Monte albán mexico tourist visits statistics. Pyramids of Monte Alban, Mexico
Monte Alban (Mexico) - description, history, location. Exact address, phone number, website. Reviews of tourists, photos and videos.
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Monte Alban, located 9 km east of the city of Oaxaca, is an archaeological complex and is a UNESCO cultural heritage. The name Monte Alban means "White Mountain".
The complex is located on a low mountain range that rises in the central part of the Oaxaca Valley. It is one of the first cities in Mesoamerica, founded around 500 BC. e. For a thousand years, Monte Alban was considered the most important socio-political and economic center of the Zapotec civilization. By the years 500-750 n. e. it lost its leading role and soon after was almost completely abandoned.
How to get there
Autobuses Turísticos buses run to Monte Alban from the Rivera del Ángel, located on Mina 518 in Oaxaca (stop 6 blocks from the city's main square). Buses leave every hour from 8:30 to 15:30 and vice versa from 13:00 to 17:00 (timetables may vary depending on the season). A roundtrip ticket costs around 120 MXN. Such a ticket allows you to return back only at the time indicated on it.
An alternative company that organizes transfers to the archaeological site is Turísticos Marfil. Buses stop at Local 25, Plaza Santo Domingo, Alcala 407 and Mezkalito Hostel. The cost of a round trip is 70 MXN.
A taxi from Oaxaca to Monte Alban will cost 200-350 MXN in both directions.
Prices on the page are as of April 2019.
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Shops and cafes
There is a small bookstore in the archaeological complex, and at the exit from the territory of Monte Alban, locals sell souvenirs and food. There is also a small cafe on the territory of the complex where you can have a snack with sandwiches. Something more essential is to look for in the city of Oaxaca.
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Entertainment and attractions of Monte Alban
Partially excavated is the civil and ceremonial center of Monte Alban, which rises to 400 meters and is located on the top of an artificially leveled ridge at a height of 1940 meters above sea level. The complex also includes hundreds of artificially created platforms. Excavations in the nearby hills of Atzompa and El Gallo are also considered to be an integral part of Monte Alban.
The central place in Monte Alban is occupied by an area with a perimeter of 300 by 200 meters. Around the square are the main civil ceremonial structures and housing facilities for "elite" citizens. To the north and south of the main square stretch huge bulk platforms, which are accessible from the main square via stairs located in the same place. Smaller platforms have also survived, on which temples and "elite" residential buildings towered. The southern platform is a pyramid with an open area at the top, to which an impressive staircase leads.
Panoramas of Monte Alban
Monte Alban is home to many stone carvings. The earliest examples of the so-called Danzantes (literally, dancers) are found mainly in the area of \u200b\u200bthe "L" building and represent naked men in twisted poses, some of which mutilate their genitals.
In the 1930s. in tomb no. 7, Mexican archaeologists have discovered various artifacts that are also of great interest. The archaeological complex also has a museum with a collection of items found during excavations in the 1920s.
The cost of a ticket to the territory of the complex is 75 MXN, an additional fee is charged for the use of a photo and video camera. The complex is open to visitors from 9:00 to 17:00.
Let's dive into the mysticism and mystery of the ancient peoples of the Zapotecs for a while .. The origin of people from stones, trees and jaguars, many gods to worship, the mystical cult of ancestors and the dead ... Creepy, right? .. This people immediately seems to us wild and uneducated. But no! In terms of knowledge and achievements in the fields of art, architecture, mathematics and astronomy, the Zapotecs were very close to the Olmecs, ancient Mayans and Toltecs. Their capital is Monte Alban. It covers an area of \u200b\u200b40 square kilometers and is located approximately 10 kilometers southwest of the city of Oaxaca. The ruin center, built on an artificial platform 400 meters above the subtropical Oaxaca valley, is arguably the most impressive site of pre-Columbian civilizations.
The name of the city is translated as "White Mountain" - the Spaniards named it so, because of the white flowers growing on the slopes. In the center of the city, there is a central square surrounded by terraces, palaces and platforms. Residential buildings were located on terraces on the slopes of the hills, and here, most likely, there were also gardens. Ruins of pyramids, temples, ball courts, galleries and an observatory have also been found in Monte Alban. There are many graves and tombs left in the city, with beautifully executed frescoes on the domes. The design of these particular tombs was recognized as the most unique in the West.
Monte Alban captivates with the monumentality of the entire complex, spacious areas on several levels, connected by numerous stone staircases and rimmed pyramids of various sizes. The skeletons of a powerful colonnade awaken the imagination, how elegant it all looked at one time. The pearl and mystery of Monte Alban are the numerous flat stones on which people are depicted in unusual poses - dancing men.
In 1932, the richest treasure of the 13th century was discovered in the ruins of Monte Alban. The excavations were carried out by a group of Mexican Americanist Alfonso Caso. It was he who, in the fall of 1931, discovered the first tomb in Monte Alban. There were so many treasures in the tomb that it took seven days and nights just to remove all the discovered items from the tomb. In the tomb, the discovery of which in importance for scientists is comparable to the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, were found necklaces made of large pearls, earrings of jade and obsidian, gold bracelets and necklaces, jewelry made of turquoise, shells and silver, the mask of the god Shipe Totek, products made of rock crystal ...
Monte Alban is a ruin that remembers the presence of many of Mexico's ancient cultures. Olmecs, Zapotecs, Bears and Aztecs considered this place sacred. Today, Monte Alban is the world's largest open-air museum. It is best to come to this place early in the morning, while there is no one yet. Then you find yourself face to face with the amazing mystery of Monte Alban.
Monte Alban large pre-Columbian archaeological site at Xoxocotlan Santa Cruz municipality in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca (17.043 ° N, 96.767 ° W). The site lies on a low mountain range, towering over a plain in the central Oaxaca Valley, where the northern last ETLA, eastern Tlacolula and southern Zimatlán and Ocotlan (or Valle Grande) branches meet. Today's state capital is Oaxaca The city is located approximately 9 kilometers (6 mi) east of Monte Alban.
The civil and ceremonial center of the Monte Alban site has been partially excavated, located at the top of an artificially leveled ridge that, from about 1940 m (6,400 ft) above sea level, rises about 400 m (1300 ft) from the valley floor, in an easily defensible location. In addition to the monumental core, the site is characterized by several hundred artificial terraces, and a dozen clusters of mounded architecture spanning the entire Ridgeline and the surrounding lateral surfaces. Archaeological ruins at the nearby Atzompa and El Gallo hills to the north are traditionally considered an integral part of the ancient city as well.
In addition to being one of the first cities in Mesoamerica, the importance of Monte Alban also stems from its role as a prominent Zapotec socio-political and economic center for about a thousand years. Founded at the end of the Middle Formative Period around 500 BC, the Terminal Formative (ca.100 BC-AD 200) Monte Alban became the capital of a major expansionist state structure that dominated most of the Oaxacan Highlands and interacted with other Mesoamerican regional states such as Teotihuacan to the north (Corral 1983; Marcus 1983). The city lost its political dominance at the end of the late Classical (about 500-750 AD), and soon after it was largely abandoned. Minor re-occupation, opportunistic re-use of former structures and tombs, and ritual visits marked the site's archaeological history during the colonial period.
