Question: Is Blunted Jaguar Paw's brother? Jaguar Paw refers to him as brother and it seems they are brothers, but Flint Sky does not refer to him as his son.
Answer: Jaguar Paw calls him father just before his throat is cut.
He calls Flint Sky Father because we know that relationship by the time he is killed.
Question: Can anyone explain the necklaces? Before Flint Sky is killed and before Jaguar Paw is sent out to run for his life, the Mayan warrior removes the necklaces they wear. When the warrior is bitten by the snake, he removes his own necklace before cutting his wrists. This happens several times in the movie so it seems like removing the necklace before facing death is significant. Can anyone shed some light on this?
Answer: It's a sign of the warrior passing over to death. When the warrior removed Jaguar Paw's necklace just before setting him free, it was a way of telling him that his life was going to be over soon.
Question: When they come across the girl crying over her mother's body, one of the guards says she has the sickness, and when they arrive in the city, they come across an old man who has the laughing sickness - what sicknesses are they referring to?
Answer: It is not specifically identified, but it appears to be the degenerative neurological disease called kuru. It is fatal and believed to have been spread in ancient sub-tropical cultures by cannibalism. Its symptoms resembles the encephalopathy disease known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob (Mad Cow), which is also called the laughing sickness, and is contracted by eating contaminated flesh.
Answer: Kuru only happens when you eat your relatives and the disease was discovered and studied in Papua New Guinea where eating your dead relatives was a way to carry them with you. There are books about it, fascinating stuff. Eating strangers is safe, not that I recommend eating anyone. The disease the girl has is smallpox brought by the Spanish, thus the ships at the end of the movie are not the first Spanish to visit the area. The laughing sickness could be straight up madness considering the horrible times everyone is living through, or a side effect of the limestone quarrying.
Question: Why is the other tribe traveling through young Jaguar Paw's tribe's forest?
Answer: They are refugees, fleeing war in their homeland.
Chosen answer: They are extremely close friends. They regard their relationship as being as close as family.
Phixius ★