Description
An outline of the work of Kent Flannery, Joyce Marcus and their colleagues in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley where the Zapotecs created one of the most world’s original civilizations. At its peak 1500 years ago, the Zapotec capital of Monte Alban – with its magnificent temples, tombs, ballcourts and hieroglyphic inscriptions – ruled a society of over 100,000 other folks with farflung territorial outposts. Yet a millennium in advance Monte Alban had been uninhabited and the valley’s population lower than one tenth its later size. The authors of the book return to the beginnings of the settlement in Oaxaca 10,000 years ago to give you the answers to what brought about this surprising cultural flowering.