The etymology of the name of the modern site is unclear, and preliminary proposals for a range of origins from the alleged corruption of the native Zapotec name in colonial-era references to a Spanish soldier named Montalbán or to the Alban Hills of Italy. The ancient Zapotec names of the cities are not known, just as the rejection occurred a century before the earliest available ethno-historical sources were written.
Research history
Site plan in Monte Alban.
Visible from anywhere in the central Oaxaca Valley, the impressive ruins of Monte Alban draws visitors and explorers throughout the colonial and modern era. Among other things, Guillermo Dupaix explored the site in the early 19th century CE, JM Garcia published a description of the site in 1859, and A. F. Bandelier visited and published additional descriptions in the 1890s. The first intensive archaeological survey of the site was carried out in 1902 by Leopoldo Batrs, then Inspector General for the Protection of Monuments for the Mexican government under Porfirio Diaz. It was, however, only in 1931 that large-scale scientific excavations were carried out under the direction of the Mexican archaeologist Alfonso Caso. In 1933, Eulalia Guzman assisted in the excavation of the tomb 7. Over the next eighteen years, Caso and his colleagues Ignacio Bernal and Jorge Acosta excavated large sections of the monumental core of the site, and much of what is visible today in areas open to the public was reconstructed in that time. In addition, as a result of the excavation of a large number of residential and civil-ritual structures and hundreds of graves and burials, one lasting achievement of the project by Caso and his colleagues was the creation of a ceramic chronology (phases Mont - Alban I through V) for the period between the founding of the site in ca 500 BC to the end in the postclassic period in 1521 CE.
Exploration of the periods leading up to the founding of Monte Alban was a major focus of prehistory and the Human Ecology Project initiated by Kent Flannery of the University of Michigan in the late 1960s. Over the next two decades, this project documented the development of socio-political complexity in the valley from the earliest archaic period (about 8000-2000 BC) to the Rosario phase (700-500 BC), directly preceding Monte Alban, thereby starting to understand the foundation of the latter and the trajectory of development. In this regard, one of the main achievements of Flannery's work in Oaxaca is its extensive excavation at the important formative center of San Jose Mogote in the ETLA Valley industry, a collaboration project directed with Joyce Marcus of the University of Michigan.
Another important step in understanding the history of the occupation of the Monte Alban site was made with the prehistoric settlement in the Oaxaca Valley project, begun by Richard Blanton and several colleagues in the early 1970s. It was only with their intensive survey and mapping of the entire site that the real expansion and size of Monte Alban beyond the limited area explored by Caso became known. Subsequent seasons of the same project, led by Blanton, Gary Feynman, Steve Kowalewski, Linda Nicholas, and others, extended the survey to nearly the entire valley, producing an invaluable amount of data on changing settlement patterns in the region from ancient times to the arrival of the Spanish in 1521 CE.
Site history
As Blanton's surveys of the site have shown, the hills of Monte Alban appear to have been uninhabited until 500 BC. (end of Rosario ceramic phase). At the time, San José Mogota was the main center of population in the valley and the head of a chiefdom that probably controlled much of the northern ETLA industry. Perhaps as many as three or four other small centers are mainly controlled by other sub-regions of the valley, including Tilcajete in the southern branch of the Valle Grande and Yegüih in the Tlacolula arm to the east. Competition and war seem to characterize the Rosario phase, and the regional survey data suggests an unoccupied buffer zone between the chiefdom of Sana'a Jose Mogota and those to the south and east. It is in the land of this non-human that at the end of the Rosario Monte Alban period was founded, quickly reaching a population estimate of around +5200 by the end of the next phase of Monte Alban Ia (ca.300 BCE). This significant increase in population was accompanied by an equally rapid decline in San José Mogot and nearby satellite sites, making it likely that its mostly elites were directly involved in the creation of the future Zapotec capital. This rapid change in population and settlement, from scattered localized settlements to a central urban area in a previously unenforced area, was named as "Mont-Alban Synoikism" by Marcus and Flannery in relation to similar recorded cases in the Mediterranean area in antiquity. that it was previously thought that a similar process of widespread abandonment, and thus participation in the creation of Monte Alban, occurred in other large, mainly centers such as Yegüih and Tilcajete, at least in the latter case it now seems unlikely. A recent project by director Charles Spencer and Elsa Redmond of the American Museum of Natural History in New York showed that, instead of an abandoned site, it did indeed grow significantly in population during the Monte Alban I Early and Late I periods (around 500-300 BCE and 300- 100 BC, respectively) and, perhaps, actively opposed inclusion in the more powerful state of Monte Alban.
Aerial view of Monte Alban
By the beginning of the terminal forming (phase II Monte Alban, circa 100 BC-CE 200) Monte Alban had an estimated population of 17,200, making it one of the largest cities in Mesoamerica at the time. As its political power grew, Mont Alban expanded militarily, through co-optation, and also through direct colonization in several areas outside the Oaxaca Valley, including the Cañada de Cuicatlán to the north and to the south of the Ejutla and Sola de Vega valleys. (Feynman and Nicholas 1990) during this period and the subsequent Early Classical (Monte Alban phase IIIA, circa CE 200-500) Monte Alban was the capital of a major regional government that dominated the Oaxaca Valley and across much of the Oaxacan highlands As previously mentioned, evidence at Monte Alban suggests high-level contacts between the site's elites and those at the powerful central Mexican city of Teotihuacan, where archaeologists have identified a neighborhood populated by ethnic Zapotecs from the Oaxaca Valley (Zagon 1983). By the late Classic (Monte Alban IIIB / IV, circa CE 500-1000) the influence of the site outside and inside the valley declined, and the elites in a number of other centers, as soon as the state of Monte Alban, began to assert their autonomy, including sites, such as Cuilapan and Zaachila in Valle Grande and Lambiteca, Mitla and El Palmillo in the eastern Tlacolula hand. The latter is the focus of the current project of Gary Feynman and Linda Nicholas Chicago's Field Museum (Feynman and Nicholas 2002). By the end of the same period (around 900-1000 AD) the ancient capital was largely abandoned, and the once powerful state of Monte Alban was replaced by dozens of competing minor polities, a situation that continued until the Spanish conquest.
monuments
View of the main square from the North platform. The southern platform can be seen in the distance.
Monte Alban's monumental center is the Main Plaza, which measures approximately 300 meters from 200 meters. The main civil-ceremonial and elite residential structures of the site are located around or in the immediate vicinity of it, and most of them have been studied and restored by Alfonso Caso and his colleagues. To the north and south, the Main Plaza is bounded by large platforms, accessible from the square via monumental staircases. On the east and west sides, the square is likewise bounded by the number of smaller platform mounds on which temples and luxury residential buildings stood, and one of two famous ballcourts existed at the site. A north-south ridge of embankments occupies the center of the square and also served as a platform for ceremonial structures.
