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250-750 - Zapotec

North of the Mayans were located other tribes that had attained a comparatively high development. Probably the most important of the Indian stocks occupying the territory between the Mayans and the Aztecs was the Zapotecan. The Zapotecs had the first writing system, the first state society, the first cities. And they controlled a fairly large territory at their Zenith - 250 BC to 750 AD. Mexico's isthmus connects the Oaxaca fiefdoms of the Zapotecs and Mixtecs, who built the temples and pyramids of Monte Alban and Mitla. Monte Alban. In the sacred Valley of Oaxaca, a pre-Maya culture called the Zapotecs started building a civilization with a highly advanced writing system of hieroglyphics.

The process of state formation varied across the Zapotec realm. Sometimes it involved conquest, and other times it was more economically driven. Archeologists are interested in different aspects of society that emerged in the process, such as social stratification and the development and intensification of agriculture and economic specialization. One of the earliest state societies in the New World, founded by ethnic Zapotec people around, this state endured until about AD 700. Then, the political power of the state declined and it broke apart into small city-states ruled by local lords.

Prehispanic Mesoamerican elites were a powerful group who comprised a very small percentage of the overall population. Although they made decisions that had far reaching consequences for themselves and their followers, it is difficult to acquire the archaeological data necessary to document the full range of variety in their decision making behavior. The elite at Monte Alban used many different political, economic and ideological tactics to integrate previously independent polities into the early state. The pinnacle of Monte Albán's development probably took place from 250 AD to 700 AD, by which time Monte Albán had become home to some 25,000 people and was the capital city of the Zapotec nation. For reasons still not entirely clear, the site was gradually abandoned after A.D. 700.

During the florescence of the Zapotec state (about AD 200-500), the site of Jalieza was founded. This secondary center or subregional capital grew rapidly to cover over 4 km and have a population estimated at 13,000 people. During the same time-period, the Zapotec capital of Monte Alban covered 6.5 km and had a population estimated at 16,500 people. After AD 700, Jalieza grew even larger (with a population estimated at 16,000 people) while Monte Alban declined and eventually was abandoned.

The Zapotec culture (in the modern Mexican state of Oaxaca) was clearly a direct derivitive from Maya culture. It had the same sort of hieroglyphs and its cities, especially Monte Alban, presented the same characteristic grouping. Little in the way of tradition or otherwise regarding the prehistoric times of the people of this group has been preserved. Some authors are inclined to believe, and perhaps correctly, that the Zapotecs were the pioneers in the advanced native culture of this section. They had in use calendar of the same type as the Mexican and Maya, except in the names and terms used and the symbols employed.

Monte Alban, the ancient capital of the Zapotees, is one of the moat stupendous ruins in Mexico. Zapotec remains worthy of the attention of the archaeologist include the group at Monte Alban, where there are great quadrangles surrounded by walls, including mounds, plazas, and depressed courts, and outer terraces. Monte Alban, near Oaxaca, 300 miles south of Mexico City, features temples and pyramids facing a great court - the most impressive archaeological site between the Valley of Mexico and the Mayan region.

The center of Zapotecan culture was the city of Mitla; her architecture still demonstrates the skill of her workmen. With stone tools those aborigines hewed massive blocks out of quarries and constructed buildings which vie with those of the Incas. The use of stucco mosaics by the Zapotecans indicates that they had been affected by Mayan civilization.

Mitla, in the same district, belongs to a different style and a later period. The Zapotec ruins of Mitla are often mentioned and figured in modern literature. Here, as is at once apparent, the type is peculiar, many features in plan, construction and finish are different from Nahuatlan and Mayan structures. The buildings are only a single story in height; and the groups or compound structures consist usually of four - occasionally of but three - rectangular buildings placed so as to form the sides of a square court; the four approximating or, as in most cases, touching - but not overlapping - at the corners. We are not aware that mention has been made of the resemblance in the plan of these groups to the rectangular pueblos of New Mexico on the one hand, and to some of the structures at Uxmal - as the Nunnery and House of the Pigeons - on the other.

The walls are massive, being usually over four feet thick, vertical, and faced with dressed stones or plaster; the inner faces are plastered or partly or wholly covered with geometrical mosaic work. The ceilings and roofs are flat, having apparently been supported chiefly by wooden beams, the triangular arch appearing nowhere in these structures; perhaps it was not known to the builders. Where the rooms or halls are of considerable width, a row of pillars or columns was placed along the middle in order to furnish support to the roof. Wooden beams were placed lengthwise upon these columns, and crossbeams from these to the sides, over which was probably a layer of poles, etc., covered to a thickness of two or three feet with gravel and cement. The height of the ceiling seldom exceeds twelve feet, and the width of the room or hall with a single span is about twelve feet, but where columns were used to give a double span the width varies from twenty to twenty-three feet. Three methods of embellishment were employed,-painting, sculpture, and mosaic; sculpturing, however, was limited here to geometrical forms, sculptured life forms being entirely absent, though such forms are of frequent occurrence in the painted designs.

The peculiar feature of these structures which has given them special notoriety is the fretwork decorations of the walls. These designs are all purely geometrical, yet varied and pleasing, and are arranged in panels covering the exterior surface of the buildings, and on the interior are in panels or continuous bands. The most remarkable of these are geometrical fretwork mosaics, made up of separate, carefully wrought stones in the form of little bricks, set in mortar to form the designs; some are angular and curved grecques.

Pyramids are not absent from Mitla, but none are of sufficient importance in size or otherwise to attract special attention. The pottery found here is mostly of the plain gray type, though occasional painted specimens occur. The introduction of the human form in connection with the vessels appears to have been a favorite custom of the potters. It was overloaded with ornamentation, grotesque and elaborate, the introduced faces often having noses exactly like the so-called "elephant trunk" ornament of the Yucatec ruins,and enormous head-dresses "encircling rather than crowning the face."

Of the peculiar features of the Mitla architecture, the mosaic designs and ornamentation of the walls and the lines of columns through some of the halls have attracted most attention, as these are features unknown to the Mayan and Mexican structures. Yet it is a somewhat singular fact that the latter feature-the central pillars-is found at Quemada, where there is a row of pillars running through one of the halls. And here, as at Mitla, a part of the buildings are of adobe, and in both the triangular arch, so common in the Maya structures, is wanting, as are also stairs, though the latter were not needed in the one-story structures.

In 1862 in Mexico, at the time of the Cinco de mayo, Benito Juarez was president. He was also a Zapotec Indian. Oaxaca is - by and large - the most ethnically complex of Mexico's thirty-one states. The two largest linguistic groups in this large collection are the Zapotec and Mixtec Indians, whose roots stretch very deeply into the early Mesoamerican era of Oaxaca.