"Every part of this country is sacred to my people." "White man has his eyes on this land." "Our land our religion and our life by honor." "My heart is full of sorrow that so may were killed." "The wearing dust on your feets is ashes of my ancestors." "Hello, I'm Kevin Costner." "This fall I'll be bring "500 Nations" to television." "I invite you to join me for a look deep in the past into the history of the Indian nations of North America." "We'll take you back to a time long before first Europians set foot on this land and we'll give you amazing glimpse of worlds fewest ever imagined." "With the arrival of Christopher Columbus we'll follow a 400 year trail of conflict that reshaped the world." "But mostly we'll follow people, real people from emperors to simple individuals that become heroes." "Through the voices of history and voices of today." ""500 Nations" steps into the past." "500 NATIONS" ""500 Nations" takes us back to the begining where great cultures tried all over North America." "So much of the evidences that links us to this indigenous people is disappearing." "And yet breakthroughs in computer technology bring the past to life like never before." "Centuries before the arrival of Europeans the forgotten city of Cahokia on the Mississippi was a great center of trade and comerce." "To the Southern Mexico, Aztec ruler, Montezuma ruled an empire of millions and commanded the army over the 200 000 mens." "In Northern New Mexico an enormous spiritual center was constructed in Chaco Canyon a hundred years before Europe's first gothic cathedrals." "Along the shores of Lakon territory in Western New York a gran councile of five Indians tribes concede to revolutionary idea democracy." "Suddenly there was tales of boats like houses floating on the sea." ""We have discovered a land rich in gold, pearls and other things"." "When Europeans landed on this ancient shores and christen them "The New World"." ""They were very white, their eyes were like chalk." "They wear long beards"." "A circle of encroachment, violence and greed begin." ""Englishman, although you have conquered the French you have not yet conquered us"." ""They took a part of my tribe and sold them to the Spaniards in Bermuda"." ""The whites have driven us from the sea to the lakes." "We could go no further"." "It was a clash of cultures." ""They wanted us to live like white people." "We couldn't live like that back there"." "A simple life crushed by colonial intereses." ""Why will you take by force, what you may have quietly by love"." ""All our ancient customs are disregarded"." ""Could it not be contribed to send a small folks among that disaffected tribes of Indians?" "You will do well to try to inoculate the Indians by means of blankets"." "For hundred years it was an open season on Indian lands and hunting grounds." "The United States looked west and saw a grand destiny." "The Indians looked east," ""What's really?" "That the white man ever made with us on the account."." "and saw the endless trail of broken promises." ""I felt a wave of fury toward our governments whole Indian policy"." ""I've come to kill Indians and believe that is right and honorable"." "Their spirits are still there at the massacre site." "They have no a rest." "Some choosed arms to resistance." ""I prefer to die fighting rather than starvation"." ""The white people are preparing to build railroad through our country." ""We have to fight for what is ours"." "Others gave in hoping to survive." ""The Indians only safe future can be found in merging their interests with ours"." "An aggressive policy of assimilation begin." "Children were seized from their families and placed in boarding schools." ""Our belonging were taken from us, even the little medicine bags our mothers had given us to protect us from odd"." ""I know who I wanted to be, like Sally, in our private books"." "Many came to doubt their own indentity." ""Desperately I tried to clean the fading past which was slowly been erased from my mind"." "Nations across the continent were forced to give up their homelands and moved onto reservations where they were held virtually prisoners." "I was born as prisoner of war in 1910, and we were free in 1913." "Remarkably Indian heritage and identity survived." "Pieces of history passed on from generation to generation of Indians." "In 1986, it was that long before I even step my foot on my own and having the opportunity of going into a cave and looking up at ceiling and seeing the paintings that my people put up there." "That's too much." "People are the key to any history." "Their stories speak to the heart as well as a head." "How would my grandmothers and my grandfathers feel if they would come like I did?" "And I saw those places for them." ""500 Nations" sweeps over thousand miles and thousand years of history." "The rich oral tradition of Indians have helped to put puzzle together through dozens of interviews filmed all over this continent." "Shoot at many of North America's most important historical sites from Central America through the Arctic." ""500 Nations" brings together the greatest collection of Indians images and artefacts ever assembled." "For the first time on television computer generated images never before seen give us a window on world long centuries lost." "The doors of memory are captured jar through the work of archaeologist, historians and most importantly