While on his first appearance on The Dick Cavett Show, John Lennon
commented that Christians destroyed most all of the Mayan
writings-leaving historians and archeologist at a loss. Why did Mel
Gibson turn a blind eye to this inconvenient truth about this legacy to
his faith?

"ghugle" aol.com> wrote in message
news:1165866785.213075.34410@f1g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

Probably figures he owns the truth and can do what he damn well pleases with
it.

Writing and Hieroglyphics
The Maya writing system is considered by archaeologists to be the most
sophisticated system ever developed in Mesoamerica.

The Maya wrote using 800 individual signs or glyphs, paired in columns
that read together from left to right and top to bottom. Maya glyphs
represented words or syllables that could be combined to form any word
or concept in the Mayan language, including numbers, time periods,
royal names, titles, dynastic events, and the names of gods, scribes,
sculptors, objects, buildings, places, and food. Hieroglyphic
inscriptions were either carved in stone and wood on Maya monuments and
architecture, or painted on paper, plaster walls and pottery.

Glyphs representing, from left to right, the sky, an ahau (king), a
house, a child, and the city of Palenque.
The unit of the Maya writing system is the glyphic cartouche, which is
equivalent to the words and sentences of a modern language. Maya
cartouches included at least three or four glyphs and as many as fifty.
Each cartouche contained various glyphs, as well as prefixes and
suffixes. There is no Maya alphabet.

Maya writing is difficult to interpret for a number of reasons. First,
glyphs do not represent just sounds or ideas, they can represent both,
making it difficult to know how each glyph or cartouche should...

Father Diego de Landa(1524-79) was the first head of the Franciscans
and thesecond Bishop of Yucatán. Landa has become bothfamous and
infamous in Mayan history and archaeolo-gy. In 1566 he wrote a book
entitled "Relación de lasCosas de Yucatán" ("Relation of the
Affairs of theYucatán"), a thorough account of all aspects of
pre-conquest Mayan civilization. Much of our present day knowledge of
the Mayan calendars and the deci-pherment of Mayan glyphs is based on
the Relación.But Landa learned in 1562 that a large number of Mayawere
secretly "practicing idolatry" and so he organizedan
"auto-da-fé" in front of the monastery at Maní.There the
"idolaters" were tortured and humiliated,Mayan ceramics and
sculptures were destroyed, andthousands of books ("codices") were
burned. Landa hadwritten "the...

source dallasvida.com

Gibson hired Carla Hool, a Mexico City based casting agent. "They had
to be really physically fit with bodies more like those of dancers and
have great deal of stamina," says Hool. "The Maya led a very
physical life of running and hunting so the physicality of the person
was very important. In fact, part of our casting process was seeing
how they could move and run," she says. (Says Diego de Landa who, in
his first-hand account of the Maya at the time of the Conquest in
Yucatan Before and After the Conquest, "The Indians of the Yucatan
are people of good physique, tall, robust and of great strength...")

source New Republic

It is obvious that Gibson has fallen completely in love with Mayan
culture, and with Mexico in general. He explored the area thoroughly
while scouting for sites; read books about Mayan culture and the fall
of civilizations (including Charles C. Mann's 1491); and scoured the
primary sources, reading Mayan spiritual texts (like the Popol Vuh) as
well as European missionary accounts (like Friar Diego de Landa's
Relaci

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http://www.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment/orl-apocalypto06dec08,0,71576.story...

MOVIES

Apocalypto (3 stars out of 5)
Roger Moore
Sentinel Movie Critic

December 8, 2006

Mel Gibson's Apocalypto passes the only movie test that's important.
It's the "I'd pay to see that" test.

As in, "a blood-spattered jungle-chase epic set at the end of the Mayan
Empire? I'd pay to see that."

It's a movie that spares no effort to take us to a place and time we
haven't been before. Mel's latest history lesson is a parable about
ignorance, environmental degradation, senseless sacrifice and religious
fanaticism. He has made a big film about the collapse of Mayan
civilization, but he's talking about our own.

ghugle wrote:

Isn't Apocalypto set well before the arrival of the Spanish? Cortez
appeared from Cuba in 1519 shortly after Grijalva first explored the
coast of the Maya region. Isn't the film set at the end of the Maya
classical period or somewhere in the early post-classic? It depicts a
period of cultural collapse and social breakdown. There could be as
much as 700 years separation involved between the Spanish and these
imagined events. I haven't seen the film yet but I should think he'd
have at least hinted at the era. Chichen Itza, for example, is an
immense post-classic ruin. The movie posters seem to suggest some
filming was done there. Did that depict a period when it was still a
living city or a sacred ruin? These things have a lot to do with the
chronology.