Ancient Mayan Culture

One of the groups did Mayan culture for the group presentations last Tuesday in class. They talked about many different aspects of ancient Mayan civilization. There is a film called Apocalypto that does a superb job at visually showing us many of these aspects. Certain human behaviors of the ancient Mayans are illustrated in Apocalypto in great detail, and certain aspects of the culture, such as human sacrifice, is shown in vivid and gruesome detail. This is important in my opinion because it successfully demonstrates the brutality and strangeness of the customs of ancient Mayans. I wonder how accurate the portrayal of these customs are in the film, but listening to the presentation in class, there are a lot of parallels between the actual facts and what happens in the movie. It seems that the film makers really did their research, but there is always the chance that they glamoured it up and emphasized things to make it more dramatic and enjoyable.