descendants of the Indian nations." "We discover the new world, with host Kevin Costner, in this epic eight hours mini-series coming to CBS television in the fall of 1994." "500 NATIONS" "500 NATIONS" "Hello I'm Kevin Costner, welcome to "500 Nations"." "The settling of this country is always been of interest to me." "It's fired my imagination and shape my life both personally and professionally, but my knowledge of history was limited by what I was taught." "As far I was concerned, the history of the continent started 500 years ago when the Columbus discovered "The New World"." "But we know that's not true." "There were people here." "So how is it we know so little of this past, human history of North America, our own story?" "Could it be that we don't think it's worth of mention the way history is remembered the ancient civilisations of Greece, Rome, Egypt or China?" "The true is we have a story worth talking about." "We have our history worth of celebrating." "Long before the first Europeans arrived here there were some 500 nations already in North America." "They blanketed the continent from coast to coast from Central America to the Arctic." "There were tens of millions of people here speaking over 300 languages." "Many of them lived in beautiful cities among the largest and most advanced in the world." "In the coming hours, 500 Nations looks back on these ancient cultures how they lived and how many survived." "We turn for guidance to hundreds of Indian people across the continent." "You'll meet many of them in our programs." "To bring the past alive, we searched archives for the oldest and most authentic images of Indian people." "We sought out rare books and manuscripts for the actual words of participants and eyewitnesses to history." "Our camera crews traveled throughout North America to film at the actual places where important events in Indian history occurred." "We filmed incredible treasures of Indian creativity from museums across North America and Europe." "Historians and archeologists worked with visual artists and advanced computer technology to allow us, for the first time to walk through virtual realities of ancient Indian worlds." "What you're about to see is what happened." "It's not all that happened, and it's not always pleasant." "We can't change that." "We can't turn back the clock." "But we can open our eyes and give the first nations of this land the recognition and respect they deserve their rightful place in the history of the world." "With that in mind, we take you first to where our story ends on the Great Plains in the late 1800s." "Masakar u Ranjenom Kolenu Najmraèniji sat" "Tokom 1800-tih Indijanska deca širom kontinenta su odvoðena od roditelja sa èestom primenom sile." "Kasnije su deca smeštana u državne internate" "Pine Ridge Indian School - 1888" "The rumor got about the school." "The dead are to return." "The buffalo are to return." "The Lakota people will get back their own way of life." "That part about the dead returning was what appealed to me." "To think I should see my dear mother grandmother, brothers and sisters again." "But, boylike, I soon forgot about it." "Until one night when I was rudely awakened in the dormitory." ""Get up." "Put your clothes on and slip downstairs." "We are running away."" "A boy was hissing into my ear." "Soon 50 of us little boys, about 8 to 10, started out across country over hills and valleys, running all night." "I know now that we ran almost 30 miles." "There on the Porcupine Creek, thousands of Lakota people were encamped." "By the late 1880s, a message of hope spread across the Great Plains." "It was called the "Ghost Dance" a dance to restore the past when Indian nations were free." "They danced without rest, on and on." "Occasionally, someone thoroughly exhausted and dizzy fell unconscious into the center and lay there dead." "The visions ended the same way like a chorus describing a great encampment of all the Lakotas who had ever died where there was no sorrow, but only joy where relatives thronged out with happy laughter." "The people went on and on and could not stop." "And so I suppose the authorities did think they were crazy." "But they weren't." "They were only terribly unhappy." "Driven off their lands Indian nations were confined to desolate reservations dependent on corrupt government agencies for food and supplies." ""The people were desperate from starvation." "We felt that we were mocked in our misery." "We held our dying children and felt their little bodies tremble as their souls went out and left only a dead weight in our hands."" "Red Cloud, oglala." "The Ghost Dance hurt no one, but as it spread, white settlers panicked." "The United States government outlawed the dance." "The white men were frightened and called for soldiers." "We had begged for life and the white man thought we wanted theirs." "On a mild day just after Christmas of 1890 a band of Hokwoju Sioux, under their leader Big Foot left the Cheyenne River Agency in South Dakota heading for a meeting at Pine Ridge with Oglala leader Red Cloud." "Traveling with Big Foot were 106 men and 252 women and children." "Among them was a boy, Dewey Beard who would later tell his children and grandchildren about that day." "Grandpa Dewey Beard being the last survivor I would listen to what he had to say." "In a way, it was sad, and yet it's beautiful, because it's