MovieChat Forums > Apocalypto (2006) Discussion > How historically accurate was this movie...

How historically accurate was this movie?


Are there any reliable texts or documentary films on this era of Mayan history? It was an amazing movie but I'm wondering how accurate it is.

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The Maya colapse had already hapened when Europeans first arrived. At least that's what I read.

I can't say much about the rest.

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The Mayan civilization has already well in decline by the time we are seeing them in this movie... I thought that was clear by the things we were shown: Mass graves, dead crops, etc.

The Mayans didn't all go extinct when their civilization collapsed. There were still Mayans when Europe came. Their descendents are still around.

But you are right. But we aren't seeing anything that contradicts that in this movie.

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thanks

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The Maya empire had already collapsed (around 900 AD), and we all know the Spanish didn't get there for another 600 years. This movie would have been fine if it were set in the Aztec Empire, as they would have been in power.

As far as the general feel of the movie, the Aztecs would have likely taken slaves and they did sacrifice thousands to appease their gods, but my Anthropology professor has claimed again and again that archaeologists and historians across the world deny the historical accuracy of the movie... he states that the Aztecs were no where near that brutal or savage.

Hope that helps, I would do some research on it though, I will do the same.

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And my guess is that they weren't. Most of what we know was writen by the conquerors for their king. The conquered had to monters and savages so the conquest would be just, natural and necessary. History repeats itself.

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The conquistatores were amazed at the beauty of the Aztec city. It was like paradise in their eyes, hence the desire to explore and find other such civilizations. If it was in fact a horrible cesspool of death and decay, such as this "Mayan" city was portrayed, they certainly would've said so in order to justify their treatment of the native population.


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Get me bromide - and put some gin in it!

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The film is historically accurate on many levels, especially in its depiction of the brutality that was so pervasive in the Mayan and Aztec cultures.

The people who think the white Europeans were worse are funny.

The question to ask yourself is, would you rather live in an ancient Mayan or Aztec society..... or in a white European society?

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Well from what I've read, the Mayans were nowhere near that into human sacrifice. They would sacrifice animals too. Their civilization declined but it didn't completely disappear and it took the Spanish quite a while to conquer all the various kingdoms due to the disunity and the harsh jungle terrain.

The Aztecs were into sacrifice in a big way and it became really serious from the rule of Ahuitzotl when they were sacrificing thousands, Montezuma came after and he was equally keen on all the sacrifices.

So the movie seems to blend the two cultures together somewhat.

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I haven't watched this film yet as i first wanted to read how historically accurate it was. I was in Mexico last week and visited Chichen Itza (Mayan Temple, 7th wonder of the new world) and saw the 'Juego de Pelota(ball game where the best players were sacrificed at the end)' and watched a show on Mayan history and they were indeed very into sacrifices, but they stated it was not in a 'brutal' way. The Mayans genuinely believed that the best people should be sacrificed, as in a next life they would be better off(is this shown in the film?). They also believed in sacrificing to the gods of nature(rain god etc). I spoke to a Mayan descendent who told me the Aztecs were more hardcore. They were the 'warriors' and the Mayans were more peaceful, thats why the Mayans just kind of rolled over to the Spanish Conquistadores. Even now it is very much similar. The Aztec communities are the guerreros, the ones who fight in wars. I want to watch this film but not if it spoils what i have just recently learnt about the Mayans. They knew so much about things we had to discover through Science and technology so many years later. But then the Catholics came in, destroyed all their writings, destroyed their communities, so that we will never know how they knew what they knew. Shame.

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Staceyhicken. I was in Mexico and took the Chitzen Itza tour last week also. This movie seems to be pretty accurate but I'm going to read up on it more.

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[deleted]

i think the maya were pretty warlike, saw this documentary once, said the mya, in their independent city-states would constantly fight each other....it would have been sick tho, if the aztecs came south, took over, or united the remnants of the maya and the proceeded to kill every spaniard on sight(except for the one spaniard that joined into the mayan culter after being shipwrecked, some dances with wolves *beep* right there)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuqTwJP5HRg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzalo_Guerrero

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I doubt that would happen, the Incas and Mayans actually traded quite a bit and the Aztecs warred amongst themselves, which is commonfold in human history.

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staceychicken:

A Dominican and a Mercidarian monks helped to catalogue the native codices. Do not swallow all of that history nonsense so easily.

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Well I guess that depends if I was white and Christian, because if I wasn't, life would suck big time for me living in Europe.
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Get me bromide - and put some gin in it!

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If you living in Europe, you would almost certainly be White, and very likely Christian.

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Not quite. Europeans had slaves and there were certainly Jews. And if you lived in Northern Europe it would suck being Catholic and if you lived in a Catholic country like Spain being Protestant, Jewish or Muslim would be dangerous. Ever hear of the Inquisition? Being tortured and burned at the stake isn't what I call "civilized".
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Get me a bromide - and put some gin in it!

