Apocalypto....uh, Mel?...

[LTS TRN 2]

Someone tell Mel that the Mayan civilization in fact had already collapsed a full five-hundred years before the arrival of the Spanish. The cause remains one of the great mysteries of archeology. Three prominent theories: Invasion from the northern warring tribes; environmental disaster from over building the elaborate irrigation systems; revolt against the priests for whatever reason.

The still substantial population of Mayans who greeted the Spaniards revealed that they in fact had no idea who had built the huge pyramids and temples--and didn't know their meaning or purpose. A great deal of Mayan lore had been carefully preserved, it's true, in a large store of codices. These were ceremoniously burned in a "cleansing" ritual conducted by a particularly fervent and stupid Spanish priest (a guy much like Mel, come to think of it).

Notice how Mel's action flick doesn't pay a bit of attention to the astonishing calenderics of the Mayans. These chronomic miracles are so precise that even modern day astronomers haven't begun to understand how they were devised.

BTW, the Mayan calender is set to "complete" in what we call 2012.

[Atomic Punk]

WGAF tard?

[Rich Fader]

Mel, if you do happen on this thread, do you suppose you could see your way clear to setting it up so LT2 gets his heart ripped out? Not in a movie, but in real life? Cheers.

[The Seer]

Why pick on Mel? He hates jews too....

[Wolfman]

was reading about the movie and wondered if Mel had been influenced by this--

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060736/

[FATALFART]

i built that sh!t

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

Apocalypto is an allegory to the current situation regarding America's border control with Mexico.
Trust me, I'm so-o-o-o-o on the money with this.

RACK Mel.

[LTS TRN 2]

The still substantial population of Mayans who greeted the Spaniards revealed that they in fact had no idea who had built the huge pyramids and temples--and didn't know their meaning or purpose.

The lost tribe from Israel built them using native draft horses and stainless steel precision surveying equiptment.

sincerely
Joseph Smith

Nice. And if you think this very construct hasn't filled Mel's fervid headspace, you don't understand Signs!

[Ingse Bodil]

The still substantial population of Mayans who greeted the Spaniards revealed that they in fact had no idea who had built the huge pyramids and temples--and didn't know their meaning or purpose.

The lost tribe from Israel built them using native draft horses and stainless steel precision surveying equiptment.

sincerely
Joseph Smith

The sad thing is that there are people who will want to believe that. Of course, there are statues and monuments in Egypt whom even the Egyptians didn't know who actually built them. Whenever I hear these stories I'm always reminded of Etrusca; and on the other hand, of how many port cities in history have been wiped away, like New Orleans, but without modern means of raising them back up; but also of Alexandria, and muslim attempts to deface hindu statues with dynomite, and of euro zeal in destroying the old world because there can never be any competition for the One True God (whoever that god may be).

Then again, I don't think the 'baby faced' statues of the Olmecs (different group, but I'm riffing on how 'victors' determine history) are of babies or demons, either. As for Mel Gibson, I'm glad he made this movie, even if the history is a little off. He's the only one who's trying, and we should thank god someone is out there trying to give us alternative stories instead of the same old stories of the same old feats... for example, how many movies have been made about the three great queens (Elizabeth I, Victoria, and now Elizabeth II)? I realize that's not fair, since that's not really Hollywood doing those movies, but Hollywood does lap up anything with a whiff of the anglophile about it when it comes to awards and fawning. Meanwhile, the rest of us get Superman Returns, My Super Ex-Girlfriend and the Ring 2. Besides, he's doing this attempting to use the language of the mayans? Mel Gibson is a drunk, and a anti-semite... but Hollywood welcomes all sorts in praising greatness. If Hollywood can lockstep behind pedophiles (plural) and rapists for the sake of Art, they need the bury the hatchet with Mel and give him due praise as well.

The only thing I hope is that this doesn't mean an avalanche of inferior knock-off movies.

[See You Next Wednesday]

The movie is a standard action flick that just happens to be set in the jungles of Central America or wherever 500 year ago. It has no historical relevance whatsoever.

