Finally, the Mayanists say the film appears confused about when events take place.
Rather, most Mayanists suspect the pyramids and the like were built by free Maya who saw it as a civic duty, perhaps forced upon them, labor as tax, or perhaps voluntary, as the medieval cathedrals were built by European guilds.
Masses of gloomy, starved captives are seen toiling under heavy loads, making lime cement and stucco, to build ceremonial centers.īut: "We have no evidence of large numbers of slaves," Taube says. Gibson includes what appears to be widespread slavery. "We know the Aztecs did that level of killing. At times the film appears to confuse the Aztecs (who engaged in mass sacrifice) and the Maya. The film depicts human sacrifice on a large scale and shows an open-pit grave filled with hundreds of headless dead.īut: "We have no evidence of mass graves," says Karl Taube, anthropology professor at the University of California at Riverside. "People think that modern man is so enlightened, but we're susceptible to the same forces," Gibson says. "It was important for me to make that parallel because you see these cycles repeating themselves over and over again," Gibson says. Gibson says he sees parallels between the collapse of the ancient Maya civilization and our own. Gibson declined to be interviewed by The Washington Post, but in production notes, the writer-producer-director states that his initial goal was to create a "high-velocity action-adventure chase film" and that he then sought an ancient culture in which to set his go-fast story. In this case, it's one of the extant Maya languages called Yucatek, which, along with Gibson's skill as a filmmaker, may enhance the verisimilitude of "Apocalypto." As he did in "The Passion of the Christ," which employed spoken Aramaic, Gibson's players in "Apocalypto," many of them indigenous people and non-actors, speak an ancient language. Tough talk, but Gibson has taken heat in the past and come out way ahead. "I can promise you that there will be a massive repudiation of this film, not only as a work of fiction, but as a systematic and willful misrepresentation of the Maya," says David Freidel, archeology professor at Southern Methodist University.