and thus they deserved, in fact, needed, rescue." Richard D. Hansen, a historical consultant on the film, stated in an interview with The Washington Post that the film does "give the feeling [that the Maya were] a sadistic lot", and expressed being "a little apprehensive about how the contemporary Maya will take it." The film's focus on "gratuitous violence" led Julia Guernsey, a professor of Mesoamerican art and culture, to condemn the film, stating in an interview, "there's a lot of really offensive racial stereotyping. They're shown as these extremely barbaric people, when in fact, the Maya were a very sophisticated culture." Guernsey points out that the film is seen through the lens of Western morality and states that it is important to examine "alternative world views that might not match our own 21st century Western ones but are nonetheless valid." Human sacrifice Apocalypto has been criticized for its depictions of mass sacrifices that were more typical for Aztecs than Mayas. Human sacrifice was "arguably less common in ancient Maya society." According to Hansen, the film depicts the post-classic period when the Maya were influenced by the Toltecs and Aztecs. Hansen states, "We know warfare was going on. The Postclassic center of Tulum is a walled city; these sites had to be in defensive positions. There was tremendous Aztec influence by this time. The Aztecs were clearly ruthless in their conquest and pursuit of sacrificial victims, a practice that spilled over into some of the Maya areas." Other disputed depictions of the Mayas include the sacrifice of commoners and mass graves. The Mayas sacrificed nobility and societal elites instead of commoners according to Anthropology professor Stephen Houston. Archaeological sites indicate that the Mayans used several methods for sacrifice such as "decapitation, heart excision, dismemberment, hanging, disembowelment, skin flaying, skull splitting and burning." Anthropologists have also pointed out that there is no evidence of mass graves in Maya as depicted in the film. Hansen states that this is "conjecture", saying that "all [Gibson was] trying to do there is express the horror of it". Another disputed scene, when Jaguar Paw and the rest of the captives are used as target practice, was acknowledged by the filmmakers to be invented as a plot device for igniting the chase sequence. Ending According to the DVD commentary track by Mel Gibson and Farhad Safinia, the ending of the film was meant to depict the