📷 Julio Maciel · Pexels

Where in the world

Mexico

Monte Albán

Zapotec · Mexico

Field notes

civilizations: Zapotec
types: City · Temple · Ballcourt · Astronomical observatory · Necropolis
built: 500 BCE — 700 CE
occupied: 500 BCE — 850 CE
country: Mexico

The site

Monte Albán is a large pre-Columbian city crowning an artificially leveled ridge some 400 metres above the Valley of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. Founded by the Zapotec around 500 BCE, its civic-ceremonial core spreads across a defensible summit ringed by hundreds of artificial terraces and mounded architecture. One of the earliest cities of Mesoamerica, it holds temples, a ballcourt and a necropolis at the junction of the valley's three arms.

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