bringing back history." "One thing that he would say is that had the soldiers..." "Had the government left them alone, in time, they would have looked outside and seen how things were changing and the change would come about from within the bands." "Big Foot's band was intercepted by the 7th Cavalry." "The officer in charge found Big Foot wrapped in heavy blankets dying from pneumonia in the back of a wagon." "Big Foot was ordered to make camp along Wounded Knee Creek." "In the morning, his people would be stripped of their weapons and escorted to Pine Ridge." "Big Foot made assurances of his peaceful intentions and the band made camp." "He's a peaceful man." "He's always said that..." ""Think about the elderly, think about the children and women and don't start the trouble."" "Morning broke after a sleepless night surrounded by soldiers." "Hokwoju witnesses would later recall what happened next." ""Big Foot, who was sick, came up with a flag of truce tied to a stick."" "Dewey Beard." "As soldiers trained their guns on them Big Foot and his men brought forth all their weapons placing them near the white flag of truce Big Foot had planted in front of his lodge." "The soldiers then searched their tents and wagons for arms even confiscating cooking and sewing tools." "As Big Foot's people gathered around the flag of truce outside his tent four powerful Hotchkiss rapid-repeating guns were mounted above the camp." "I noticed that they were erecting cannons up here also hauling up quite a lot of ammunition for it." "They encircled us like a band of sheep." "I could see that there was commotion amongst the soldiers and I saw, on looking back, they had their guns in position, ready to fire." "Thomas Tibbles, a white reporter who followed the troops to Wounded Knee recorded what happened next." "Suddenly, I heard a single shot from the direction of the troops." "Then three or four..." "A few more." "And immediately, a volley." "At once came a general rattle of rifle firing then the Hotchkiss guns." "An awful noise was heard and I was paralyzed for a time." "Then my head cleared and I saw nearly all the people on the ground bleeding." "My father my mother my grandmother my older brother and my younger brother were all killed." "And he saw his mother walking toward him." "She was walking along, and she was shot." ""Dewey," she said." ""Keep walking, my son."" "She said, "Keep going."" "She said, "I'm going to die."" "And that was the last time he saw his mother." ""The women, as they were fleeing with their babies, were killed together shot right through." "And after most of them had been killed a cry was made that all those not killed or wounded should come forth, and they would be safe." "Little boys came out of their places of refuge." "And as soon as they came in sight a number of soldiers surrounded them and butchered them there."" "American Horse, oglala." "The firing continued for an hour or two wherever a soldier saw a sign of life." "With the sunset the weather turned intensely cold." "About 7:00 that night, the 7th Cavalry brought in the long train of dead and wounded soldiers and Indians from Wounded Knee." "Forty-nine wounded Sioux women and children had been piled into a few old wagons." "The wounded Indian women and children were eventually carried into an agency church where they lay in silence on the floor beneath a pulpit decorated with a Christmas banner reading," ""Peace on earth, goodwill to men."" ""Nothing I have seen in my whole life ever affected or depressed or haunted me like the scenes I saw that night in that church." "One unwounded old woman held a baby on her lap." "I handed a cup of water to the old woman, telling her, 'Give it to the child' who grabbed it as if parched with thirst." "And as she swallowed it hurriedly, I saw it gush right out again a bloodstained stream through a hole in her neck." "Heartsick, I went to find the surgeon." "For a moment, he stood there near the door looking over the mass of suffering and dying women and children." "The silence..." "The silence they kept was so complete, it was oppressive." "And then to my amazement, I saw that the surgeon, who I knew had served in the Civil War attending the wounded from Wilderness to Appomattox he began to grow pale." "'This is the first time I've seen a lot of women and children shot to pieces,' he said." "'And I can't stand it."'" "Thomas Tibbles, reporter." "For three days, the frozen bodies of the dead including Big Foot, lay where they fell at Wounded Knee." "Finally, the Army dug a large trench at the massacre site." "Then, as they collected the bodies a blanket was seen moving." "Beneath it, snuggled against her dead mother was a baby girl." "The official military histories called Wounded Knee the last battle in the Indian Wars." "But the tenacious struggle for Indian survival as symbolized by a child clinging to life for three days on a frozen field continues to this day." "500 Nations will follow a path that covers thousands of years and will bring us full circle to 1890." "In this hour, we will travel back in time to three stunning civilizations that flourished long before the arrival of Europeans." "To the Anasazi of the Southwest the Mound Builders of the Mississippi and the great pyramid builders of the Maya." "But when we return, we'll go back even farther." "To creation, as seen through the eyes of Indian people." "The