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The Zapotec were the largest indian group of Oaxaca,
from 800 BC to 1600 AC.The early Zapotecs were a sedentary,
agricultural city-dwelling people who worshipped a
pantheon of gods headed by Cocijo the rain god, represented
by a fertility symbol combining the earth-jaguar and
sky serpent symbols common in middle-american cultures.
They had no
traditions or legends of migration, but believed themselves
to have been born
directly from rocks, trees, and jaguars. A priestly
hierarchy regulated religious rites, which sometimes
included human
sacrifice. The Zapotecs worshipped their ancestors,
and believing in a paradisaical underworld, stressed
the cult of the dead. In art, architecture, hieroglyphics,
mathematics, and calendar the Zapotecs seem to have
had cultural affinities with the Olmec (ancient Maya),
and later with the Toltec. By 200 B.C.
the Zapotecs were using the bar
and dot system of numerals used by the Maya.
The Mixtecs, from
the north, replaced the Zapotecs at Monte Alban
and then later at Mitla. Though the Zapotecs captured
Tehuantepec from
the Zoquean and Huavean indians of the Gulf of
Tehunatepec, by the middle of the 15th century both the Zapotecs
and Mixtecs were struggling to keep
the Aztecs from gaining control of the trade routes
to Chiapas and Guatemala. Under their greatest
king, Cosijoeza, the Zapotecs withstood a long siege on
the rocky mountain of Guiengola, overlooking Tehuantepec.
The arrival of the Spanish in 1521 changed forever
the
traditional rivalries in the Valley of Oaxaca. With
the Spanish Conquest, Hernan Cortez even took his title
from the name of the Valley, becoming marquis of the
Valley of Oaxaca. Today, most of the 300,00 Zapotecs
are Catholic, and live either
in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec or the mountain village
communities of the Oaxaca Valley.
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Zapotec
Religion
 Ancient
Zapotec ritual activities provide clues to their pre-Hispanic
religious beliefs. > Read more
Zapotec Symbols
 The Zapotecs along
with the Mayans
devised sophisticated
and complex symbols
that are thought be
among Mesoamerica's
earliest writing
systems.
> Read more
Zapotec Language
Pre-Hispanic Zapotec writing was
very complicated; partly phonetic
(where some glyphs represented
sounds) and partly ideographic
(where certain glyphs represented
ideas). > Read more
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