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There was almost no slave ownership in Europe. Yes, there were Jews, and like I said they were minorities.

Both Catholics and Protestants are Christians. Muslims, too, were minorities.

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I'm not taking a census count, my point is that if one did not belong to mainstream society in whatever part of Europe whether it be London, Paris or Madrid, their life was in danger.

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Get me a bromide - and put some gin in it!

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There was almost no slave ownership in Europe.

I think you're very wrong about that. Slavery has been prominent in all cultures until modern times and even know it's a problem, just much less widespread.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Europe#Europe

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Ha ha. No.

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Are you serious? Or do you just blatantly ignore history?

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Yes, I am serious.

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Duuude... Both ancient Roman and Greek economy were totally built on slaves, you know that? I've studied six years of Latin in high school, Rome's population consisted of 70% slaves at some times. Those slaves weren't always badly treated, but slaves they were o.o How do you think they got all that Greek knowledge? They enslaved their scholars and had them teach their children. Europe had the most slaves since the Egyptians -_-

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You're off by about 1,000 years.

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You said there never was any slavery in Europe, I proved you wrong -_- Anyway, have you ever heard of feudalism? Many of those peasants were slaves in every way except in name. Oh, and I suggest reading the link the person who answered before me posted. Although there wasn't any 'legal' slavery, it still did exist.

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I said, "There was almost no slave ownership in Europe," in the context of the question presented in the thread title: "How historically accurate was this movie?" Meaning, of course, that there was almost no slave ownership in Europe during the time period that this movie takes place in. So, no, you didn't "prove [me] wrong."

Feudalism is distinct from slavery.

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Exactly!! Greek knowledge by way of the Egyptian Mystery Schools. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, etc. were all students. Questions?? Google Mystery Schools.

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I don't think the Mayans sacrificed as many people as the film depicted; the Aztecs did, though.

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I took this film to be showing some Aztecs who lived in the range that bordered Mayan lands, raiding and capturing Mayans so they could be put to death in one of their religious ceremonies. It makes sense that this is how it would have happened, they wouldn't have been killing off their own people, but rather peoples from other cultures who were caught in these types of raids and also those they had captured in wars. I think this movie tried to show the Aztecs as the technologically superior people with their multi story pyramids and sophisticated jewelry and weapons, preying on the lesser Mayans. I'm not sure how accurate every detail is but it seems like they did a decent job trying to get the general gist of the situation in 16th century Meso-America

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BLKLIGHT25: It's possible, but unlikely. Kukulkan was the Mayan god of the Sun, so they couldn't be Aztecs. Kukulkan was the specific god worshipped (and feared) at the Mayan center Chichen Itza. It is the Chichen Itza pyramid that is portrayed in Apocalypto. Mel got it right. Aztecs were brutal according to historians and archaeologists, but so were the Mayans. Both cultures practiced human sacrifice, even sacrificing babies. In a cenote near the main pyramid, baby skull and bone pieces were found on an underwater altar. It is believed that the Mayans suffered severe droughts which lowered the water level enough for them to place their gifts on this altar. There is also pottery and other artifacts found in this underwater area. There are four major cenotes located around the main pyramid, which also sits ontop of a natural pyramid which covers another cenote. It was the source of fresh water for Chichen Itza people. It is said that there were more than 30,000 inhabitants of Chichen Itza and that doesn't count other cities of the Mayas.

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"There was almost no slave ownership in Europe."

This statement is absolutely false. Saying there was almost no slave ownership in Europe is like saying there was none in Africa.

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LOL I think you got your geography backwards.

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No I didn't. African cultures have a longer history of slave ownership than cultures found on any other continent, including the present day. Slavery didn't start with European Americans, contrary to many people's beliefs.

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[deleted]

You are seriously comparing slavery in Africa to slavery in Europe?

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You can't read. I simply said that saying there was no slavery in Europe is like saying there was no slavery in Africa. It's stupid. There was most definitely slavery in Europe.

You're seriously responding with that question?

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So, the answer is, "yes," you are comparing slavery in Europe with slavery in Africa. Wow. You are out there.

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[deleted]

They did but much earlier timeframe. This was already Renaissance era.
There were slaves in europe but mostly those in muslim countries like ottoman empire.

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I would prefer a society where brutality doesn't exist. The Mayan and Aztec experienced brutality just as much as White Europeans have. Skip your azz back to stormfront and quit wearing the sheep's clothing you wolf.

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I'd read that one of the reasons that Cortes and Pizarro had such and easy time wit the Aztec and Incan warriors was the fact that most of the native battle strategy revolved around slightly wounding and capturing your opponent, instead of simply killing him. The Spaniards had no intentions of doing anything but efficiently killing their opponents.