[Uncle Fester]

I think Mel and a small army of new Hollywood directors draw their "inspiration" from stuff like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmcrreUVBeo

[Cuda]

euro zeal in destroying the old world because there can never be any competition for the One True God (whoever that god may be).

Maybe the Euros just weren't into mass human sacrifice. How "judgmental" of them...

I knew IB couldn't stay away from posting very long

Nice vacation from her, while it lasted

[PSUFAN]

Maybe the Euros just weren't into mass human sacrifice.

A Kinder, Gentler Pizzaro...

[BSmack]

Maybe the Euros just weren't into mass human sacrifice. How "judgmental" of them...

Yea, the Inquisition was just a party that got a little out of hand.

[Tom In VA]

Maybe the Euros just weren't into mass human sacrifice. How "judgmental" of them...

Yea, the Inquisition was just a party that got a little out of hand.

Judging from 90% of the pron originating from that filthy continent, it looks like it might have been just that.

[Cuda]

Maybe the Euros just weren't into mass human sacrifice. How "judgmental" of them...

Yea, the Inquisition was just a party that got a little out of hand.

The "inquisition" was a mostly political response to islamic agitation against the Church, dumbfuck

[BSmack]

Maybe the Euros just weren't into mass human sacrifice. How "judgmental" of them...

Yea, the Inquisition was just a party that got a little out of hand.

The "inquisition" was a mostly political response to islamic agitation against the Church, dumbfuck

That the Spanish Inquisition was used by Ferdinand and Isabella as a political tool to unite their kingdom does not mitigate in any way the atrocities that came with the Inquisition.

[Cuda]

In those times, people really didn't see those practices as subhuman, regardless of religion. It was just the way things were.

[Cuda]

By our standards, yes.

Even by Ferdinand & Isabella's standards, too

But not really by Mayan standards of the day.

The Mayans accepted it as the way thigs were, but that didn't mean they were into it.

When the Spaniards showed up and didn't immediately start hacking out hearts, it created a pretty favorable impression, I'd guess

[PSUFAN]

Let's blow a little life into this.

What exactly is being claimed here? That the Spaniards came to the New World with the aim of civilizing the indigents?

[BSmack]

Hacking people's hearts out of their chests en masse was indeed properly considered a subhuman form of behavior.

Why that's just barbaric!

sin

Drawing and quartering
Burning at the stake
The breaking wheel

[Cuda]

They went with it- just not enthusiastically. They were probably pretty enthusiastic when it was somebody else's heart, though

[Cuda]

Let's blow a little life into this.

What exactly is being claimed here? That the Spaniards came to the New World with the aim of civilizing the indigents?

If by civilizing them, you mean converting them to Christianity, then yeah. They fucked up, though, and left it in the hands of the Jesuits (same principle as leaving the occupation of Iraq in the hands of Chimpy & Rumsafeld)

They also came for the gold.

[Tom In VA]

Hacking people's hearts out of their chests en masse was indeed properly considered a subhuman form of behavior.

Why that's just barbaric!

sin

Drawing and quartering
Burning at the stake
The breaking wheel

Shut up before you get to sit on the Judas Cradle and get the Pear of Anguish.


Great Link on European ingenuity and engineering to further "civilized" behaviours. :D

http://www.occasionalhell.com/infdevice/

[Ingse Bodil]

Hacking people's hearts out of their chests en masse was indeed properly considered a subhuman form of behavior.

[Irrelevant attempt at moral equivalence]

Fuck off, dipshit.

In other words, BSmack won the argument, and you have nothing in your arsenal except what's left of the shit you've flung from your hand in the first place.

You're supposed to be the history buff, and all of a sudden you're acting indignant over New World atrocities while downplaying Old World atrocities? If I didn't see it from you, I wouldn't have thought it of you.

Cuda, what's your beef with the Jesuits?

PSUFan, nice Pizarro blast. Thank you.


And again, I don't care that it's just an action flick with the details fucked up. So's the Odyssey. So's the epic of Gilgamesh. So's Zulu Dawn and Lawrence of Arabia, to get modern. So's every tale from every land. Doesn't matter. What does matter is that it's an action flick of the Mayans from the Mayan point of view -- when's the last time that's happened with a big hollywood budget? That's right: never. Keep em coming, Mel.

