A deeper historical narrative, including social and political context, critical counterpoints and explicitly optional films.
“Discovery” describes a European point of view: the Americas were already home to diverse societies. Conquest and colonization involved warfare, epidemics, forced labor, settlement and diplomacy. Screen reconstructions may repeat colonial myths or flatten Indigenous perspectives.
The Americas were home to complex, diverse societies long before European voyages. Portrayals of precontact life require particular care because cinematic spectacle often distorts evidence.
1511
REPRESENTED HISTORY 1511
An optional stylized glimpse of a fictional Mesoamerican society as a counterpoint to European arrival narratives.
Contains significant historical and cultural inaccuracies; NOT a reliable account of Maya history or Spanish conquest.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
European exploration opened new routes of exchange and conquest. It also introduced catastrophic pressures on Indigenous societies.
1492 → 1500
REPRESENTED HISTORY 1492 → 1500
Anchors Columbus’s first Atlantic expedition and its immediate colonial consequences.
European-centered and romanticized; its representations of Indigenous peoples and Columbus’s conduct are selective.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
Spanish expansion included coercion, Indigenous alliances and armed conflicts; expeditions frequently fractured under the pursuit of wealth.
1560 → 1561
REPRESENTED HISTORY 1560 → 1561
Uses a sixteenth-century Amazon expedition to interrogate violence, greed and the imperial imagination.
A highly fictionalized psychological film rather than a faithful reconstruction of Lope de Aguirre’s itinerary.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
English settlement created new contests over territory, sovereignty and survival in North America.
1607 → 1614
REPRESENTED HISTORY 1607 → 1614
Shows Jamestown-era contact and conflict, with greater attention to landscape and Indigenous–settler encounters.
Poetic retelling and fictionalized romance; do not treat its Pocahontas story as a documentary account.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
Missions, border treaties and colonial states continued the transformation of Indigenous communities long after initial voyages.
1750 → 1756
REPRESENTED HISTORY 1750 → 1756
Shows the tension between Jesuit missions, colonial interests and Guaraní communities on the South American frontier.
Set in the 1750s, outside the core age of oceanic exploration; an explicit historical epilogue.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.