1491_ New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus - Charles C. Mann [126]
FROM 1-EARTHQUAKE TO 8-DEER
The development of writing in Zapotec society went hand-in-hand with growing urbanization. In about 500 B.C., San José Mogote seems to have transplanted itself to Monte Albán, in the middle of the buffer zone. About half an hour by bus from Oaxaca City, Monte Albán is today a decorous sprawl of walls and pyramids enveloped by a lush lawn (this last is an import from Europe; lawn grass did not exist in the Americas prior to Columbus). Arriving tourists are hailed by “guides” with backpacks full of phony ancient figurines and ethnically incorrect souvenirs of Mexica drawings. Their ministrations do not diminish the lonely dignity of the ruins. Monte Albán is atop a steep, 1,500-foot hill that overlooks the valley of Oaxaca. The Zapotec reconfigured the entire hill to build the city, slicing out terraces and platforms. By leveling the entire summit, they created a fifty-five-acre terrace half the size of the Vatican. At its zenith, Monte Albán housed seventeen thousand people and was by a considerable margin the biggest and most powerful population center in Mesoamerica.
The rationale for its construction is the subject of yet another lengthy archaeological dispute. One side proposes that Monte Albán formed because maize agriculture allowed the Oaxaca Valley’s population to grow so much that the rural villages naturally clustered into something resembling cities. For most of its history Monte Albán was thus a huge village, not a true city, and certainly not a hierarchical state. Others argue that warfare had grown so devastating, as shown by the destruction of San José Mogote, that the main valley chiefdoms formed a defensive confederation headquartered at Monte Albán. Yet a third theory is that the Zapotec of Monte Albán—not the Olmec of La Venta—consolidated to form North America’s first imperialist power, an aggressive state that subjugated dozens of other villages.
Among the strongest evidence for the last view are the nearly three hundred carved stone slabs at Monte Albán that depict slain, mutilated enemies: the rulers, Marcus believes, of communities conquered by Monte Albán. Some of the stones are labeled with enemy names, as with the unfortunate 1-Earthquake. These may commemorate victories in Monte Albán’s grinding battle for supremacy with its local rival, San Martín Tilcajete, in the southern arm of the Central Valley. When San José Mogote founded Monte Albán, Tilcajete responded by gathering people from its surrounding villages, doubling in size, and erecting its own ceremonial buildings. War was the inevitable result. Monte Albán sacked Tilcajete in about 375 B.C. Undiscouraged, Tilcajete rebuilt itself on a better defensive position and acquired larger armies. When it again became a threat, Monte Albán attacked for the second time in 120 B.C. This time its forces finished the job. They burned the king’s palace to the ground and emptied the rest of Tilcajete, leaving Monte Albán firmly in control of the entire valley.
With nothing to impede it, Monte Albán swept out and established a domain of almost ten thousand square miles. For centuries it stood on equal ground with its neighbors, the rising Maya states to the east and Teotihuacan to the north. It enjoyed relatively peaceful relations with both but had continual trouble with the Ñudzahui (pronounced “nu-sa-wi”—Spaniards called them the Mixtec), a constellation of petty principalities immediately to the west. By contrast with Monte Albán, these were minuscule entities; most were clusters of rustic villages covering ten to twenty square miles. Yet they were amazingly troublesome. Monte Albán repeatedly overran the Ñudzahui statelets, but never managed to eliminate them. These tiny, fractious domains endured for more than a thousand years. Meanwhile the much stronger and more centralized Zapotec empire collapsed completely in about 800 A.D.