An impressive staircase leading to the south platform.
One of the characteristic features of Monte Alban is the large number of carved stone monuments found throughout the area. The earliest examples are the so-called "Danzantes" (literally, dancers), mostly in the immediate vicinity of Building L and which represent naked men in distorted and twisted poses, some of them mutilated genitals. The numbers are said to represent sacrificial figures, which explains the morbid characteristics of the figures. The Danzantes has physical traits typical of the Olmec culture. The 19th century notion that they depict dancers is now largely discredited, and these monuments, dating from the earliest period of occupation on site (Monte Alban I), are now considered to clearly represent tortured, sacrificed prisoners of war. some are identified by name, and may represent the leader of rival centers and villages captured by Mont Alban. (Blanton et al., 1996) Over 300 "Danzantes" stones have been recorded to date, and some of the best preserved ones can be viewed at the site's museum. There are several indications that the Zapotecs were writing and calendar designations.
Another type of carved stone is found in the adjacent building J in the center of the main square, the building characterized by an unusual arrow-shaped shape and orientation that differs from most other structures on the site. Installed in the walls of the building are more than 40 carved slabs dating from Monte Alban II and depicting place names, sometimes accompanied by additional writing and in many cases characterized by inverted heads. Alfonso Caso was the first to identify these stones as the "conquest of the slabs", most likely a list of places the Monte Alban elite claimed, conquered and / or controlled. Some of the sites listed on the building J slabs were tentatively identified, and in one case (Cañad de Cuicatlán region in northern Oaxaca) Zapotec's conquest was confirmed through archaeological research and excavations.
The Monte Alban site contains several pieces of evidence across the site architecture to suggest that there is social division in the locality. Walls that were larger, nine meters high and twenty meters wide, were built around the settlement and would have been used not only to create a border between Monte Alban and nearby settlements, but also to prove the power of the elites within the community. In Scott Hutson's analysis of the relationship between commoners and elites in Monte Alban, he notes that the monumental mounds that were found in the site seemed to be evenly distributed throughout the site so that each house would be close enough to the embankment that he could easily hold under control. Hutson also makes a note that over time, the style of the house seems to have changed and become more closed to those living in buildings, making it more difficult for information to be obtained by outsiders. These changes in the ability of the elite to obtain information about the private life of citizens would play a key role in the internal political structure of the settlement.
Many of the artifacts unearthed at Monte Alban during a century of archaeological research can be seen at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City and at the Regional Museum of Oaxaca in the ex-convention de Santo Domingo de Guzman in the city of Oaxaca. The last museum, among others, many of the objects discovered in 1932 by Alfonso Caso in Monte Alban in Grave 7 , in the classical period, the Zapotec coffin, which was opportunistically reused in postclassical times for the burial of the Mistec elite individuals. Their burial was accompanied by some of the most spectacular funerary offerings of any site in America.
Mont Alban is a popular tourist destination for visitors to Oaxaca and has a small museum site mainly displaying the original carved stones from the site. The site received 429,702 visitors in 2017.
Panorama of Monte Alban from the South Platform.
Threats
The main threat to this archaeological site is urban growth, which encroaches upon and "threatens to expand into areas of potential archaeological value." To complicate matters, the site's administration is split between four different municipalities, making a concerted effort to stop the urban call invasion.
Gallery
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One of the steles known as dancing on the unorthodox positions of the characters presented.
View across the main square from the South Platform, with Building J in the foreground.
Building M as seen from the South Platform.
Dancing stones, in the dancing square, next to building L.
Tomb north of the North Platform
Building X on the Northern Platform
Undiscovered building on the North Platform
Stone carving, L
View of the main square from the North platform
View of the main square from the south platform, with Building J in the foreground.
“Is there any other piece of land on earth whose history would be just as dark? Where else would all your questions so invariably remain unanswered? Which feeling prevails in us: admiration or confusion? What causes these feelings is a complex of buildings that rush to infinity, or, perhaps, pyramids that look like luxurious staircases leading to the inner chambers of the sky. Or maybe the courtyard of the temple, which our imagination fills with thousands of Indians immersed in frantic prayers? Maybe an observatory, which has an observation post with a meridian circle and an azimuth angle, or a giant amphitheater, which Europe did not know either in ancient times or in the twentieth century - there were one hundred and twenty stone sloping rows!
Perhaps these feelings are caused by the location of the crypts: they were placed so that the area they occupied did not turn into a cemetery and at the same time one grave did not interfere with the other. Or maybe they are caused by a motley mosaic, frescoes depicting various scenes of life, the most diverse figures of people, symbols, hieroglyphs? ”- wrote the German journalist Egon Erwin Kish about the ruins of Monte Alban.
Monte Alban is an archaeological reserve located in the southern part of Mexico, near the city of Oaxaca. For almost two millennia, there was one of the largest centers of pre-Columbian America - an ancient Indian city, whose name has not been preserved in history. Today it bears the name Monte Alban, after a forested hill that for many centuries hid the ruins of a huge Indian settlement. It was excavated in 1931 by the Mexican archaeologist Alfonso Caso, and this discovery is equated by many with the discovery of Troy by Heinrich Schliemann.
"Mexican Troy" turned out to be a city in which people of surprisingly high culture lived. They built magnificent temples, they knew how to process rock crystal and make gold items and other jewelry of extraordinary beauty. This talented people were called the Zapotecs.
The founding of Monte Alban dates back to around the 4th century BC. e. At the time of its heyday (200-700 AD), the city occupied an area of \u200b\u200b40 square meters. km, and its population exceeded 20 thousand people. On the artificially leveled giant square at the top of the hill, stepped pyramids with a ball court still rise today. Remains of palaces, steles with inscriptions, a stone staircase 40 m wide and other structures have been preserved on the slopes descending into terraces. The walls of the buildings were decorated with mosaics, frescoes, and reliefs.
The main god of the Zapotecs was the rain god Kosiho. As a sign of special reverence, the title Pitao (“The Great”) was added to his name. The main pyramid of the city, crowning the top of the hill, was dedicated to him. But much more interesting than temples, palaces and steles are the famous tombs of Monte Alban.
These tombs are built of stone and each is topped with a large stone slab. This design reproduced the image of those caves in which in more ancient times the Indian peoples of southern Mexico buried their leaders and priests. The Zapotecs believed that their ancestors at the dawn of history were born from large caves. Therefore, they should have returned to the world of the dead in the same way.
The discovery of the tombs of Monte Alban was a real shock for scientists. First, it turned out that the Zapotecs - this is completely unusual for the Indians - decorated their "artificial caves" with rich murals. And secondly, these "caves" turned out to be chock-full of gold items of unheard-of beauty and value!
Nowhere else in America was there anything like it. This find was later compared with the discovery of the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, with the famous gold of Troy, with finds in the royal tombs in Ur.
