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The Central Valleys of Oaxaca, the cradle of Zapotec civilization, are three broad valleys—Etla in the west, Ocotlán in the south and Mitla in the east—that join at an altitude of about 4500 feet above sea level in the center of what today is the state of Oaxaca. They are located about 200 km south of Mexico City.
The Zapotecs call themselves Bën Za, which means “The People.”. For decades it was believed that the exonym Zapotec came from the Nahuatl tzapotēcah (singular tzapotēcatl), which means "inhabitants of the place of sapote".
A forerunner to the better-known Zapotec site of Monte Albán, San José Mogote was the largest and most important settlement in the Valley of Oaxaca during the Early and Middle Formative periods (ca. 1500-500 BCE) of Mesoamerican cultural development.
Cempoala or Zempoala (Nahuatl Cēmpoalātl 'Place of Twenty Waters') is an important Mesoamerican archaeological site located in the municipality of Úrsulo Galván in the Mexican state of Veracruz. The site was inhabited mainly by Totonacs , Chinantecas and Zapotecs .
There are four basic groups of Zapotecs: the istmeños, who live in the southern Isthmus of Tehuantepec [10] the serranos, who live in the northern mountains of the Sierra Madre de Oaxaca, the southern Zapotecs, who live in the southern mountains of the Sierra Sur and the Central Valley Zapotecs, who live in and around the Valley of Oaxaca.
Zapotec civilization, a historical indigenous pre-Columbian civilization and archaeological culture of central Mexico; Zapotec languages, a group of closely related indigenous Mesoamerican languages
Guiengola is a Zapotec archeological site located 14 km (8.7 mi) north of Tehuantepec, [1] and 243 km (151 mi) southeast of Oaxaca city on Federal Highway 190. The visible ruins are located between a hill and a river, each carries the name of Guiengola. The name means "large stone" in the local variant of the Zapotec language. [2]
The Zapotecs were the earliest to gain dominance over the Central Valleys region. [7] The first major dominion was centered in Monte Albán, which flourished from 500 BCE until 750 CE. [8] At its height, Monte Albán was home to some 25,000 people and was the capital city of the Zapotec nation. [7]