the pre-columbian Americas, and tells them, "And verily I say unto you, that ye are they of whom I said: 'Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd'" (3 Nephi 15:21). The civilizations in this film are made up, but the idea of them is accurate. They may not have been the Olmec, Mayans, or Incas, but they were a similar civilization.

I think "Captain Planet" is something that should be mandatory to watch nowadays.

Team Jacob!

From a 'scientific' standpoint, in my opinion (being the 'self-proclaimed' world's most 'imminent' 'authority' of prehistoric Amerindians)...

Book of Mormon peoples -like nearly all other Amerindian peoples- were a 'hybridization': That is, they were a 'creole' an 'amalgation' of different races, languages, and cultures.

When Lehi and his party landed in probably Guatemala...they soon began (much more so the Lamanites, especially) hybridizing -culturally, genetically, and later on linguistically- with Sino-Tibetan, Austronesian, and Paleo-Siberian Eastern Asians. This hybridization, however, was already in 'full flux' and had been since "Olmec" ("Jaredite") times a few thousand years before Lehi arrived...

This is the main reason why Amerindians are so enigmatic...and seemingly 'indecipherable' -due to the fact that they are 'uber-creolized'...