Archaeologists discovered the first tomb of Monte Alban in the fall of 1931. And on January 9 of the following year, at 4:30 pm, Alfonso Caso and his assistant Juan Valenzuelo saw a real miracle. When Valenzuelo made his way through a narrow hole into the newly discovered tomb (it received serial number seven) and turned on an electric flashlight, he thought he was losing his mind: he saw a huge treasure that had lain untouched underground for more than eight hundred years ...
It took seven days to take out the treasures kept here from "tomb No. 7". In total, about five hundred objects were found, including the magnificent golden mask of the god Thype Toteka, whose nose and cheeks were covered with human skin; necklaces of extraordinarily large pearls, earrings of jade and obsidian, gold chased bracelets with convex ornament, gold necklaces consisting of 900 links, a snuff box of gilded pumpkin leaves, clasps and buckles of jade, turquoise, pearls, amber, coral, obsidian, teeth jaguar, bones and shells.
Mysterious human skulls, carved from pure rock crystal, were also found here. But crystal is one of the hardest minerals on earth. As it turned out, the crystal skulls were made from a whole quartz crystal. Their surface did not have the slightest traces of any processing with metal tools and was, apparently, polished with a special paste, the secret of which has not reached our time. But, according to the most conservative estimates, in order to make it in this way, the Indians would have taken at least 300 years!
In 1970, one of the crystal skulls was examined by Hewlett-Packard, a well-known expert on quartz and a well-known manufacturer of quartz oscillators. In his report, engineer L. Barre wrote:
“We studied the skull along all three optical axes and found that it consists of 3-4 aggregates. Analyzing the aggregates, we found that they grow from a single center and form a single continuous crystal. We also found that the skull was carved from a single piece of crystal along with the lower jaw. On the Mohs scale, rock crystal has a high hardness of 7 (second only to topaz, corundum and diamond). As for the processing, it cannot be cut with anything other than a diamond. But the ancients managed to somehow process it. And not only the skull itself - they cut out the lower jaw from the same piece and the places for the articulated jaw, on which it was suspended. With such a hardness of the material, this is more than mysterious, and here is why: in crystals, if they consist of more than one intergrowth, there are internal stresses. When you press on the crystal with the head of the cutter, due to the presence of stresses, the crystal may split into pieces, so it cannot be cut - it will simply split. But someone made this skull out of a single piece of crystal so carefully, as if he hadn't touched it at all during the cutting process.
Thus, Hewlett-Packard experts confirmed F. Dorland's assumption that the skull was made not with a chisel, but by long-term abrasion. Which ones?
“When examining the surface of the skull, we found evidence of the effect of three different abrasives,” writes L. Barre, “the final finish was made by polishing. We also found some kind of prism carved into the back of the skull, at the base of the skull so any ray of light entering the eye sockets is reflected in them. " In conclusion, the experts wrote in their hearts: “The damn thing shouldn't have existed at all. The one who carved it had no idea about crystallography and completely ignored the axes of symmetry. It inevitably had to fall apart during processing! "
By the way, the words that those who made the skull did not have the slightest idea about crystallography and ignored the axes of symmetry of the stone, are the best proof that the skull could not have been made by the mythical "aliens", to whom some hotheads immediately rushed to ascribe the authorship of the crystal skulls. But who would have thought that "Indian savages" could achieve such precision in the processing of rock crystal!
More than one and a half hundred tombs were discovered by archaeologists in Monte Alban. But none of them in their wealth surpassed the famous "tomb No. 7".
At the turn of the XIV-XV centuries. n. e. The Zapotecs were expelled from their "golden city" by the Mixtecs. They moved their capital to the city of Joopa. The Aztecs called it "Mitla" - "Home of death". According to the ideas of the Indians, here was the entrance to the underworld, the gateway to the afterlife. Pilgrims from all over Mexico flocked to Joopa to await their death here. In their new capital, the Zapotecs built many palaces that differed from other monuments of ancient Mexican architecture in that they were stretched in breadth and had only one floor. These palaces were decorated with friezes, white stone mosaics and excellent wall paintings. Joopaa became the seat of the high priest, the highest religious leader of the Zapotecs. The Zapotecs called him “Viha-Tao” (“Seeing”). The will of the gods was revealed to him alone, only he alone could speak with them, and only he alone possessed the gift of divination. Ordinary mortals could not see the Seer. He lived in his palace in complete solitude and only once in his life appeared in public: during a special religious festival, a girl chosen for him, drunk with a narcotic drink, was brought to him, whose chastity was vigilantly guarded and who was to conceive a successor of Viha-Tao. The son of the great priest and this girl later became the new Seer.
In the vicinity of Monte Alban, the Zapotecs lived two millennia ago. They lived in the same place during the time of Columbus and still live here. But the ancient secrets and traditions of this people have long been lost.
Joyce Marcus, Kent Flannery ::: Zapotec Civilization. The history of the development of urban society in the Mexican Valley of Oaxaca
By the end of the sixth century BC. e. the Oaxaca Valley was on the verge of a great transformation. She was about to witness the birth of an urban society, one of the earliest in the New World. This society will emerge at a tremendous pace, and its emergence will be unprecedented, since there have never been urban societies to model for it.
The Settlement Pattern Project provided us with a rough outline of what happened. Towards the end of the Rosario phase, the population of the valley was apparently divided into three chiefly communities of unequal size: a larger polity in the Etla sub-valley (2000 inhabitants), and two smaller polities in the Valle Grande (700-1000 inhabitants) and the Tlacolula sub-valley (700- 1000 people). These polities were divided by 80 km 2 of no man's land, the most visible feature of the landscape of which was an uneven mountain range of 6 km 2. The disproportionately large size of the main center of each polity - San Jose Mogote, San Martin Tilcahete and Yeguih - suggests that each center made an effort to attract and concentrate as much human resources as it could. Archaeological evidence in the form of burnt temples and sacrificed captives shows that some or all of these polities vied with each other.
At the end of the Rosario phase, an unexpected phenomenon occurs: San José Mogote, the largest community in the valley for over 800 years, unexpectedly loses most of its population. Although on the spurs of the nearby foothills one can still find separate “suburban” quarters inhabited by farmers, an entire 40-hectare of ceremonial and nobility-populated core of the village was abandoned. And San Jose Mogote was not the only village in the Rosario phase to lose population; he was soon joined by Tierras Largas, the San Jose Factory, and other communities. Survey of the surface reveals that in the southern part of the Etla sub-valley, a good half of the villages of the Rosario phase remain uninhabited in the subsequent period.
At the same time as this widespread abandonment of the villages of Etla, there is a rapid and unexpected surge in population in the former no man's land in the center of the Oaxaca Valley. The most impressive example of this surge was the sudden and large settlement on the summit of the already mentioned 6 km2 rugged sacred mountain. This mountain, today known as Monte Alban, rises 400 meters above the plain of the Atoyak River.