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This is because of the 'flower war' history - where the Aztec Tripple Alliance would agree to wage war, not for territory, but for captives, which were later then used for sacrifice.

Also, it wasn't cortez or pizarro that killed the Americans, it was the plague - flu, pox, typhus and others, that was brought by them to the continent. Native Americans did not have enough immunity to deal with these diseases, so they're wiped out. If I remember correctly, 95% of native americans were dead by the time the conquest was ended.

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[deleted]

> Not sure what kind of nationalistic textbooks they taught you in school.

I am not american and not even caucasian. Never read any textbook material about it.

> Yes disease killed most, but they still SLAUGHTERED hundreds of thousands.

Which is what I am saying, so why are you mad? The conquistadors killed some, but the primary killer is plague - it's a fact. The cocoliztli plague killed up to 80% of native american population, while a second outbreak killed up to 50% of the remainder. That's not counting influenza, smallpox, diptheria and other diseases. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquistador#Military_advantages

> Because that Conquistador tortured people and did so many horrible things (feeding people to dogs, bashing babies on rocks, burning people alive)

Yes, conquistadors did bad things. Aztec Empire were no better. Both wage wars and kill people for territorial and ideological advances. Your point?

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[deleted]

Yes. They are both the same. Pretty sure Aztecs like to set children on fire, drown people, cutting open people to get their still beating heart, nobles would offer their children as sacrifices (and this happened for religious sacrifice, mind you).

As for setting fires to libraries:

Tlacaelel ordered the burning of most of the extant Aztec books, claiming that they contained lies and that it was "not wise that all the people should know the paintings". He thereafter rewrote the history of the Aztec people, placing the Mexica in a more central role.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_Triple_Alliance#Imperial_Reforms

For colonialism:

After Motecuzoma I succeeded Itzcoatl as the Mexica emperor, more reforms were instigated to maintain control over conquered cities.[18] Uncooperative kings were replaced with puppet rulers loyal to the Mexica. A new imperial tribute system established Mexica tribute collectors that taxed the population directly, bypassing the authority of local dynasties.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_Triple_Alliance#Imperial_Reforms

Wars that doesn't even have territorial or ideological cause, it's just so that they can have fresh supply of human sacrifices :

One component of this reform was the creation of ritual wars called the Flower Wars. These wars created a steady supply of experienced Aztec warriors and war captives for human sacrifice. Flower wars were pre-arranged by the emperors and enemy cities and conducted specifically for the purpose of collecting prisoners for sacrifice.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_Triple_Alliance#Imperial_Reforms

The spanish at least, wage war to conquer, not just so that they can 'kill people'.

Wiping out entire cities:

Ahuitzotl then began a new wave of conquests including the Valley of Oaxaca and the Soconusco Coast. Due to increased border skirmishes with the Tarascans, Ahuitzotl conquered the border city of Otzoma and turned the city into a military outpost.[30] The population of Otzoma was either killed or dispersed in the process.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_Triple_Alliance#Later_Wars_of_Expansion

> they did not kill to the or whipe out the religion of the people they conquered.

Wiping out religion and belief system that is based on the notion of 'sacrifices'. Good riddance I say.

Also Aztecs cannot wipe out religion of the people they conquered, because the people they conquered are invariably other meso american cultures, which share lots of similarities. It will be like if sunni muslims were to win against shi'a muslims, they can't wipe out shi'a muslims religion because they share similarities, it will be equivalent to wiping themselves out.

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[deleted]

As far as I know, they're both cruelties.

> Also I have never heard of them setting children on fire. You made that up.

Tlaloc was the god of rain. The Aztecs believed that if sacrifices weren't supplied for Tlaloc, rain wouldn't come and their crops wouldn't flourish. Leprosy and rheumatism, diseases caused by Tlaloc, would infest the village. Tlaloc required the tears of the young as part of the sacrifice. The priests made the children cry during their way to immolation: a good omen that Tlaloc would wet the earth in the raining season. In the Florentine Codex, also known as General History of the Things of New Spain, Sahagún wrote

See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Aztec_culture#Tlaloc

Pretty sure immolation means 'kill or offer as sacrifice, by burning'.

> Then you go on to copy past a bunch of irreverent wikipedia pages

That's call trying to cite the sources. You know, so I don't just say stuff without any backing, like you. You think of it as "irreverent" because it does not fit into your worldview. Being irreverent does not change the truth. Don't expect me to be politically correct.

It's funny because I only cite from sources that try to be neutral, while when you cite, you cite on sites whose clear agenda is to promote meso american cultures.

> What do you mean "at least". Conquering is worse and commiting cultural genocide is worse.

