I've been to the Tulum ruins.
That village in the film in no way resembled the Tulum ruins.
The pyramid/temple staircase heights in the film were very steep and had about 100 steps. The highest staircase in Tulum is about 24 steps.
You could say that about any civilization that gets reorganized out of existence by another civilization that impinges successfully on it, which is exactly what happened to the New World societies, which were ravaged by Old World diseases propagated in the Columbian Exchange (see, Secret Judgments of God, which discusses both the colonial and precolonial epidemics which attacked New World societies after first contact).
Gibson's Apocalypto is based in part on the boutique idea of the last decade, that (classical) Mayan civilization simply exhausted its resources and thus undermined its own abilities to organize people, competencies it tried to leverage by intensifying the organizational activities in order to try to meet the crisis. Postclassical Mayan cities are also thought to have been in crisis before the Spanish arrived, as witness the formation of the defensive League of Mayapan in the Yucatan, and perhaps for some of the same reasons, but the full story may not have been elucidated yet.
This exhaustion thesis is also being pushed concerning central Mexican civilization, and it is supported by forensic studies of excavated burials, which show deteriorating health among the people.
The collapse of the Mayan Classic cities occurred centuries before contact, and the Postclassical Mayan city of Tulum in the Yucatan, which Gibson's fictional city resembles sitewise, fell to revolt at least 50 years before the arrival of the Spanish (about the time of first contact, in other words).
The fate of the city depicted in Apocalypto turns, however, not on its afflictions, but on a "judgment of God" formed in secret and then delivered to the frightened Mayan warriors by a plague-stricken but inspirited girl, who pronounces an oracular doom on the city. The rest of the film is the unfoldment of her doomsday pronouncement of divine judgment, which is contrasted with the cynicism of the head chac officiating at the ceremonies and declaiming to the vast crowds below.
The bottom line is that the arrival of the Spanish in the New World was, in Gibson's opinion at least, as expressed through his film, the descent of the hand of God Himself on the civilizations of the New World and the fulfilment of His fatal judgment of their lurid perversions and brutalities. Noah's neighbors got the Flood, Lot's got the brimstone, and the Mayan kings and priests got the conquistadores.
Well put - even if the Spanish Conquistadores were the judgment of God on the Mayans, they were angels of mercy compared to the Mayan priests and people. The Spanish did not sacrifice or eat the Mayans but the Mayans had no scruples about doing this to others.
I've been to the Tulum ruins.
That village in the film in no way resembled the Tulum ruins.
The pyramid/temple staircase heights in the film were very steep and had about 100 steps. The highest staircase in Tulum is about 24 steps.