Around 600 BC. BC, in the late Rosario phase, Monte Alban appears to be uninhabited. By about 400 BC. BC, in the phase known as Early Monte Alban I, it was estimated to have 5,280 inhabitants. By about 200 BC. BC, during the Late Monte Alban I phase, its population was estimated to be 17,242, making it one of the largest cities in the New World at that time. By that time, a 3 km long defensive wall was being built along the western slopes of the mountain, which are the easiest to climb, and the top was crowned with an acropolis of public buildings.
These changes mean that during the transition from the Rosario phase to the Monte Alban I phase, thousands of Indians from the bottom of the valley left their villages to move to the top of a rocky, previously unoccupied, virtually waterless mountain, forming the largest single community, which valley when -or seen. By the Late Monte Alban I period, about a third of the valley's population lived in this single fortified city. The term "urban revolution" may be an exaggeration for some prehistoric situations, but in the case of Monte Alban it seems appropriate.
How should we explain this sudden transformation? Was Monte Alban unique, or were there similar precedents in other parts of the world? Were there other ancient societies similar to what happened in Oaxaca? It turns out that there were not so few of them.
Moving cities in ancient Greece
Documents from archaic and classical Greece show that dozens of ancient cities were founded or relocated here, usually with the aim of confronting an external threat. The most significant, from the point of view of this chapter, was a process called syneikism (from the Greek. Oikos - "house", and "sin" - together), during which the inhabitants of entire groups of villages left their rural surroundings and gathered together to form a city where it was not before. These newly created cities, often located in defensive or strategically advantageous locations, survived because their leaders were able to manage distant landholdings and integrate originally autonomous populations into one megalopolis or "agglutinated city."
A recent study by Nancy Demand makes it clear that the main reasons for this urban movement were not ecological, agricultural, or economic. Communities moved "only in the face of an extraordinary external threat that called into question their continued existence as autonomous political organizations," and the villagers came together to "form a large and strong city that could withstand the threat."
The process of synoikism, whose purpose was to protect the independence of the polis by transforming it into a megalopolis, "ironically contributed to the decline of the polis itself as a fundamental autonomous political unit of the Greek world." This is an example of what action theorists call "unintended consequences." By creating the largest political grouping ever before, Greek actors changed the “system” and the entire course of Greek history. Let's look at two examples now.
Peloponnesian synoikism
In the three years after Sparta was defeated at the battle of Leuctra, several new cities arose in the Peloponnese, which were founded precisely to control Sparta. In 369 BC. BC, the city of Messena moved to Mount Itoma, the most powerful natural fortification in the region. New Messena was built on the western slope of the mountain, and above it was its acropolis, which, in case of need, could serve as a refuge. The land was distributed among the new townspeople; the cost of building the defensive walls was probably paid from the spoils of war.
In 368 BC. AD, along the main road leading from Sparta to Arcadia, the walled city of Megalopolis was created, which provided security for the local population, and hindered the expansion of Sparta. As shown in fig. 156, Megalopolis is an example of true synekism, in which (according to Pausanias and other historians) somewhere between 20 and 39 rural communities in Arcadia united to form one large city. Situated to take advantage of the hills near an important river, Megalopolis covered 324 hectares and had walls over 8 km in circumference.
Most of the villages, so far identified as Oikists, or participants in the synoikism of Megalopolis, lie within 10-15 km from the city. Some people, however, were brought from a distance of 30-65 km. Four communities are known to have resisted unification. Many of these dissenters were simply brought to Megalopolis by force. In 362 BC. e. there was a later attempt by some residents to return to their native villages, but they were also forced back. Presumably, these later rebels were from areas 30-65 km away.
The rulers of Megalopolis made every effort to make their forcibly integrated population feel happy. They brought the statues of the old gods from the forsaken regions of Arcadia and placed them in the Acropolis, proving that they have a "synoykism of the gods" similar to that of humans; they set up designated areas in the city so that each group could have their own temples; and they invented a new cult to unite the motley oikists of Megalopolis.
Synoikism Syracuse
Demand's analysis of the synekism of Syracuse, a Greek city in Sicily, shows that this was more a case of "consolidation of power" than a defense. The story began in 491 BC. e. with the death of Hippocrates, the powerful tyrant (or hereditary ruler) of Gela. A usurper named Gelon seized power, justifying his claims to it by the fact that his family had a hereditary right to fulfill the priestly cult of Demeter and Cora. In 485 BC. e. Gelon, with the help of military alliances, seized control of Syracuse. He immediately moved there, making Syracuse his new capital and leaving his brother Hieron in charge of Gela. Half of the population of Gela - mainly workers and peasants - then also moved 140 km to Syracuse in order to strengthen this city by increasing the population.
Like many sixteenth-century Mesoamerican rulers, Gelon himself handpicked administrators for urban settlements in the countryside around Syracuse. When the city of Kamarina rebelled, he destroyed it to the ground and resettled the inhabitants 110 km away to Syracuse. When the wealthy elite of Megara Giblai rebelled, he forcibly relocated the elite to Syracuse, and sold their compatriots from the lower classes into slavery; these slaves were then forced to work to provide food for the larger population of Syracuse.
Like the rulers of Megalopolis, Gelon used community service to portray himself as a man who terrifies people, but is pious towards the gods. He built an elaborate water supply system, erected temples in honor of Demeter and Cora, and built the Temple of Athena on top in the foothill plains. Demand describes Gelon's tactics as typical of the Greek tyrant, but they were also typical of the Mesoamerican rulers described in sixteenth century documents. The latter also seized power by force, resettled peasants, appointed members of their own families to control secondary communities, and recruited their subjects into public works, demonstrating piety and reverence for the gods.
Archaeological evidence of synekism
We have discussed synekism with some detail, as we think it represents the best analogy for the urban revolution in Oaxaca. Monte Alban did not grow slowly from village to city. It arose on an uninhabited natural fortification similar to Mount Itoma, and expanded to a 365 hectare city, like Megalopolis, in a very short period of time. Its foundation was accompanied by the departure of the population from a number of villages at the bottom of the valley, and many of these villages were located within 10-15 km from the city. At an early stage in its history, while the bulk of the population lived on the slopes of the mountain, the rulers of Monte Alban organized the construction of the main public buildings on its summit and directed the construction of a 3 km protective wall along the most accessible and vulnerable slope.
Before we take a closer look at Monte Alban, let's look at some of the characteristics of synekism that may be important in our case.
First, synoikism was not a rare event. It was one of the many recurring phenomena, and was one of the most common processes of city formation in ancient Greece. At the same time, this process was launched by individual human figures, actors. We have seen that an aristocrat named Gelon was behind the sprawl of Syracuse; It is believed that a Theban aristocrat named Epaminondas was behind the synekism of Megalopolis. This should remind us that important leaders - whose names we unfortunately never know - had to be behind the synequism of Monte Alban.
Second, we remember that Demand found no evidence that Greek cities changed their location for environmental, agricultural, or economic reasons. Moving so many people is very costly, and the primary motivation in each case seems to have been political considerations. The rulers practiced synekism to strengthen their power, or to create a city strong enough to defend their independence in the face of external threats.