Cultures fight each other off on all times. It's part of evolution. The strongest culture will survive. It's basically survival of the fittest in a bigger term. Either they fight by wars, or by assimilation. Conquering each other off actually helps evolution of human civilization. If a culture fights and tries to impose its culture (system of values) upon others, both cultures are tested. Both will change because of the encounter, maybe one will assimilate the other, completely supplant the other and so on. The deaths help the advancement of humanity's culture. That's what makes conquering more meaningful than just killing for the sake of killing.

> Spaniard racism was human sacrifice was more scarring and devastating.

There you go again labeling stuff. It's not racism.

> They just were not to the cruelty or extent of the Spanish.

Well, we disagree. Who's more cruel than who is pretty subjective. To me they're all the same.

> That is still an ideology. Ideology is a way of looking at the world.

And pretty bad one at that. Again, this is subjective.

Now, they didn't fight for imposing their ideology on other people, which is why I thought of it as a waste. It doesn't help cultural evolution of humanity in any way, so lives are wasted for nothing.

> Newsflash. America (and all nations) still commits human sacrifice. And to a great larger degree. A human sacrifice is giving up human lives for a specific goal.

No, human sacrifice is giving up human lives for NO specific goal other than 'to do human sacrifice' itself. We disagree on the definition of human sacrifice, which makes the whole debate rather meaningless.

> Well most polythiestic religions have almost the same religions. Different deities or monsters representing forces of nature and celestial bodies.

Glad you agreed.

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[deleted]

*beep* YEAH INTERNET ARGUMENT!

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YOU WANNA GO TOO?!

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> Incorrect, it just proves you haven't researched this before now as you copy pasted many things we we're
> talking about.

So citing sources is bad? Wow.

> Not true in the slightest. And many wikipedia pages due have agendas, especially with naming conventions.
> Like using "Aztec" when that was put on hundreds of years later but a guy selling books. Or using
> "Ancient Greek" instead of Hellenies. Many things. It's all over the place.

They're as neutral as any resource on the internet can be. You're trying to make citing looks bad, which is laughable.

> No, that a shows maturity and liberalism away from a hard nationalistic nontolerant society.

Yes, of course! Why didn't I think of that? I'm sure liberalism and tolerance are all the aztecs ever thought about when they slashed open the bodies of people to get their still beating heart!

No, it shows their commitment to human sacrifices, as they fought just so that they can have somebody to sacrifice.

> no. It's simply giving something up for something else.

This debate is going nowhere. Different definitions for pretty much everything.

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[deleted]

seven_rchristie YOU ARE A FOOL!!! the reason everyone was mocking your supposed citing of sources is because its WIKIPEDIA!! no school, college or university would every allow a student to use wikipedia to cite anything WHY......

BECAUSE ANYONE CAN WRITE ON AND CHANGE "THE FACTS" ON WIKIPEDIA, THATS WHY ITS NOT A RELIABLE SOURCE AND WHY PEOPLE ARE LAUGHING AT YOU!!!

God you are stupid, now i know this isnt school however if you are going to start moaning about citing sources you cant cite things that i could change, or you or anyone else can go on and mess about with. now you may look something up on wikipedia to get some history on it then go to EDUCATIONAL (.edu just incase you dont understand) sites and look up documented historical FACTS!!! yes history may be written by the victors BUT the mayan civilization was NOT WIPED OUT!!! there are even mayan descendants to this day. do you not think these tribes who had living but displaced people, told their children how their tribe was slaughtered by this one, or our people used to fish in these rivers, hunt here, sacrifice people to our gods. Understandably when a civilization is wiped out or completely stamped out then yes we cannot believe the history books just coz they say it, this is where checking other sources, works, books, coz guess what.... while a lot was burnt, destoryed or lost, not all of it was!!


WIKIPEDIA IS NOT A RELIABLE SOURCE!!!!!! STOP BEING RETARDED!!! IF YOUR TRYING TO MAKE A POINT IN AN ARGUEMENT DONT QUOTE WIKIPEDIA, learn and research before you run your mouth quoting the most unreliable source on the internet.

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Dude, if you're going to be pedantic, learn to farking spell.

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Ignore him.

Cyclo is a notorious troll among the imdb boards.

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Wtf are u babbling about? Yes they were. White barbarians ransacked rome, ran it into the ground and destabalized an advanced empire and former republic. Theyre backwards brutality brought the dark ages in Europe, retarded themselves and brought on a thousand years of war and plague.
Only the Spaniards could have over matched the brutality of the precolumbian warriors. The Spaniards had over 500 years of non stop war that gave them the military advantage to invade the Americas.
Natives were just chilling living a hippie existance until the Spaniards tried to enslave them, steal their gold and impose the ideologies of christianity by force. Id rather be a fishermen in a coastal aztec tribe than a knave serf in some septic hamlet in middle age Europe. At least Aztecs/Mayans didnt starve and begged their noble overlords for scraps of bread or permission to hunt rats in their forest. Aztecs could just pick mangos out of trees and chill.

