For more than 3000 years, the Zapotecs have occupied the fertile
Valley of Oaxaca, in southern Mexico. There during the Classic
stage of Mesoamerican culture (ca.A.D. 100-900), Zapotecs
princes and priests ruled a complex theocratic state, and the
temple city of Monte Albain became one of the greatest cultural
centers of Mesoamerica.

The decline of Zapotec civilization and of Monte Alban as a civil
and religious center began, before A.D. 900, with a shift toward
divisive militarism. The decline continued with the arrival of the
Mixtecs in the thirteenth century, the rise of the Mixtec-Puebla cult-
ure, and the invasion of the tribute-demanding Mexica Indians in
the fifteenth century. Ultimately, the Zapotec princely elite and most
of their religious and political traditions were ended by the Spanish
conquest, which reduced the Zapotecs and Mixtecs to rural peasantry.