Sacred Sites of the World

I was pretty disappointed that the episode on the Maya didn't use actors indigenous to the Americas. The Maya are still a significant population in the Yucatan and throughout Guatemala, it would not have been a stretch to employ these people to represent their own ancestors. The historical and scientific stories are tremendously interesting, and it is evident that there is still a great deal to learn about the lives and the cultures of those who came before us, still it would have been a better story had the producers of this show given the Mayan people their rightful place in a story that is theirs.

Through the series they take the flimsiest bits of information and rumor and just make stuff up to fill in the huge gaps. "Some say..." or "It's rumored that..." or similar weasel language precedes almost every statement. In the end, you don't really know anything except there are places all over the world that have legends connected to them but nobody really knows much about them with any real confidence.