the sacrificial altar is not mayan in origin and they (the mayans) almost certainly did not sacrifice people in such huge numbers as shown in the movie. Women and children sold into slavery, no direct evidence of those things happening either. I think that history has taken a back seat to emotional appeal so as to elicit a certain response from the movie's viewers. This is just par for the course as far as I can tell whenever a movie deals with or claims to deal with historical events.
Its why I like books more than movies, especially when I want a history fix. Even still, I found apocalypto entertaining.
I don;t remember in the movie or in this thread, anyone saying the sacrificial alter was of Mayan design. My take is that the movies was great. It was fictional and fantastical, as evidenced by some of the battle scenes. The "body and body-part pits" seemed a little over-the-edge. However, assume for a moment that all of the persons sacrificed (children included)
as evidenced by the sum collection of pictographs, lore, and archeological findings, were sacrificed in one day. I certainly wouldn;t think so BUT, if it occurred in one day, the pits of death seen in that movie would be a grand understatement. The estimates of death by sacrifice run into the tens of thousands, with no one sure of an exact number. Let's not forget there are hundreds if not thousands of scientists who have studied and are currently study the Mayan civilization alone. This isn;t Mel Gibson's thesis. It's a movie based on a real civilization featuring a main character or three.
Now, this is not what Gibson was trying to relay (at least, not in my opinion based solely on wathcing the movie). What it appeared to me he was trying to portray was strife and love: a main character who survives the odds and returns to his wife and children.
As far as there being no
direct evidence of women and children sold into slavery, you may be right. We have no living witnesses to tell us it was true. Instead, we have circumstancial evidence consisiting of (again) pictographs, lore, and archeological findings. Additionally, we have history around the world (including here in America) where women and children have been sold into slavery, giving credence and plausibility to the evidentiary findings indicating it occurred on a relatively large scale in southern Mexico and Central America (Mayan tribes) [speaking about them and leaving out others only because of the topic of this thread]
I'm with you. I prefer my history to come from books, preferrably several sources. But the topic of this thread happens to be about a movie. Gibson obviously was not trying to make an historical documentary.... rather he was making an action movie. An action movie based on a very short period of time during the reign of a civilization, the overall basis of which is based n historical fact..... or at least, what scientists (archeological) believe to be fact because of the evidence compiled and currently available to them.
as did my wife, my son, and everyone that watched it with me at work. 