[BSmack]

Fuck off, dipshit.

This device was being used in Europe into the 19th Century. But the Myans were barbaric and the Euros not?



Call it moral equivalence if you must. But 16th Century Europeans had no business calling ANYBODY barbaric.

[Ingse Bodil]

what is that? and what worse torture was it meant to be the humane version of?

[Prancer]

what worse torture was it meant to be the humane version of?

Being forced to read the textual diarrhea that you post.

[BSmack]

what is that? and what worse torture was it meant to be the humane version of?

It's a gibbet. It was used to publicly display the corpses of executed criminals.

You're half right. The gibbet was also a means of execution. The method was to hang the gibbet with the person inside until said person died of exposure/starvation.

Real civilized.

[Tom In VA]

what is that? and what worse torture was it meant to be the humane version of?

It's a gibbet. It was used to publicly display the corpses of executed criminals.

It was also to used to make corpses.


Then of course there was the "breaking wheel" or "Catherine's Wheel"

""Breaking with the wheel" was second only in popularity to hanging as a means of capital punishment, but it was decidedly more painful and brutal.

The condemned was usually staked out on the ground with wooden timbers placed strategically below the limbs. The executioner then repeatedly smashed the limbs using the iron edges of the wheel, careful not to deliver killing blows.

Once the victim's bones were thoroughly broken, his or her limbs were 'braided' into the spokes of the wheel, much like a pretzel. Then the wheel was erected horizontally on a pole, with the victim left to die a slow, agonizing death."


"image copyright Erik Ruhling, used with permission". from
http://www.occasionalhell.com/pages/copyright.shtml

Public executions and torture, fun for the whole family and the bed rock upon which cultured and civilized nations are built.

[Tom In VA]

You're half right. The gibbet was also a means of execution. The method was to hang the gibbet with the person inside until said person died of exposure/starvation.

Real civilized.

No, it wasn't.

In any event, it wasn't a religious observance. It was reserved for the worst form of criminal scum in society.

According to this site you're wrong. In fact, based upon your posts here revealing your thoughts on God and Religion in general, you would have been the lucky recipient of the tongue sheers and having your tongue cut to ribbons before you were put to death or allowed to anguish and die.

http://www.occasionalhell.com/

[Tom In VA]

Based on that you should realise that I would have even greater contempt for this sociopathic insanity then I do for the morons who worship a homosexual, wannabe revolutionary who was nailed to a cross.

Disbelief AND calling Christ a homosexual. Great, back then, that would have TWO "Pears of Anguish", for starters. By the end of the morning with what's left of your tongue you'd be begging to have your heart cut out.

[Hobbes]

Mods/Admins, isn't there some way to implement a moratorium on anything IB? Please? I actually got a laugh out of this place once in a while but I can see that's all going to come to a screeching halt with the resident thread killer back on the prowl.

[BSmack]

It's beside the point. Medieval punishment for murderers has nothing to do with New World savages cutting the hearts out of peoples' chests to make the rains come or whatever the fuck it was they thought they were doing.

And the Euros did the same thing as a penalty for High Treason. Actually it was a 4 part process.

1. Dragged on a hurdle (a wooden frame) to the place of execution. (drawn)
2. Hanged by the neck, but removed before death (hanged).
3. Disemboweled, and the genitalia and entrails burned before the victim's eyes (often mistaken for drawing).[1]
4. Beheaded and the body divided into four parts (quartered).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drawing_and_quartering

[Ingse Bodil]

you're acting indignant over New World atrocities while downplaying Old World atrocities?

Whereas you prefer to ignore New World atrocities and overblow Old World atrocities.

Care to comment on the practice of cutting the heart out of living, conscious human beings as a religious observance?

You think maybe that practice might not leave a very favorable impression on strangers?