Ancestors" "There are as many stories of creation as there are Indian nations." ""When Earth was still young and giants still roamed the earth a great sickness came upon them." "All of them died except for a small boy." "One day while he was playing, a snake bit him." "The boy cried and cried." "The blood came out, and finally he died." "With his tears, our lakes became." "With his blood, the red clay became." "With his body, our mountains became." "And that was how Earth became."" "Taos Pueblo." ""Pleasant it looked, this newly created world." "Along the entire length and breadth of the earth our grandmother extended the green reflection of her covering and the escaping odors were pleasant to inhale."" "Winnebago." ""God created the Indian country and that was the time this river started to run." "Then God created fish in this river and put deer in the mountains." "Then the Creator gave Indians life." "We walked and as soon as we saw the game and fish we knew they were made for us." "My strength, my blood is from the fish from the roots and berries and game." "I did not come here." "I was put here by the Creator."" "Meninick, Yakima." "In the Old Testament Adam and Eve were forced from the garden of creation and expelled to a cruel world." "For most North American Indian nations, it was, and is, very different." "They stayed in the garden, the place of their creation the single place on earth most perfect for them." ""The Crow Country is a good country." "The Creator has put it exactly in the right place." "While you are in it, you fare well." "Whenever you go out of it, whichever way you travel you fare worse." "The Crow Country is exactly in the right place."" "Arapooish, Crow." ""There is a song in everything."" "Medi-aks, Tsimshian." ""Make my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunsets." "Make me wise so that I may know the things you have taught my people the lessons you have hidden in every leaf and rock." "Make me ever ready to come to you with clean hands and straight eye so that when life fades as the fading sunset my spirit may come to you without shame."" "Tom Whitecloud, ojibway." "The Anasazi" "To the outsider the sun-beaten deserts of the American Southwest are a harsh and unforgiving land reluctant to support life." "To the ancient people who lived there it was a place where the Creator provided everything." "There is nothing there that you can see even to this day." "Very little vegetation." "You'll see a lot of rocks, and you'll see a lot of sand." "The Hopis have always maintained that that's a chosen place for them." "It was chosen for them by the Creator, the great spirit, for the Hopis." "The ancient people of the desert were the ancestors of all the modern Pueblo nations." "To their Hopi descendants, they are known as the Hisatsinom." "But to most of the world they are known by the Navajo name:" "Anasazi." "Around 900 A.D., the Anasazi flourished in a wide circle covering parts of modern-day Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico." "The Anasazi found balance with their world." "They learned where to find water and how to harness it." "Villages joined together to build dams, reservoirs and irrigation canals turning deserts into gardens of corn and squash." "They were a people intimately connected to their land." "In a very real sense, they emerged from it." "Generations before the time of Christ the Anasazi lived in subterranean pit houses sunken homes with stonework walls and broad, strong roofs." "Formidable protection against the searing sun and bitter cold of the desert." "With time, they adapted their aboveground storage houses into living spaces." "But the underground pit houses were not abandoned." "They were retained as spiritual places of teaching the place of origin the kiva." "One hundred years before the first Gothic cathedrals were built in Europe the master architects and stonemasons of the Anasazi were building great kivas that could hold 500 people." "Around 900 A.D., the Anasazi leadership embarked upon a bold and visionary plan:" "Create a mecca for pilgrimages and a focal point for trade at the very center of their land." "They chose the barren, treeless Chaco Canyon 100 miles northwest of present-day Albuquerque, New Mexico." "It was a monumental undertaking." "They built 400 miles of distinctive, graded roads and broad avenues all leading to the canyon." "At distant points, signal stations were constructed where fires blazed to communicate across the vastness of the desert and to guide travelers at night." "Over 50,000 trees were cut down in the surrounding mountains to build the towns of Chaco Canyon." "Along with traders and pilgrims the roads carried resources to maintain dozens of communities." "None compared with the largest single complex the Anasazi ever built:" "Pueblo Bonito, the wonder of the canyon." "At its peak, Pueblo Bonito's 800 rooms may have housed over a thousand residents." "Some sections overlooking the main plaza loomed five stories above the canyon floor." "The plaza pulsated with life." "Women gathered the colored corn blanketing the rooftops and knelt in rows to grind it." "Children played." "Men returning from the fields gathered to talk." "Thirty-seven sacred kivas scattered throughout the complex speak to Pueblo Bonito's rich ceremonial life." "During ceremonies, the feet of dancers pounded the ground smooth as