Unlike most indians of Middle America, 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, the ancient Maya, and later with the Toltec. For instance, by 200 B.C. the Zapotecs were using the bar and dot system of numerals used by the Maya.

Architecture

However, the Zapotecs of Period III, wishing to hide this lack of symmetry, built two small structures, separated by a patio, opposite Mounds M and IV:. thanks to this measure an almost perfect regularity was assured.

It is important to remember that although the architectural complex of the Great Plaza consists of buildings of ocher stone, in the days of their greatness these same buildings were covered with stucco of different colors. It is, however, obvious that, aesthetically, the Zapotec architects relied far more on linear effects and the interplay of light and shade than on sculpture or decoration.

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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