Monte Albán
A city on a levelled mountaintop, with a script of its own
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The Zapotec are a people of Oaxaca in southern Mexico, and Monte Albán was their capital for over a thousand years. Zapotec script is among the oldest in Mesoamerica and remains only partly deciphered. The city's siting — high, central between three valleys, without water — points to a political founding: a neutral seat for an alliance rather than a town that grew where it was convenient. The so-called danzantes reliefs are probably depictions of slain enemies rather than dancers, and belong to the city's earliest phase.
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The Zapotec levelled the top of a mountain in Oaxaca and built a city up there, with plazas, temples and a ballcourt. They also developed one of the earliest writing systems in the Americas.
Sources
- Marcus & Flannery, Zapotec Civilization (1996)
- INAH (Mexico): Zona Arqueológica de Monte Albán
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