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"would you rather live in an ancient Mayan or Aztec society..... or in a white European society?"
White European societies, especially Spain, weren't that nice to live 500 years ago. Ask the persecuted jews for instance.

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wow at such blatant racism.

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[deleted]

I rather live in a Mayan or Aztec culture than the ravenous *beep* our civilization has become.

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If you go back a few centuries white European 'civilisations' were just as savage in their own way with people being hung, drawn & quartered, beheaded, burned, drowned, racked. So to act as though either culture were necessarily kind to people they conquered is biased nonsense. Europeans had better weaponry, and it's that that made them more dominant wherever they invaded.

So no, neither culture would've been nice to live in unless you were part of the wealthy, privileged elite.

Lest we forget, it was Europeans who were going around the world invading, colonising, strip mining, raping, pillaging and plundering, and native populations that weren't wiped out by European-brought diseases or by plain ol' genocide, were turned into 2nd class colonial subjects, or slaves. Africa, for example, was carved up like a friggin cake and shared out between a number of European colonial powers (nicknamed "The Scramble for Africa"). They carved up that continent across pre-existing cultural boundaries, threw peoples together who had been rival cultures...Nigeria is a fine example of what happens when you Balkanise a region. It should've developed naturally into a number of smaller countries but instead the British turned it into one big country encompassing many ethnicities who don't all get along and where there's an obvious hierarchy. The effects of colonialism and imperialism can still be felt today across Africa, the Indian sub-Continent, central and South America. North America and Australasia didn't start out mostly white so how do you suppose that happened?

European imperialism created two huge entities: the Third World, and Multiculturalism. You can make up your own mind what you think is good and bad about those things.



I still don't understand it, why they hate us so much - Valerie, V for Vendetta

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Amen to that, couldn't have said it better myself.

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[deleted]

With all due respect, you are brainwashed by 500 years of psychological determination through the eurocentric paradigm according to which everything that is good in the world is the product of the Caucasian/European civilization whereas the rest of the world is allegedly wallowing in blood-thirst and barbarism.

Your point of view works under the assumption that the concept of civilization itself is the product of the European world consideration and the implication that there is indeed an intrinsic race hierarchy representing inherent mental and psychological inclinations characteristic of the different ethnic groups populating the world.

Your point is also deeply tainted by the concept of progress whereby anything that is from the past is bad, that everything from the present is better and that everything in the future will be best. In short, that the history of human societies can be interpreted as a straight line going in one direction only, from the bad (worst) to the good (best), which translates into the general thinking by which the European societies, being the latest having appeared on earth, are necessarily better than any other.

All that being said, i'm not really blaming you, it is indeed the way humanities are taught in academic circles probably in the whole western civilization, which highlights according to me not a real intent to harm (even though sometimes it has indubitably been the case), but rather the inescapable impossibility of remaining totally objective when studying something as complex and subject to interpretation as the history of human civilizations. Even more so when the data and archaeological evidence are so scarce given the huge timespan in question.

The important thing to remember here is that all the concepts and ideas i mentioned earlier, such as progress, civilization and moral hierarchies based on ethnicities, all those notions as we know them have all been theorized and rationalized in western societies (especially during the XVIII and XIX c.) and as such are all deeply influenced by Caucasian/European ideology which makes them all inherently eurocentric. This is why for instance most people, just like you are convinced that the western world is the holy grail of civilizations, that it is the most perfect human organization possible and that the rest are mere barbarians towards whom the Europeans have a moral duty to bring the enlightenment of civilized progress.

Now for the content of your post:

The film is historically accurate on many levels, especially in its depiction of the brutality that was so pervasive in the Mayan and Aztec cultures


It's almost impossible to ascertain with certitude what those Mesoamerican cultures were or weren't and any attempt to do so is inevitably culturally biased. Let it be noted that most of what we know about human sacrifices among the Aztecs is known from post-conquest codexes such as Ramirez Codex, Codex Tudela, or Codex Magliabechiano, written by baptized Christian Aztecs.
There is no comprehensive and even quantitative data from any non-Christian source. It is also known that Franciscan bishop Juan de Zumárraga burned all pre-Christian Aztec books that could shed any non-biased light at the pre-Christian Aztec customs.

