The cultural phases designated as Monte Albán III-A and III-B mark the Classic occupation of this major site in the Valley of Oaxaca. There can be little doubt that the people of Monte Albán were Zapotec speakers, who during Classic times had unequaled opportunity to develop their civilization unaffected by the major troubles that disturbed Teotihuacán and the Maya at the close of the Early Classic. Instead of the 18 or 19 sites known for the valley during the Late Formative, there now were more than 200, a testimony to Zapotec prosperity.
The Monte Albán Classic Period (III-A and III-B) lasted from 250 to 700 ce. During the earlier (III-A) part of the period (250–450) the site shows considerable influence from Teotihuacán. The Early Postclassic Period at Monte Albán (IV; 700–1000) was a time of significant cultural change; it is still uncertain, however, whether the Mixtec replaced the Zapotec at that time.
The Classic site of Monte Albán is quite spectacular. Stone-faced platforms are fronted by stairways with flanking balustrades and exhibit a close counterpart of the talud-tablero motif of Teotihuacán. The temple superstructures had colonnaded doorways and flat beam-and-mortar roofs. One of the best-preserved ball courts of Mesoamerica can be seen at Monte Albán, with a ground plan fashioned in the form of a capital I. Spectators watched the game from stone grandstands above the sloping playing surfaces.
Subsurface tombs were dug in many parts of the site as the last resting places of Monte Albán’s elite. The finest are actually miniature replicas of the larger temples on the surface, complete with facade and miniature painted rooms. The style of the funerary wall paintings is quite close to Teotihuacán, in which areas of flat colour are contained within very finely painted lines in red or black. Teotihuacán presence can also be seen in the finer pottery of Classic Monte Albán, but the manufacture is local as can be proved from the predominance of the fine gray ware that has always typified Monte Albán.
The tradition of literacy dates to Monte Albán I. By Classic times, inscriptions are abundant, appearing on stelae, lintels, slabs used as doors, and wall paintings. The 52-year Calendar Round was the only form of writing dates. The subject matter of these inscriptions can be related to the scenes that they accompany: quite often it is a bound captive standing on a place-glyph, presumably an enemy leader taken in war—an old Monte Albán preoccupation.
The Zapotec of Monte Albán, like the Maya, never exerted much cultural or other pressure on peoples beyond their lands. They did, however, control lands from the Tehuacán Valley in Puebla as far south as the Pacific shore of Oaxaca. Whether they themselves were also controlled by Teotihuacán has not been demonstrated.
Monte Albán: ancient Zapotec reliefAncient Zapotec relief at Monte Albán, Oaxaca state, Mexico.© Dmitry Rukhlenko/Shutterstock.com
The Maya highlands and Pacific coast
Little is known about the Guatemalan highlands between the demise of the Late Formative Miraflores culture and the onset of the Early Classic. But at the ancient site of Kaminaljuyú, on the western side of Guatemala City, a group of invaders from Teotihuacán built a miniature replica of their capital city. This happened about 400 ce, when Teotihuacán was at the height of its power.
This implanted Teotihuacán culture is called Esperanza. Mexican architects must have accompanied the elite, for Kaminaljuyú structures copy the older prototypes down to the last detail, including the support of the lower moldings around tableros with slate slabs. The abundant volcanic building stone, however, so freely used at Teotihuacán, was not present, so that Esperanza temple platforms are built from clay instead.
Each temple platform was rebuilt several times, the later structures being raised over the earlier. Within the stairways fronting each successive platform a great leader was buried. The rich burial furniture in the tombs is informative, for it included three classes of goods: (1) items such as Thin Orange pottery manufactured in Teotihuacán or in one of its satellite areas, (2) hybrid Teotihuacán-Maya pottery and other objects, probably made in Kaminaljuyú, and (3) pottery imported from Petén and of Early Classic Maya manufacture. Also discovered in one tomb was a slate mirror carved in Classic Central Veracruz style. Jade objects occur in abundance in the Esperanza tombs, and in one structure an enormous boulder was recovered; it had been imported from the Maya source along the Motagua River in the southeastern lowlands. The Esperanza elite were enormously wealthy.
What were they doing in the Maya highlands in the first place? Were they an army of imperial conquest? Or were their interests more in the realm of trade? Or both? It is not possible to be definite in these interpretations; but it is known that among the Aztec of the Late Postclassic there was an institution called the pochteca, a hereditary guild of armed merchants who traveled into distant lands looking for luxury goods to bring back to the royal house. Quite often the pochteca would seize lands of hostile peoples through which they passed, or they would provoke incidents that led to the intervention of the regular Aztec army.
It has been suggested that the Teotihuacanos in Kaminaljuyú were also pochteca. They had clear access to the Petén-Yucatán Peninsula and may have exercised political control over it. Kaminaljuyú may have been one of their principal bases of operations in the inclusion of the Maya, both highland and lowland, within the Teotihuacán state.
Within a zone only 75 miles long and 30 miles wide, on the Pacific coast plain of Guatemala, is a cluster of nine compactly built ceremonial centres that together form the Cotzumalhuapa civilization. It forms a puzzle, for there are strong affiliations with most other contemporary civilizations in Mesoamerica. Stylistic influence from the lowland Maya, Classic Central Veracruz, and Teotihuacán can be detected among others. While Cotzumalhuapa took form by the Early Classic, it continued into the Late Classic; but there are great problems in dating individual sculptures.
The problem of Cotzumalhuapa has been linked with that of the Pipil, a shadowy people living in the same region on the eve of the Spanish conquest, who spoke Nahua rather than Maya. It is possible that these Classic sites were actually Pipil capitals, but the case cannot be proved. There is some hieroglyphic writing on Cotzumalhuapa sculptures, mainly dates within what seems to be a 52-year Calendar Round, the glyphs for days being Mexican rather than Maya. There are no real texts, then, to help with the problem. Classic civilization in the Maya lowlands: Tzakol phase
Archaeologists have divided the entire area occupied by speakers of Mayan languages into three subregions: (1) the Southern Subregion, essentially the highlands and Pacific Coast of Guatemala, (2) the Central Subregion, which includes the department of Petén in northern Guatemala and the immediately adjacent lowlands to the east and west, and (3) the Northern Subregion, consisting of the Yucatán Peninsula north of Petén proper. Between 250 and 900 the most brilliant civilization ever seen in the New World flourished in the forested lowlands of the Central and Northern subregions.
Lowland Maya civilization falls into two chronological phases or cultures: Tzakol culture, which is Early Classic and began shortly before 250 ce, and the Late Classic Tepeu culture, which saw the full florescence of Maya achievements. Tepeu culture began about 600 and ended with the final downfall and abandonment of the Central Subregion about 900. (These dates, based on the correlation of the Long Count system of the Maya calendar with the Gregorian calendar, are the most generally accepted; but there is a slight chance that a rival correlation espoused by the American archaeologist Herbert J. Spinden may be correct, which would make these dates 260 years earlier.)