Apocalypto: The Mayan Culture

The Mayan civilization strived from 500 A.D. to around 1000 A.D., but over time many key factors decreased their populations. Although there are not many Mayans today, there are still some who are threatened. The movie Apocalypto is a visual today that shows us all of the common problems that the Mayan culture faced. In this movie, one Mayan tribe was attacked by another tribe which is known as a raiding party. They killed many but took the rest of the men and women on a long journey to their village where they would be slaves or sacrificed to the gods. Sacrificing people to the Gods was an important part of their culture. The movie follows an indian named Jaguar Paw who was one of the many captured indians, but was luckily able to escape

being sacrificed to the Gods. Like life today, the Mayans were not careful with their actions and how it would affect the environment.
To begin with, the disintegration of the Mayan civilization is similar to the threats that America and other nations face today. There are three main reasons which are widespread environmental degradation, excessive consumption, and political corruption. Many key factors led to degradation of the environment for the Mayans. The main reason was deforestation. Similar to what we do today, the Mayans would cut down forests so they could have room to make or expand their civilization. Environmental degradation also led to drought. Drought destroyed many agricultural fields especially fields of crops. Excessive consumption is another problem that we share with the Mayans. Today whether it's food or resources, Americans tend to consume a lot of it. For the Mayans, they consumed a lot of natural resources to build their villages. They often used tree branches, and they also used limestone to build the temples. Lastly, political corruption occurred in the Mayan civilization and it occurs in society today. For the Mayans, the higher class tribes wore the most jade jewelry. For example, in the movie Apocalypto, the captured men are taken to the top of a temple to be sacrificed. The most important members who make most of the decisions were covered in jade. Today in American society, the president is the highest class member who makes most of the decisions.
Out of the three themes, I think widespread environmental degradation is the biggest threat to society. Today, most Americans do not care about the big issue of global warming. We have been polluting the air with our daily activities and we aren’t doing anything about it even though we know its great harm to the environment. If we continue the path we are on, it will be too late to stop it. Another problem connected to widespread environmental degradation that we face today similar to the Mayans is deforestation. We are cutting down so many forests to replace them with huge cities and towns causing overpopulation in many areas. This issue of widespread environmental degradation also played a role in the Mayan collapse. The Mayan tribes were often forced to leave their villages because of problems in the environment especially drought and not being able to grow necessary crops.
All of these reasons led to demise of Mayan civilization which are all shown as themes of the movie Apocalypto.