Also, the concept of "brutality" itself is an ethnocentric one and the elements of its definition are inappropriate to consider other kinds of cultural behaviors. For instance, the fate that awaits a person sentenced to death can be considered as "brutality" or "barbarism" in any region of the world wherein death penalty is forbidden, whereas the same punishment is nothing more than the applicable law in regions that practice it.
Another example would be the habit spread among some royal courts in Europe (especially in France) of entertaining the guests and the royal family by torturing and burning small animals, such as cats and dogs. At the time, none of this was considered neither as brutality nor as barbarism.

As you can see, man has always found a way to define all vile behaviors and practices as being part of whatever doesn't constitute his own culture/reality. Evil is the other, never us. Reason why we are always so keen to throw around terms such as barbarism, brutality and cruelty towards everything that doesn't make sense in our own biased cultural view of the world.

The people who think the white Europeans were worse are funny.


What makes you think that the Europeans were better? I don't think anything can warrant such a claim. What about witch hunts? Burning people at the stake? Institutionalized torture? The Inquisition?

As for me, i don't think any culture is intrinsically worse or better than any other, just fundamentally different. Which means that any attempt to rationalize and fathom specific human and social behaviors using tools, concepts and references created by another civilization is doomed from the outset.

Europeans are not better nor worse than Aztecs, just different. Another cosmogony, another set of morals, different absolutes and different world considerations, moreover, notions such as brutality, cruelty and barbarism can be applied to the European civilization just as well as they are to the pre-Columbian cultures.


The question to ask yourself is, would you rather live in an ancient Mayan or Aztec society..... or in a white European society?


The answer seems so obvious to you, i find that unsettling. Do you know what life was like in the Middle Ages? It wasn't the oasis of happiness you seem to think it was. Life was rough, dangerous and pretty short and frankly, between living in a city riddled with sicknesses wherein people literally threw their dejections from their windows to the middle of the street and living in some village in the forest in harmony with nature, the choice is rather easy as for me.

If my account seems to be an idealization of the Mesoamerican cultures, which i accept, please know that your assessment is one too, except in an opposite manner. You assume that we are good and civilized whereas the others are evil and barbaric.

The only way of discussing those subjects the most objectively possible is to see and admit the cultural biases we grew up with that compel us the feel morally superior and better than any other form of human society... It is an socially constructed and educationally spread illusion, nothing more.



People who don't like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn't have such funny beliefs

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My African friend likes to wax lyrical about how the Zulu's were a beautiful peace loving folk before the British/Europeans showed up . Total nonsense of course .

The same applies here . The original migrants to Central & South America did indeed build fantastic civilisations - unfortunately because of the 'El Nino' effect they sometimes thought the 'Gods' were angry with them and some cultures resorted to Human Sacrifice . Not all the time , but yes , they did it alright .

When i was younger i used to hate my own culture for past deeds . As you get older you realise that all Humans can be pretty evil in certain circumstances . Deal with it .

Hopefully mass enlightenment is at hand but don't hold your breath .

That which does not Kill me makes me Stranger

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I am currently in an Atlantic World history class. My professor said the Aztecs sacrificed roughly a couple thousand a year, which if you think about it, is not that much compared to how many people the Europeans killed in the inquisition or how many died in wars or the plagues. However, they were barbaric to the Spanish when they first arrived, but not barbaric to the natives. It's a different lens the Spanish were looking through, we might call it barbaric, but to the Aztecs it was life.

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Making a movie about Mayans was expensive. I can't imagine a movie about Aztecs. It would be stratospheric. Maybe a video game of Aztecs, Gog of war alike would kick ass

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If you want Mayan history written about that particular period, check out "Yucatan Before and After the Conquest" by Diego de Landa. He was a Spanish Inquisition priest or something that was ordered to compose a history of the Maya after it was discovered that he and the people he was with burned most of their books.

Also, sometimes called the "mayan bible", there is the incomplete (the "full text" was never found (likely burned by the Spanish Inquisition/conquistadors)) "Popol Vuh" which is basically a collection of Mayan mythology and legends.


Also, the movie isn't entirely accurate at all. Keep in mind, it's a fictional epic movie based on Mayan AND Aztec culture. While the Mayans did participate in Human sacrifice, even as brutal as it was depicted in the movie on occasion, from my understanding the Mayans either rarely or never participated in such large scale human sacrifice like that but the Aztecs are known for that.


Just remember it's a movie...a hollywood movie. Not a documentary. As far as ANY movie goes that depicts any native american civilization in Central America/Mexico, Apocalypto is possibly the most accurate and most dedicated to the source materials but it still takes a lot of liberties in the movie.


Keep in mind that while the Mayans were suffering from famines, droughts, etc, the Aztecs in central mexico were thriving. They built their city on fertile swamp lands (plenty of water) with lakes nearby and developed horticulture (farming on floating islands in their rivers, streams, lakes, etc) and irrigation. For all we know, if Cortez hadn't sacked the Aztec main city they would still be around today.