spectators huddled against buildings and thronged the roofs to watch." "But Chaco Canyon was more than a spiritual mecca." "It was also a center of trade and commerce." "And trade in one stone, more valuable to Chaco's Mexican trading partners than gold or jade, was the engine of the canyon's economic growth:" "Turquoise." "Here, raw stone arrived from distant mines for the craftsmen of Pueblo Bonito to cut and shape into small tiles and beads which were then traded south to merchant centers in the heart of Mexico." "There, they were transformed into extraordinary creations." "For 150 years, trade fueled the Chaco economy but the wealth and power of the canyon was fleeting." "Chaco's major turquoise consumer, Tollan in Central Mexico fell to civil strife." "Extended drought or hostilities also may have contributed to the downfall of Chaco Canyon." "By 1150, it was in decline the great turquoise road over the Mexican High Sierra abandoned." "But the Anasazi world still flourished." "The people of Chaco Canyon simply moved to other locations." "Many went north to Mesa Verde, which at that time was reaching its cultural and architectural height." "There, under the shelter of the pine-studded mesas of southern Colorado the architects of Chaco Canyon would help create some of the most stunning buildings of all time." "The largest of these is known as Cliff Palace though it is a palace in name only." "These beautiful stone buildings of the Anasazi were home to common families." "It was a society based on equality." "Men rotated service on public works." "Women plastered houses." "The man who farmed also carved." "Spiritual leaders tilled the fields." "Each time, when I see and visit any ancient dwelling I feel close because these are my ancestors my forefathers for centuries." "With a little meditation, looking at their dwellings within a few minutes, half-hour, I get refreshed." "The people of Mesa Verde and many other Anasazi towns relocated around 1300." "The period of the ancestors came to an end and the modern-day Pueblo world took shape." "Traditions that live today in the American Southwest the way of life, the architecture, the religion are the resonance of a heritage reaching back thousands of years." "The kocha wanted to send a prayer to the sun so he called on his friend the bear and the bear came and he said, "oh, I'm very honored to be asked to do this, but I can only take it to the top of the highest tree." "But I know someone who can." "So let's call eagle."" "And so eagle was called, and eagle said, "Yes, I can try."" "And so eagle flew and flew and flew, up, up, up and got to the sun and delivered the prayer." "And the sun was so taken with this, he said, "Give me one of your feathers."" "And so the eagle plucked out a tail feather and gave it to the sun and the sun kissed that feather." "Which is why, you know, eagle feathers are black on the end it's because the sun singed them there." "He said, "Take this back and forever this will be my recognition of my special people."" "Cahokia:" "City of the Sun 750 A.D. - 1300 A.D." "Along the Mississippi River six miles from present-day St. Louis, Missouri there stood a city that once dominated the heart of the continent." "At its center was a powerful leader." "A great number of years ago there appeared among us a man who came down from the sun." "This man told us that he had seen from on high that we did not govern ourselves well that we had no master that each of us had presumption enough to think himself capable of governing others while he could not even conduct himself." "A thousand years ago, the Great Sun a leader who was both king and pope lived atop a man-made royal mountain 10 stories high its 16-acre base larger than any pyramid in Egypt." "He told us that in order to live in peace among ourselves we must observe the following points." "We must never kill anyone but in defense of our own lives." "We must never know any woman besides our own." "We must never take any things that belong to another." "We must never lie nor get drunk." "We must not be avaricious." "We must give generously and with joy and share our subsistence with those who are in need of it." "From the heights of his royal estate the Great Sun mediated between the Creator and the people between the sun and the Earth." "This is Cahokia, "City of the Sun."" "The Great Sun ruled the thriving center of a vast Mississippian culture." "Outside the walled city surrounded by fields of corn." "With 20,000 residents, no city in the United States would surpass Cahokia's historic size before 1800." "Only then would Philadelphia's population eclipse the ancient center." "These people lived in daub and wattle houses." "The principal people did, the priests and the royalty." "They lived in very substantial houses, not tepees." "Not tepees!" "Tepees, western Plains people." "Down here, they lived in houses." "They were sedentary." "They were farmers." "They used the rivers and the bayous and the streams not only for commerce, but for sustenance as well." "With the Mississippi and other major rivers as its highways Cahokia was linked by trade to a third of the continent." "Copper arrived from the Great Lakes obsidian from Yellowstone mica and crystal from the Appalachians gold and silver from Canada shell from the Gulf of Mexico." "Look at these old, live oak trees that have seen so much pass by them." "Magnificently