Indians in 10,000 B.C.

[Spoiler alert] Here's how someone describes the master race--the people building pyramids using mammoths--in 10,000 B.C.:They are not men like us, Baku. ... Some say they came from the stars. Others believe that they flew across the great water when their land sank into the sea.Clearly they're supposed to be Atlanteans or aliens. But several clues suggest they may be Mesoamerican Indians.

First and foremost is their appearance. These people--let's call them Atlanteans--have bald heads, topknots of hair, and pendants in their ear lobes. This was a very typical look among the Maya.

A good example of this look is the non-Maya Black Hawk, war chief of the Sauk Indians (below). He would've fit right in with the Atlanteans of 10,000 B.C.



Other clues

An Atlantean priest throws one of the tribesmen off a pyramid as a human sacrifice. It seems such sacrifices are part of the Atlanteans' culture.

The Atlanteans have a map that shows both sides of the Atlantic. (I think--it flashed by too quickly to be sure.) So they didn't just come from an island in the Atlantic. They explored the Americas and met the Paleo-Indians there, at least.

The African tribesmen give D'Leh what appears to be a chili pepper at one point and kernels of corn at another. These presumably came from the Americas. The Atlanteans could've bred the corn using their advanced genetic techniques millennia before the indigenous Americans actually did it.

The Atlanteans' master ship--the one they try to flee in--is big enough to cross the ocean.

Many people have speculated that the Egyptian pyramids inspired the Mesoamerican pyramids. It could've been the other way around.

What it means

This is just speculation, but at least two theories explain the movie's "facts":

1) The Atlanteans seeded both the "New" and "Old" Worlds with their culture and technology. Hence both sides had the same type of monumental architecture.

2) The Atlantean culture arose in the Western Hemisphere--one of those lost Mesoamerican civilizations so often seen in fiction. It eventually disappeared, but its impact was lasting enough to influence later Mesoamerican cultures.

For more on the subject, see The Best Indian Movies.