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7/11/2025, 9:22:56 PM
>>715170575
>bloodthirsty brutal barbaric savages
The Aztec specifically were violent warmongers who brutally subjugated the surrounding tribes. A lot of people have this idea of the Spanish waltzing up with a handful of conquistadors and conquering everything solely because of their super tech. It's more like the Spanish easily recruited all the other tribes to help them overthrow the Aztec so the bulk of their armies were comprised of other natives with the Spanish conquistadors just acting as small elite units. Then after defeating the Aztec the Spanish pulled the "more like under new management" on the rest of the natives.
What also gets lost is that European colonization spans 500 years and essentially comprises the entire development of Europe from medieval kingdoms into industrialized, post-enlightenment modern civilization. And in that same span, 90% of the native population was wiped out by disease. So Native American societies are undergoing a sort of reverse development. Their grand kingdoms are withered away by a literal apocalypse. All this to say the 16th century Spanish Empire was way more similar to the natives they conquered than they are to contemporary society. This wasn't a clash of modernity versus primitives, it was more like Rome's conquest of Gaul.
>Apocalypto
The issue with this movie is that it haphazardly combines a whole bunch of iconography from a ton of different tribes across wildly different geographies and time periods. It also plays up piercings and body/hair ornamentation as being really common and widespread when it was probably mostly a thing for the upper castes. Though I have to say, the movie is sort of overhated for this. Medieval fantasy already does similar shit for European history and nobody bats an eye.
>bloodthirsty brutal barbaric savages
The Aztec specifically were violent warmongers who brutally subjugated the surrounding tribes. A lot of people have this idea of the Spanish waltzing up with a handful of conquistadors and conquering everything solely because of their super tech. It's more like the Spanish easily recruited all the other tribes to help them overthrow the Aztec so the bulk of their armies were comprised of other natives with the Spanish conquistadors just acting as small elite units. Then after defeating the Aztec the Spanish pulled the "more like under new management" on the rest of the natives.
What also gets lost is that European colonization spans 500 years and essentially comprises the entire development of Europe from medieval kingdoms into industrialized, post-enlightenment modern civilization. And in that same span, 90% of the native population was wiped out by disease. So Native American societies are undergoing a sort of reverse development. Their grand kingdoms are withered away by a literal apocalypse. All this to say the 16th century Spanish Empire was way more similar to the natives they conquered than they are to contemporary society. This wasn't a clash of modernity versus primitives, it was more like Rome's conquest of Gaul.
>Apocalypto
The issue with this movie is that it haphazardly combines a whole bunch of iconography from a ton of different tribes across wildly different geographies and time periods. It also plays up piercings and body/hair ornamentation as being really common and widespread when it was probably mostly a thing for the upper castes. Though I have to say, the movie is sort of overhated for this. Medieval fantasy already does similar shit for European history and nobody bats an eye.
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