But anyway, the point I am trying to get at... The Mayan's weren't as brutal in real life as they are depicted in the film. In the film it looks as if thousands (if not tens of thousands) of people were recently sacrificed based on the multiple giant body piles throughout the movie. The Aztecs were more on board with that kind of large scale sacrifice.

Also, in Mayan countries, most sacrifices were voluntary and were considered very honorable things to do (sacrifice your life for the good of your country and to make the god's happy). A lot of the victims were wealthy as well. As far as I am aware, only the Aztecs participated in forced sacrifices.

Anyway, I'm not a anthropology professor or archaeologist...

Don't hate on Apocalypto though because it may be stretching the facts a little bit. The film is a masterpiece in my opinion. Mel Gibson is a very talented director, I wish he would make more movies.

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Who gives a rat's patooty if the movie is historically accurate! IT IS A MOVIE. A MOVIE IS A FORM OF ENTERTAINMENT. If you want education, GO BACK TO SCHOOL. GO TO THE LIBRARY. It's amazing ppl have to find fault with such an amazing movie by trying to challenge its historical significance. Where in the title or any part of this movie does it say it is an actual representation of real events.

SMGDH at some ppl's inability to appreciate art its true form.

I don't know who you thing you are, but before the night is thru...I wanna do bad things with you!

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[deleted]

Actually, it isn't very accurate, at all. Supposedly, Mel hired several prominent anthropologists and dismissed most of what they said. The language spoken in this film isn't one that Mayans spoke during the time they were depicted, the sacrifices were something Aztec's did, and so forth. Even the garments they wore were inaccurate, because Mayans wore very little, if any.

It's entertaining, for sure. But accurate? No, sir.

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It's as accurate as a movie needs to be as far as I can tell. It got me interested to know more about native Mesoamerican culture, and what I've read mostly backs Apocalypto's depiction up. It puzzled me at first that they chose the Maya over the Aztecs, since the latter were really the kookoo ones for human sacrifice, but I guess it was because Mayan society was in decline when the Europeans arrived, and that's the main theme of the movie.

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I think that it was historically accurate but the viewer is removed from the movie as a historical drama as it turns out to be an ACTION FLICK!!!

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Most experts on Mayan culture actually think the language, make-up, etc. are all accurate. It's the storyline that isn't accurate (like the Spanish arriving while the Mayans were still living in big cities). And the Mayans did perform those sacrifices, just not on such a big scale.



I'm the grim reaper, lardass, and you're my next customer.

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No one at any time criticized this film for being historically inaccurate, the OP states he was just wondering how accurate it was, that's all.
Artistic license is fine and dandy, some of us who never studied the Mayan/Aztec/Incan civilizations at school are just curious if the types of things that went on (mass forced human sacrifices) is accurate or not, and the timing of the Spaniards arriving etc. I'm not motivated enough to go off and read several books on Mayan history. IMDB exists as a forum to ask other viewers of the film (who are perhaps more well read and knowledgeable on this subject) for their 2 cents.
Some of us would like to know if the stuff that happens in the film is flamboyant or technically fairly true to history.

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For those saying that the Maya were not brutal sacrificers, a viewing of the most recent documentaries from the National Geographic Society and NOVA may convince you otherwise. They most certainly were, unless, of course, they are in cahoots with Mel to make the Maya look bad...

The thorn defends the rose, yet it is peaceful and does not seek conflict.

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There is no way that the Maya sacrificed more humans than the number of Mayans that died as a result of the whites stealing their land. They would've been better off. So once again, I'm confused, is the movie trying to show that the whites showing up was a good thing for the natives?

Please excuse any typos, this was typed on an iPad

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[deleted]

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I don't think anyone would argue that the whites showing up was a good thing for the natives

Please excuse any typos, this was typed on an iPad

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I love how all of you are acting as if you were alive during those times... who is to say this is accurate or inaccurate? We cant go off of history, unless you like to follow the conquerors story... No one really knows what the Mayans or Aztecs were like all we know is what their conquerors wrote of them...

Not to mention that this is a movie.. not a documentary. Id like a movie to be somewhat accurate but if Im looking for complete historical accuracy Ill go read a book.. Stop complaining about things that dont belong here, its entertainment not education.

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[deleted]

It is a tad inaccurate.
The pyramids in the film(the high ones) were no longer in use by the time the Euros arrived.
The Maya had changed to short squat ones.
Its a bit of a mix and match, but its done well.

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I never got the feeling that this movie is trying to show that whites showing up was a good thing for the natives.

The movie simply shows some of the brutal things that the Mayans did, and had to set up an antagonist for Jaguar Paw to escape from to get back to his wife and children.

