David Attenborough turns to the Aztecs and the Incas in this episode of his seven-part BBC series on tribal art, tracing what survives of two empires that Spanish conquest tried to erase. He looks at the gold work, textiles, and stone carving the Aztecs and Incas produced before European contact, using surviving objects and sites to explain how each culture organized its craftsmen and what their art was for, whether temple offering, royal display, or burial good. The film treats the pieces as evidence rather than curiosities, asking what a feathered headdress or a piece of Inca metalwork tells you about the society that made it, and what was lost when conquistadors melted down gold objects for bullion instead of preserving them. Attenborough's presence keeps the focus on close looking at individual objects rather than a broad historical sweep, in keeping with the series' method across its other six episodes on tribal art worldwide.