Third, Demand points out that while the motives may have been political, there were unintended economic consequences. Resettlement was expensive. Many displaced people, finding themselves far from their native lands, abandoned peasant labor forever and became urban workers. These workers, as well as the representatives of the nobility for whom they worked, had to be fed. In ancient Greece, the problem was solved by intensifying agriculture near the city, importing food from more distant regions, levying tribute from the conquered population and using the labor of slaves (servos). We will present evidence that the rulers of Monte Alban also used many of these methods.
157. Twenty-five Important Settlements of the Early Monte Alban PhaseI overlaid on the Oaxaca Valley agricultural classes map. (Over 200 smaller settlements skipped).
Settlement scheme during Monte Alban Phase I
In his original definition of the Monte Alban I period, the eminent Mexican archaeologist Ignacio Bernal identified three pottery horizons, which he named Ia, Ib and Ic. The Settlement Pattern Project found that only Ia (Early Monte Alban I) and Ic (Late Monte Alban I) can be distinguished on the surface of settlements. We, following them, will consider Ia and Ic as discrete phases, the transition between which is Ib.
During the Monte Alban Ia phase, which probably began in 500 BC. e. and ended by 300 BC. BC, there were 261 settlements in the Oaxaca Valley. Some 192 of them, including Monte Alban itself, were qualitatively new settlements. Despite this unprecedented redistribution of the valley's population, the enduring continuity in ceramics and architecture from the Rosario phase to the Monte Alban Ia phase shows that we are dealing with the same ethnic group. We estimate that approximately 96 percent of the new settlements were villages with less than 100 inhabitants. In contrast, the population of Monte Alban was estimated to be over 5,000. This was a very large percentage of the valley's population, which, according to our estimates, ranged from 8,000 to 10,000.
158-160. Communities of the central Oaxaca Valley. (Above) Rosario phase. (Center) Monte AlbanIa. (Bottom) Monte AlbanIc.
161. Settlement 2-6-136 near San Agustin de las Juntas, important administrative center of the Monte Alban phaseIc in the foothills of the central Oaxaca Valley.
Additional evidence that Monte Alban was founded through synekism can be found by examining the 65 hectares of the city where the surface density of Period Ia ceramics is highest. This 65 ha is divided into three discrete clusters of high population density, which are separated by areas where shards Ia are less common. Richard Blanton, who oversaw the drafting of the Monte Alban plan, sees this as evidence that Monte Alban was founded by at least three groups of colonists who established separate living areas.
The founding of Monte Alban also changed the demographics of the central Oaxaca Valley, including the 80 km2 zone that was no man's land during the Rosario phase. In the central valley there were only five small villages of the Rosario phase. During the Monte Alban Ia period, this number increased to 38 villages, while Monte Alban Ic exploded to 155 villages and small towns. In fact, the entire demographic center of the valley's gravity has shifted from Etla to the region surrounding Monte Alban. The satellite communities - undoubtedly producing the bulk of the maize used in the city - now clustered around Monte Alban, much like the way they clustered around San José Mogote centuries earlier.
During the Monte Alban Ic phase, which probably began in 300 BC. e. and ended by 150 - 100 BC. BC, the population of the valley reached 50,000, according to the Settlement Pattern Project. One third of this population (estimated at 17,242) lived in Monte Alban; in addition, three quarters of the increase in population between the Monte Alban Ia and Ic phases occurred in an area within 20 km of the city. 744 communities were subordinate to Monte Alban. Some of these were townships with a population of 1,000-2,000, but the vast majority of settlements are villages with an estimated population of less than 150.
162. Forty Important Settlements of the Late Monte Alban PhaseI overlaid on the Oaxaca Valley agricultural classes map. (Over 700 smaller settlements skipped).
163. Komal, or ceramic tortilla pan, first appears in the Early Monte Alban phaseI.
The rural population distribution data for the Monte Alban Ia - Ic phases show three clear trends. The first is the already mentioned tendency of new settlements to cluster around Monte Alban itself. The second is a doubling of the number of settlements in the area of \u200b\u200bthe valley's foothills; 30 percent of the settlements in the Monte Alban Ic phase are located at the top of the foothills, compared with just 16 percent in the Monte Alban Ia phase. The third trend is an impressive increase in the number of settlements located in places convenient for defense. Approximately 39 percent of the population of the Monte Alban Ic phase lived in 13 settlements that were either on hilltops, had defensive walls, or both. This is significantly more than in the Monte Alban Ia phase, when there were only three such settlements.
These trends are not surprising given our previous discussion of synekism. The increased selection of sites for defense, the construction of fortifications at Monte Alban, and some other signs of militarism, which will be discussed below, remind us that synoikism was often planned as a response to an external threat. Moving settlements into the foothills of what the Settlement Pattern Project called the “foothills strategy” reminds us that the newly created cities had to be fed. The foot of the mountains was the nearest unoccupied land that Monte Alban could turn to in order to intensify agricultural productivity.
Another trend of Monte Alban I deserves a mention. Large ceramic pans known in Mexico as comal, first appear in Period Ia. These pans are used to make tortillas, unleavened tacos that can be mass-produced in the thousands. The sudden appearance and rapid increase in the number of Komale in Period I could mean that large teams of workers were now rewarded for their labor in the form of tortillas.
Canal irrigation and the foothills strategy
Canal irrigation has a long history in the Oaxaca Valley, but its use increased significantly during the Monte Alban Ic phase. This rapid growth almost certainly stemmed from the city of Monte Alban's need for provisions. Canal irrigation in ancient Oaxaca used not so much the Atoyak River as its smaller tributaries in the foothills. Many of these streams could, with relatively little labor, be used for irrigation by channeling some of the water into small canals using boulders and branches. All such systems were small and usually served the land of one or two communities.
The Oaxaca Valley is thus a region of numerous small canal systems rather than one large system. In contrast to regions like southern Mesopotamia, the northern coast of Peru, or even the nearby Tehuacan Valley, central Oaxaca was not an area suitable for models of "despotic control" of the upstream polities over the downstream polities. The Atoyak River, the largest stream in the valley, creates a strip of periodically flooded yuhkohpfor which channel irrigation usually does not make sense.
Due to the small size of the streams, canal irrigation today serves only 9 percent of the cropland in the Oaxaca Valley. It is significant that most of this land is located in the Etla sub-valley. 25 percent of the Etla region is irrigated by canals, while Valle Grande has 7 percent and Tlacolula region 3 percent. This may explain why the Etla sub-valley experienced such high population growth during the Monte Alban Ic phase, especially with the founding of new villages in the foothills.
Small canals first appear, at least during the San Jose phase, when they were used to divert rainwater runoff from homes. This simple technology eventually allowed agriculture to expand beyond humid low-lying lands into foothills, where small ditches could be used to direct water flows to lands that would otherwise be unprofitable. We suspect that early villages in the foothill area, such as Fabrika San José and Tomaltepec, already resorted to some kind of canal irrigation. However, it was not until the Monte Alban Ic phase that this practice spread so widely that the ancient canal systems were left far behind.
