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The Zapotec Ruins at Mitla
The ruins at Mitla are a source for many of the designs of the Zapotec
weavings. View photographs of details of the patterns carved into the stones at Mitla in our slideshow below. Then view the rugs to see how these designs correspond.

 View Mitla Site Plan

Rock shelters in the hills above Mitla give evidence of human habitation during the Lithic stage, several thousand years B.C. Mitla itself was occupied from about 100 A.D., though nearly all of the architecture now to be seen at Mitla dates from the three centuries before the Spanish Conquest in 1521.

The name Mitla comes from the Nahuatl Mictlan, and means place of the dead. The 17th century Spanish priest Francisco de Burgoa described Mitla as a center of Zapotec religion, ruled by a trained priesthood.