Zapotec State of Monte Albán

The Zapotec state centred on Monte Albán was the first true urban polity in the Valley of Oaxaca and one of the earliest cities and states in Mesoamerica.

Founded around 500 BCE on a deliberately levelled mountain ridge at the neutral meeting point of the valley's three arms, Monte Albán grew from a settlement of several thousand into the capital of an expansionist Zapotec polity that dominated the Oaxacan highlands. Its population swelled and it exerted political, economic, and military influence over the region from the Terminal Formative through the Early Classic period, interacting with other Mesoamerican powers such as distant Teotihuacan. The Zapotecs developed a logosyllabic writing system and a 260-day ritual calendar, and Monte Albán preserves the earliest large body of hieroglyphic inscriptions known from Mesoamerica, including some of the oldest calendrical records in the Americas. The city lost its political pre-eminence by the end of the Late Classic period (c. 750 CE) and was largely abandoned as a capital by around 800 CE, after which power dispersed to successor centres such as Mitla and the surviving Zapotec petty kingdoms.