More Sponsored Links For:
ZapotecThe early Zapotec were a sedentary, agricultural, city-dwelling people who worshiped a pantheon of gods headed by the rain god, Cosijo—represented by a fertility symbol combining the earth-jaguar and sky-serpent symbols common in Middle American cultures. A priestly hierarchy regulated religious rites, which sometimes included human sacrifice. The Zapotec worshiped their ancestors and, believing in a paradisaical underworld, stressed the cult of the dead. They had a great religious center at Mitla and a magnificent city at Monte Albán, where a highly developed civilization flourished possibly more than 2,000 years ago. In art, architecture, hieroglyphics, mathematics, and calendar the Zapotec seem to have had cultural affinities with the Olmec, with the ancient Maya, and later with the Toltec.
Coming from the north, the Mixtec replaced the Zapotec at Monte Albán and then at Mitla; the Zapotec captured Tehuantepec from the Zoquean and Huavean of the Gulf of Tehuantepec. By the middle of the 15th cent. both Zapotec and Mixtec were struggling to keep the Aztec from gaining control of the trade routes to Chiapas and Guatemala. Under their greatest king, Cosijoeza, the Zapotec withstood a long siege on the rocky mountain of Giengola, overlooking Tehuantepec, and successfully maintained political autonomy by an alliance with the Aztec until the arrival of the Spanish. The Zapotec today are mainly of two groups, those of the southern valleys in the mountains of Oaxaca and those of the southern half of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec; together they number some 350,000. The social fabric of Zapotec life—customs, dress, songs, and literature—though predominantly Spanish, still retains strong elements of the Zapotec heritage, particularly in the present-day state of Juchitán.
See H. Augur, Zapotec (1954); M. Kearney, The Winds of Ixtepeji (1972); B. Chinas, The Isthmus Zapotecs (1973).
The Columbia Encyclopedia. Copyright © 2001-09 Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
- Mitla
Mitla [Nahuatl,=abode of the dead], religious center of the Zapotec, near Oaxaca, SW Mexico. Probably built in the 13th cent., the buildings, unlike the pyramidal structures of most Middle Ame...
- Monte Albán
Monte Albán, ancient city, c.7 mi (11.3 km) from Oaxaca, SW Mexico, capital of the Zapotec. Monte Albán was built on an artificially leveled, rocky promontory above the Valley of Oaxaca. Locat...
- Juchitán
Juchitán or Juchitán de Zaragoza, town (1990 pop. 53,666), Oaxaca state, S Mexico. Located on the Juchitán River in a vast expanse of flat, fertile plain only slightly above sea level, the old...
- Tehuantepec
Tehuantepec, officially Santo Domingo Tehuantepec, town (1990 pop. 33,445), Oaxaca state, S Mexico, on a wide bend of the Tehuantepec River not far from the Gulf of Tehuantepec, an arm of the ...
- Mixtec
Mixtec, Native American people of Oaxaca, Puebla, and part of Guerrero, SW Mexico, one of the most important groups in Mexico. Although the Mixtec codices constitute the largest collection of ...
- Oaxaca, city, Mexico
Oaxaca, city (1990 pop. 212,818), capital of Oaxaca state, S Mexico. The city is officially called Oaxaca de Juárez. Situated in a valley encircled by low mountains, Oaxaca is a commercial and...
- Toltec
Toltec, ancient civilization of Mexico. The name in Nahuatl means master builders. The Toltec formed a warrior aristocracy that gained ascendancy in the Valley of Mexico c.A.D. 900 after the f...
- Oaxaca, state, Mexico
Oaxaca, state (1990 pop. 3,019,560), 36,375 sq mi (94,211 sq km), S Mexico, on the Pacific Ocean and its arm, the Gulf of Tehuantepec. Oaxaca is the capital. The northern part of the state is ...
- writing
Writing, the visible recording of language peculiar to the human species. Writing enables the transmission of ideas over vast distances of time and space and is a prerequisite of complex civil...
- Natives, Middle American
Natives, Middle American or Mesoamerican, aboriginal peoples living in the area between present-day United States and South America. Although most of Mexico is geographically considered part o...