Where am I ignoring the New World's atrocities? I know why Dona Maria pulled her b.s., even if I ultimately don't agree with it and think she's a stone cold bitch for doing it; I do know why she did it. And I don't think a certain disgusting and disgustingly simple torture Aaron Eckhart suffered in 'The Missing' (when he should have suffered it 'In the Company of Men', but that's off-topic) was pulled completely out of filmmakers' asses.

My problem is with you holding up the New World's atrocities as some kind of epitome of inhumanity and bestialness. As BSmack and Tom in VA are proving -- and unfortunately don't have to go very far in that proving -- the Old World held its own and then some in the atrocity department.

Besides, you want to talk religion? What were the autos de fey except religious ceremonies, at their heart? Seriously. Get everyone together in bloody communion and re-affirmation of faith, while the scandalous, the sacrilegious, the heretical -- and the innocent -- are made an example of.

Meanwhile, the very symbol of the faith -- an instrument of torture! -- the crucifix itself -- is paraded around for the faithful to genuflect before in adoration and wonder and awe and love.


What's so different? Eat his body drink his blood -- what's so different? Carve the hearts out of prisoners, burn heretics alive (that whole thing about cutting throats before the flames get too high is ghastly, by itself, and wasn't always done),

or go old school indeed, and wall up young men and women alive into foundations so that fortresses and cities may stand, toss sacrifices into bogs, into lakes, into volcanoes, into pits,

burn the living with the dead so that the dead will have company in the afterlife,

human sacrifice -- blood sacrifice -- is as old as blood taboos in the first place. Ask Abraham, and what would have happened to Isaac if that ram hadn't been caught in that bush;

or the former owners of the 10,000 foreskins David presented to Saul as Tamar's dowry.

or... one can just get into the really freaky golden bough stuff that i'm not relating here because i don't remember all of it and i don't know how much of that was real and how much of that was mistranslation. but all that's just religion. There's the stuff BSmack and Tom speak of, which is about punishment as well as religion.


So they cut hearts out for their gods. To me, their sin wasn't cutting hearts out for god -- why is it a bad thing to cut it out for god, but not to do so in war, the same wars that netted those sacrifices in the first place, soldier boy -- it was using non-believers hearts for the sacrifices, instead of their own. You're not supposed to use substitutes. THAT'S what's wrong with the whole picture. That's the dastardliness. Believers can do whatever they want to themselves; don't bring other people into it though, and still assume sanctification.

Unless it's a way of culling the young men, the threat, the enemies at your border in the grandest way possible. Then it's genius. Or don't you agree?

[Ingse Bodil]

So don't commit high treason. How hard is that?

speaking of ... is a blow job still high treason, but lying one's way into a quagmire across the ocean still in the national interest? republican to republican.

[Goober McTuber]

My problem is with you holding up the New World's atrocities as some kind of epitome of inhumanity and bestialness. As BSmack and Tom in VA are proving

If you ever spent any time at TNW, you know that BSmack and Hillbilly in VA were responsible for a lot of atrocities on that board. Pretty much unreadable.

[Tom In VA]

My problem is with you holding up the New World's atrocities as some kind of epitome of inhumanity and bestialness. As BSmack and Tom in VA are proving

If you ever spent any time at TNW, you know that BSmack and Hillbilly in VA were responsible for a lot of atrocities on that board. Pretty much unreadable.

You're actually coming up with original stuff today. A change from your typical gravy training.


Congrats.

[Ingse Bodil]

My problem is with you holding up the New World's atrocities as some kind of epitome of inhumanity and bestialness.

But they pretty much are the "epitome of inhumanity and bestialness".

There is nothing else in the annals of any religion on Earth that can compare with it in scale.

*Right.
(self-edit)


and the answer is no. LOL

[Ingse Bodil]

The emperor is god. God's will be done. That's not religion? The pleasure of god is only entertainment, not religion? Destroying heretics before God, and the Glory which is God, is not about religion?

Now you're being dense. I don't know if it's because you don't want to give up your pet bias against the New World; or if you really can't conceive of what happens with state religion when it's perverted the way the romans perverted (or brought to its proper frution... since that's also an arguable, and arguably correct, possibility) state religion.