Duct system under Monte Alban
A team led by Michael J. O'Brien discovered a small irrigation system on the southeastern side of the mountain on which Monte Alban lies. The system consists of a dam and a 2 km long canal. The dam, approximately 10 m high in the central part, and a total of 80 m long, stretches the entire width of the natural gorge and consists of boulders, lined with limestone blocks. The channel begins at the southern end of the dam and follows the contours of the mountain along the southern end of the gorge, and then stretches down the mountain spur towards the bottom of the valley. On the other end of the canal there are terraced fields for farming.
167. This canal and terraced system on the slopes of Monte Alban irrigated about 50 hectares during the Monte Alban phaseI.
This canal system supplied water to a settlement that was founded during the Monte Alban Ia phase, flourished during the Ic period, and fell into decay during the Monte Alban II phase. The cultivated area was estimated at 50 hectares and could probably not support more than 250 people. Thus, she made very little contribution to the food supply of the whole of Monte Alban. We must assume that this was just one of many small canal systems from this period - one of the few surviving.
Other small systems
The Settlement Pattern Project has discovered at least two more irrigation systems in the Monte Alban I Phase. One, consisting of a 35 m long earthen dam, lies in a ravine near Loma Larga, about 5 km west of Mitla in the eastern Tlacolula sub-valley. The second lies at the foot of the mountain 10-12 km east of Monte Alban.
Yerve el Agua
Probably the most impressive pre-Hispanic water management system in the region lies in the mountains east of Mitla. This is the Hierve el Agua system, fed by streams and small streams, which has recently been analyzed in detail by archaeologist James Neely, hydrochemist Christopher Caran, and diatom (flint) algae specialist Barbara Vinsbare (Barbara Winsborough).
Yerve el Agua makes a strong impression, because the mineral salts in the artesian springs that fed it literally turned the ancient canals into calcareous tuff. Below the springs, the remains of fossilized canals and stone-lined terraces cover over 1 square kilometer, with the upper 2 hectares comprising the most complex part of the complex. The main canals meander down the slopes, periodically giving rise to secondary canals that run along the walls of each terrace. Excavations of the Nile within the terraces' earthen infill show that construction began during the Monte Alban Ic phase, although the system clearly reached its highest point in later pre-Hispanic times (AD 300-1300).
Since the mineral content in the springs of Yerve el-Agua is today very high, Neely initially assumed that this place was rather used not for agriculture, but for obtaining salt. However, none of the terraces resembles a shallow tank for water evaporation. Most of them are narrow and deep, and, apparently, the fertility of many of them was artificially increased by the addition of ancient organic remains. Moreover, computer models designed by Karan show that if the water from the springs is allowed to evaporate, the first to appear are completely different salts that we consider edible (such as sodium chloride), but on the contrary, a number of very bad tasting sediments.
It is possible, of course, that the ancient builders of Yerve el-Agua considered such contaminated salts to be curative, and believed that water with them was good for health. Indeed, there are ancient structures near the springs that could have been bathing pools. In this respect, Yerve el Agua is reminiscent of the famous Aztec "Baths of King Nezahualcoyotl" in the Valley of Mexico. It is believed that the ruler of the city of Texcoco took baths in the healing waters there, after which these waters flowed down into rows of irrigation terraces that are more extended than the terraces of Hierve el Agua.
Whether Yerve el Agua was a combination of a spa and an irrigation system or not, its builders seemed to know quite well how to remove harmful salts from mineral water. First, adding organic debris to the terraces would draw out boron - potentially the most dangerous chemical in the water - and prevent it from reaching any crops. Second, the terrace walls appear to have been provided with "leak holes" to maximize drainage and prevent sodium from entering the subsoil support. Third, since the terraces lie in an area where the annual rainfall is 600-700 mm, canal irrigation could be nothing more than an addition to supply agricultural plants with water during the periods between rains - some of which could be strong enough to wash out large amounts of salts from the terraces. Neely, Karan and Vinsbare note that waters with exactly the same mineral composition as Yerve el Agua "are regularly used for irrigation in the Pecos River Valley and surrounding New Mexico and Texas."
Key Points of the Foothills Strategy
Unfortunately, only a few of the canals designed during the Monte Alban I phase survived to the point where archaeologists could study them. We must therefore refer to the Settlement Pattern Project data to find out which of the irrigable foothill regions experienced the highest population growth during the Monte Alban IC phase, the first phase during which the “foothill strategy” was clearly defined.
It is not surprising that one such region is located in the hilly foothills immediately south and southwest of Monte Alban. It is mostly Class III land, but its small and intermittent streams may have been blocked for irrigation purposes to help feed the city's growing population.
However, even more important seemed to be the Etla sub-valley, in which a quarter of the cultivated land is suitable for canal irrigation. New settlements have sprung up in the foothills to the north and east of Monte Alban, reaching all the way to San Luis Beltran in the western part of the Tlacolula sub-valley. Although most of the foothills are Class III land, much of it has never been cleared and may have been more fertile in the beginning than it is today.
As we have seen, synoikism always poses the problem of providing a large new city with food. In the case of Monte Alban, it can most definitely be said that the strategy of the foothills was aimed at solving this problem. The Settlement Pattern Project identified 19 locations where the increase in the number of new settlements in the foothill area during the Monte Alban Ic phase was higher than the standard deviation from the mean for the valley as a whole. 15 of these locations are located in Etla or the central regions of the valley; ten lies within 15 kilometers of Monte Alban. Fifteen kilometers is less than one day's crossing for a person carrying a load of maize in Monte Alban.
Using crop data for different soil classes, Linda Nicholas calculated that Monte Alban's maize requirement in a normal year could be met by a region consisting of the Etla sub-valley, northern Valle Grande, and a central valley near Monte Alban. In particular, her calculations imply that the Etla region could produce enough for itself, plus 10,600 more; the central region could produce enough for itself, plus another 5,000 people; and the northern part of Valle Grande could produce enough for itself, plus 9,000 more. These numbers imply that in a good year of 17,242 (an estimate), the inhabitants of Monte Alban hardly needed to farm themselves. In any case, it would have been difficult for them to do so, since the lands adjacent to Monte Alban had been so densely populated during Period Ic. The question remains, what happened in dry years, when there was insufficient rain and many streams in the foothills dried up. In such years, tribute in the form of maize from more distant fields might be needed.
Was there an "external threat"?
We have seen the historical facts according to which Greek synekism was often a response to an external threat. We do not have comparable historical data for Monte Alban, but its carved stone monuments and defensive work indicate such a threat.