dressed Indian people coming down that bayou in a dugout greeting people, standing right here on this bank having a good time." "Because they did, you know." "Indian people have always known how to have a good time." "And there would be a feast prepared." "And the women would put the corn together." "They'd make sofkey." "They would roast a deer." "The people would bring gifts." "You never go to an Indian's house without bringing something." "That's as old as the sunrise." "Cahokia was the pinnacle of a mound-building culture with traditions dating back to before 1000 B. C." "Thousands of mounds still dot the landscape from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico." "An average funeral mound in the Ohio Valley was three stories tall." "Construction could represent 200,000 man-hours of labor or a hundred men carrying the baskets of earth for a year." "But few mounds compare with the religious effigy located 50 miles east of Cincinnati, Ohio:" "The Great Serpent Mound." "The enormous snake stretches over 400 yards in length." "While their earthworks are the Mound Builders' most visible legacy their smaller creations are their most beautiful." "Only glimpses remain of the people who changed the course of life on the northern continent." "Most of their material world, wooden buildings, boats, baskets woven textiles, leather footwear and clothes have long since turned to dust." "An old Caddo relative of mine said that I used to go outside and hold my hands up and bless myself with the sun." "Well, I can't do that anymore, because they say we're sun worshipers." "We didn't worship the sun." "We worshipped what was behind it, the power behind it." "Pelanque:" "The Maya 603 A.D. - 800 A.D." "In the 19th century, 2000 miles south of Cahokia a group of European explorers carved their way into the jungles of southern Mexico." "There, buried for centuries and surrounded by massive pyramids they came upon a royal palace resplendent with grand rooms, courts and a tower." "The Europeans recognized that by their own standards the site was a legacy of greatness." "Standing in the middle of the largest Indian nation in North America, the Maya descendants of the pyramid builders." "The explorers could not imagine that the towering architecture was the work of Indian people." "Instead, they speculated wildly about the lost civilization that could have built so grand an existence." "Refugees from the sunken continent of Atlantis a lost tribe of Israel, seafarers from the Orient even beings from another planet." "They considered everything but the obvious." "In 1949 a Mexican archaeologist came to the same magnificent ruins now known as Palenque." "He climbed the steps to the top of the largest pyramid the Temple of the Inscription." "There, he noticed holes in the floor, below the capstones." "He removed the slabs and discovered a rubble-filled passageway descending deep into the pyramid's heart." "After three years of excavation, the passage was cleared." "At the bottom was a tomb that had been buried for over 1200 years." "It would unlock the history of Palenque and help to reveal the past of the Mayan people a past they left for the future to read." "For centuries, Mayan glyphs were considered complex picture stories like Egyptian hieroglyphics." "Only in the 1980s did archaeologists finally recognize that it was true writing." "They were not looking at pictures to be interpreted but symbols for sounds to be read." "It was the Maya language." "Instantly, a door was opened on the past." "Beneath the 5-ton sarcophagus cover at Palenque, lay Pakal "shield" in the Maya language." "He was born in 603 A. D." "His head was bound at birth to enlarge his forehead a fashion that marked him as a member of the royal elite." "He wore a cosmetic bridge on his nose and decorated his hair with water lilies." "Pakal rose to power at the age of 12." "He would build a holy city and rule for nearly 70 years leading Palenque during a time of greatness and growth in the Mayan world." "As the Maya expanded, over 60 capital cities emerged their growth fueled by a successful agricultural society." "The roots of Mayan agriculture reached back thousands of years and stretched across Mexico and into Central America." "Now, friends and brothers listen to these words of dreaming." "Spring rains give us life and bring forth the golden corn silk." "By the time of Christ, there were millions of people in the region with agriculture allowing populations to settle and expand." "Art, mathematics, astronomy, architecture priesthoods and royalty all flourished." "By the mid-700s, at Palenque alone the sons of Pakal ruled over 200,000 Maya living in regional communities of farmers, weavers, stonemasons and feather workers." "But the golden age of building and growth would be transformed by a new era of war and destruction." "For reasons still locked in the past, the Mayan world turned against itself." "Farmers became soldiers." "By 800 A.D., an era had ended." "Most of the capitals that had been among the living wonders of human creativity including Palenque, were deserted and reclaimed by the jungle." "When "500 Nations" returns we'll take you back to Mexico to follow the rise of the most powerfull military empire in the history of the North America." "The Aztecs." "Feel free to translate this to your language and place your name here as translator."