As for other arguments on this board, it is silly. There were bad natives. There were good natives. There were bad whites. There were good whites. History is not about pointing fingers, but realizing that every culture has screwed up and we had better learn from it. The Mayans practiced brutal sacrifices, especially at Chichen Itza, whether we like it or not. It's fact.

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Thats cos of wasps scared of losing their hands on the control.
Keep the monorities down.

Eat the Neocons.

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To carrotzucchini: quit harping on about "fake names" of people's cultures. It's a matter of life that people use different languages. And when people with one langauge talk about another culture that uses another language it's a necessity to make up a name to refer to that other culture. It happens in every language with every culture. It's not as if "Aztecs" is an exception.

I aplaud discourse and abhor discourse-challenged trolls.

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Winners get to write history.

I personally don't care if they sacrificed ppl to their Gods. ppl were burnt at the stake for deviating from God in Christianity, witch hunts etc.

It's just a shame this is used to undermine the genocide Europeans caused to Central and South America. Plus the new diseases they brang effectively acting like a bioweapon.

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Well said.

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The basic tenet of ANY movie is to entertain, not to inform, even if it is a documentary. Apocalypto was by no means a documentary.

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"I really don't like talking about my flair."

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To the TC: This movie is pretty inaccurate, but in the movie's defense, it's an epic Mel Gibson movie. Those are known for being historically inaccurate.

Welcome to my Nightmare- Freddy Krueger

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well, it's a movie, not a documentary. Take that with a grain of salt.

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I always thought the Spanish arriving was supposed to be ironic. Like, these new people saved the lives of the protagonists, but would go to kill so many more people with disease and conquest.

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I thought the ending was meant to match up with the W. Durant quote at the beginning. We usually associate the arrival of the whites with the downfall of the natives, but in the movie, they had already done a number on themselves, making it easier for them to be conquered. I think the movie was more about present-day America than Mayan culture, so the inaccuracies didn't bother me.

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In Hernan Cortes' own words, he described Tenochtitlan as the Venice of the Americas. He also noted that if the inhabitants of Tenochtitlan were to remove the bridges between the islands that formed the city, the Spanish soldiers would have been sitting ducks. In fact, after the death of Moctezuma, the Spanish had to flee into the night. Over 100 Spanish soldiers were killed and that night was called "La Noche Triste". Tenochtitlan, at the time, had over 250,000 inhabitants. When Cortes came back a year later with an army of Maya and Zapotec warriors, there were only 25,000 people living in the Aztec capital. The inhabitants had died of the diseases carried by the Spanish soldiers.

It is believed that Orellana, the first European explorer of the Amazon river, was responsible for the death of 8 million people without raising one sword. The Spanish Conquistadors were brutal in the subjugation of the native peoples but disease killed way more people than all of the European armies combined. In fact, it is commonly believed that before the first British settlements were made in North America, over 90% of the indigenous population had already been wiped out by disease.

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Huh, I didn't know that. At my college, disease is downplayed as the killer of the American natives. I knew that the Spanish killed a lot of people directly, and I knew that disease also did a number on the natives, but I didn't realize disease was winning by a landslide.

Goddard

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this film (which is excellent) seems to be a bit of Mayan and a bit of Aztec

this is about the Aztecs=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4JabdIKx8s

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Okey lets get one thing straight here.. Slaves is the oldest property of man. EVERY civilization has had it. In ancient ones such as Rome or Egypt, 1 out 3 would be a slave. Slave trade is NOT a European thing.. jesus christ.

And the Indians died from disease, only a few in comparison died from the Spanish in battle, which was justified for the Spanish came to conquer for king and god, not for the sake of killing. If it wasn't the Europeans that came, it would have been the other way around, its the natural way of things.

And yes European way of life was brutal, if you had the wrong religion, sexuality, race, opinion about your king, etc you would face brutal torture and death. But that was the way of things not just in Europe but in pretty much any "advanced" civilization at that age, it was ****ing 500 years ago.

What is worrying is that we go nation TODAY that uses the same intolerance and brutality as was used back then, and those nations are definitely not in Europe, but very close, but I suppose you dont give a **** about that...No its all about the evil Europeans 500 years ago wiping out the (equally evil) less evolved.

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Thhis movie was more about aztecs than the mayans ... at the end I take it as a signal of the worse is yet to come!!! and it came ... natives sacrificed poeple but it was their ideology .. a true way of life ..

in europe all the killings and sacrifices were more about religious control not because a way of life ... so at the end you can say that what the spanish did to the natives was much worse ... and it wasnt for the best as an idiot replied above ... it meant the destruction of great civilizations all across central and south america. ... civilizations that were already more advanced in astronomy and mathemathics than most others in the world. ..and this aseverations can be made from just studying the few remainings from the conquests and time ... one can just imagine all that was lost and all that could've come.

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Nice contextualization.

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