A specialist online resource maintained by professional Mayanists, collecting and directly answering the period's press criticism of the film. Its strength is that it is the rebuttal side of the same documented argument the National Geographic source carries, written by people in the same field as the critics it answers, not a defense from the studio. Its limit is that it is a web resource rather than a peer reviewed journal, so it is cited here for its documented argument and its quotation of the USA Today critique it responds to, not treated as the final word.
Facts
Assessment
Reliability Tier2
Reliability tier 2: an unsigned page on Mesoweb, a specialist Mesoamerican studies resource maintained by working scholars in the field, without the accountability a named byline carries but backed by subject expertise the outlet is known for. NotesRead directly. Quotes a USA Today article citing archaeologists Lisa Lucero (then New Mexico State University) and David Webster (Pennsylvania State University), who argued mass sacrifice as shown "was relatively unknown in the Classic Maya culture, being a feature rather of the Aztec civilization" and questioned the Yucatec language choice and the Veracruz filming location as being outside the Maya region. Mesoweb's own analysis answers that Apocalypto is explicitly set in the Late Postclassic period, not the Classic period, when mass sacrifice is in fact documented among the Maya and Yucatec was the spoken language of the Yucatan peninsula.
Citation
PublisherMesoweb
URLhttps://www.mesoweb.com/reports/apocalypto.html
Source Typereference
Claims Backed By This Source (9 claims)
This source backs 9 claims across the atlas. As facts: 7 well-attested. Plus 2 entities citing it as a general reference with no single fact or relationship attached.
Disposition By Topic
- Sources, 6 claims: 6 well-attested.
- Articles, 2 claims: 1 well-attested, 1 general references.
- Screen Works, 1 claims: 1 general references.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.