Beginning with a politically incorrect admission that slavery existed among Native American societies—as it existed in any agricultural society—this film also gives a rare and refreshing history of maize, which is one of the most impressive agricultural innovations in human history. There were 80 breeds of maize. America was lacking in the grains that Old World civilizations were based on, therefore, the fact that the original Native Americans were so damned good at hunting that they wiped out all of the animals that would have been suitable for domestication in a later age screwed them in the long run. A handful of failed aboriginal civilizations are featured, offering a sobering view of Pre-Columbian America.

Overall, this is a pretty solid survey of what the conquistadors were headed into.

Also, the picture of inequity in Europe, that propelled poor people to get off the continent whenever possible, and bred an unparalleled elite equally poised to maintain the enslavement of their underlings and expand their holdings overseas, gives the viewer an idea of what drove the conquistadors on their bloody quest. Militarily speaking, the huge difference between the Old World and the New World was the dense forest cover and the vast plains. By this time Europe was basically a bloody Christmas Garden, as if some little brat of a god had neatly cleared and parceled out the land to make it an ideal mass battlefield. While the Europeans were domesticating animals, who altered the landscape, Native Americans were domesticating the landscape so that they could hunt more bigger animals and cultivate orchards of tropical fruit trees. This set up an extreme clash of martial cultures.