Along the western and northern border of the early city, a three-kilometer-long wall of earth and stone winds about 15-20 m wide. Along the section called Cañada Norte, the surviving wall reaches a height of 4-5 m; south of this point there are places where the wall still reaches a height of 9 m. The northern sector is made up of a double wall, with the outer structure being better preserved and the inner wall heavily eroded, “which is probably a sign of an older structure that was later attached to the outer wall. " It is not surprising that the construction of the older wall began when the city was founded. So far, only one small section of the younger wall has been excavated, and it is dated to the Monte Alban Ic phase or the early Monte Alban II period.
170. Peña de los Corrales, near Magdalena Apasco in the Etla subvalley, is a typical example of a location on a hilltop convenient for defense. This location was chosen by many communities of the Monte Alban phaseIс.
Monte Alban was not the only settlement in the valley protected by walls or natural landforms; by the end of the Monte Alban I phase, more than a third of the valley's population lived in such settlements. This trend began in the Monte Alban Ia phase with two walled settlements in the western foothills of the Etla sub-valley. By the Monte Alban Ic phase, the number of settlements located on the hilltops convenient for protection had reached thirteen, and at least six of them had wall marks on the surface. The presence of so many communities in fortified or defensive locations is in stark contrast to previous periods.
The data on the location of settlements for the Monte Alban I phase, suggesting that the need for defense became an important factor influencing the location of communities, is complemented by carved stone monuments from the same period. More than 300 of the earliest monuments of Monte Alban depict enemies killed or sacrificed, similar to the one we saw in San José Mogot. There is reason to believe that during the Monte Alban Ia phase, all these carved stones were part of one huge composition on the front of a public building in the city's acropolis. Unfortunately, over time, this building was buried under larger structures; and hundreds of carved stones were reused in later buildings, sometimes as part of the steps.
L in Monte Alban.174. Carved stones depicting killed prisoners, reused as steps in the later staircase of the BuildingL in Monte Alban. The dimensions of the lower carved step are 88 by 35 cm.
Remains of this early composition, now partially buried under Building L in Monte Alban, have preserved four rows of carved stones in their original positions. Each stone depicts a single male victim, naked, with eyes closed, usually with an open mouth, sometimes with curls of blood depicting the severing of the genitals. Most are prostrated in grotesque, ridiculous positions, as they would appear to an observer standing over them while they lie on the ground. If these carvings were arranged horizontally, like the sacrificed prisoner at Monument 3 in San José Mogot, their true meaning would have been clear even to nineteenth-century explorers who first found them. However, the fact that most of them were vertically embedded in the wall led some observers to misinterpret them as "dancers."
The bodies in the lowest row are vertical, with the heads turned to the left. Since this row would be best seen at close range, it contains more elaborately carved figures, some of which have necklaces, earrings, intricate hairstyles, and glyphs that appear to be hieroglyphic personal names. One common glyph that resembles a piece of a spear thrower can indicate that the person was captured in combat.
The second row of carved stones, which are arranged horizontally, depicts simple, prostrate figures with their heads turned to the north. The third row, positioned vertically, resembles the lowest row, with the exception that all bodies now look to the right; they also do not have hieroglyphic names, as in the first row. The fourth row, counting from the bottom, like the second, depicts horizontal outstretched figures. Probably, such figures once stretched along the entire length of the building from north to south, and there were other rows of carvings located even higher. Some of the horizontal images in Rows 2 and 4 were reused as steps in the later staircase of Building L, where the naked bodies of the slain enemies of Monte Alban would be trampled underfoot by anyone who climbed the stairs. This "stepping on the bodies of captives" was a powerful metaphor for conquest often used by the later Maya.
When all the carvings of over 300 prisoners were still in place on the original platform of Building L, it must have been one of the most terrifying depictions of war propaganda in all of Mexico. What prompted the earliest leaders of Monte Alban to intimidate their enemies with this composition? Consider that these carvings accounted for up to 80 percent of the number of monuments known for the entire 1200-year heyday of the city. Add to this the fact that more than a third of the valley's population lived in defensive or fortified places, and there is reason to believe that Monte Alban's synekism was indeed a response to an external threat. But who posed this threat? Was it a polity originating elsewhere in Mexico, or a rival polity within the Oaxaca Valley?
If we look beyond the Oaxaca Valley at the end of the Rosario phase, we will not see any threat in the immediate vicinity. The Tamasulapan and Nochishtlan valleys in the northwest, Cuicatlan Cañada in the north, the Ehutla and Miahuatlan valleys in the south have all been explored, and none apparently had the manpower or political clout to challenge the Oaxaca Valley.
In more remote areas, at the end of the sixth century BC. e. there were several important centers: Cuicuilco in the Valley of Mexico City, La Venta in the southern part of the Gulf of Mexico, Chiaapa de Corso in central Chiapas. As impressive as these centers may seem, we find it hard to believe that they posed a threat to the Oaxaca Valley. After all, they were separated by hundreds of kilometers of rugged mountain trails, and some of them, in all likelihood, have not yet taken full control of their own surrounding regions. On the other hand, the Oaxaca Valley lay along the main pre-Hispanic route from the Mexico Valley through Cuicatlan Cañada and on to the Pacific coast, which apparently made it a desirable target.
For a number of reasons, we do not think that the slain enemies at Building L in Monte Alban came from the Mexico Valley, the Gulf Coast, or the Chiapas Central Depression. In later periods in Monte Alban (Chapters 14 and 15), we will see that the Zapotecs used two conventions to depict conquered foreigners. One of them consisted in associating them with the hieroglyphic name of the corresponding foreign province; in fact, the initial appearance of the Zapotec “place glyph” was intended to indicate the conquered foreign a place. Another convention was to depict foreigners with non-Zapotec headdresses or costumes.
None of these artistic conventions were used in Building L. Based on our research on figurines and depictions of the Rosario and Monte Alban I phases, neither the hairstyles nor the decorations depicted on the slain prisoners look foreign to Oaxaca. And the hieroglyphic names accompanying the bottom row of carvings do not indicate places, but personal nameslike Earthquake 1 at Monument 3 in San Jose Mogot. We strongly suspect that when the prisoner was identified by a personal name rather than a glyph indicating a place, he was a rival from the same ethnic group.
Thus, while we cannot rule out an external threat from one of the outlying regions mentioned above, we find it likely that the threat came from other areas within the Oaxaca Valley. In fact, we see two possible scenarios. (1) In the first scenario, the population of the Tlacolula and Valle Grande districts could have founded Monte Alban to block the expansion of San Jose Mogote. (2) In the second scenario, San Jose Mogote could himself prepare for expansion against its rivals from Tlacolula and Valle Grande, creating a strong confederation of villages in the Etla and central valley regions. The capital of this confederation - along with many other participating villages - could then be relocated to a defensive mountain peak in a former no-man's land.
We find the second scenario more convincing. It is in better agreement with the large number of abandoned villages at the end of the Rosario phase in the southern part of the Etla sub-valley, and also with the amazing flourishing of canal irrigation in the foothills of the Etla mountains and the central regions. Like any synekism, the founding of Monte Alban set the task of how to feed the large urban population. It seems to us that this task fell on Etla and the central regions, which implies their main role in the founding of Monte Alban.
