Zapotec civilization

The Zapotec civilisation grew up in the Valley of Oaxaca in southern Mexico and is known above all from the hilltop city of Monte Albán, one of the earliest cities in Mesoamerica. From around 500 BCE until the later first millennium CE, Monte Albán was the capital of a Zapotec state that came to dominate much of the Oaxacan highlands. Zapotec communities lasted through later centuries of rival kingdoms and the Spanish conquest, and Zapotec peoples and languages remain part of Oaxaca today.

The Central Valleys of Oaxaca form a Y shape, with branches around Etla, Tlacolula and the southern Valle Grande meeting in the middle. The land suited maize farming, and irrigation canals extended the fields beyond the river margins. Excavations led by Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus traced the growth of village societies here over thousands of years. By the Rosario phase, about 700 to 500 BCE, several rival chiefdoms shared the valley, the largest centred on San José Mogote. Burned temples and sacrificed captives suggest frequent conflict, and surveys point to an empty buffer zone between the rivals.

Around 500 BCE a new settlement appeared on a ridge in that buffer zone, about 400 metres above the valley floor. As Monte Albán grew, San José Mogote and its satellites lost population, and early Monte Albán pottery resembles San José Mogote wares, so archaeologists think the old chiefly elite moved there. Marcus and Flannery compared this gathering of scattered communities into one defensible city to the "synoikism" of ancient Greece. Survey estimates put the population at about 5,200 by around 300 BCE and about 17,200 in the Monte Albán II phase (roughly 100 BCE to 200 CE). Not every centre joined: work by Charles Spencer and Elsa Redmond suggests that Tilcajete grew in this period and may have resisted the new power.

During Monte Albán II the state expanded beyond the valley through conquest, alliance and colonisation, reaching areas such as the Cañada de Cuicatlán to the north. Local pottery styles in several regions were suddenly replaced by Zapotec ones. Alfonso Caso, who excavated the site from 1931, argued that Building J on the Main Plaza, an arrow-shaped structure with more than 40 carved stones naming places, recorded conquered provinces. Monte Albán also had close ties with Teotihuacan, where archaeologists have identified a neighbourhood of people from Oaxaca.

The Zapotecs used a glyphic script and the Mesoamerican calendar. A carved "Danzante" stone from San José Mogote, once dated to 500 to 600 BCE, was long thought to bear the earliest writing in Mesoamerica, though that date has been questioned. The script has not been deciphered. Religion was polytheistic, with deities such as the rain god Cocijo and the maize god Pitao Cozobi. The Zapotec name for themselves, Be'ena'a, is usually translated "the cloud people". Caso's team set up the ceramic sequence still used to date the culture, phases Monte Albán I to V, running from the city's founding to 1521.

From the Late Classic period Monte Albán's influence faded as centres such as Lambityeco, Mitla, Zaachila and Cuilapan asserted their independence, and the old capital was largely abandoned at some point between about 700 and 1000 CE. Smaller competing kingdoms followed. The Aztec Empire pushed into the valley in the fifteenth century, and the Zapotec king Cosijoeza later chose not to resist the Spanish. After 1521 the region became part of New Spain. Monte Albán became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, and the Zapotec languages, part of the Oto-Manguean family, are still spoken in Mexico and by migrant communities abroad.

The maps label this culture "Monte Albán" and draw it from 323 BCE through to 700 CE, in today's Oaxaca, as an approximate outline. Older Mesoamerican traditions are covered under the Olmecs, and its great central Mexican contemporary under Teotihuacan.