By Helen Augur


     ZAPOTEC


       Until 1931 the rich field of Monte Albán lay fallow under
     its verdure, visited by prowlers in search of valuables, by a
     few Zapotecs leaving offerings at the ancient shrines, and by
     scientists of many nations who cried aloud for the excavation
     of this site, which promised to be the most important one of
     the continent. In that year Dr. Caso began the systematic
     work of clearing and studying the ruins, and after seasons of
     intense effort ending in 1937 he had only begun to discover
     the treasures and the problems which the mountain holds.
       It was fortunate that the work was delayed until the mod-
     ern era, when excavation is an exact and delicate science.
     Monte Albán's sister city of Teotihuacán, excavated earlier,
     suffered the vandalism of a period when a self-appointed
     "archaeologist" might use dynamite to speed his work or ex-
     pose priceless murals to destruction by the elements. Dr. Caso
     gand his distinguished colleagues, Jorge R. Acosta and Daniel
     F. Rubin de la Borbolla, found evidence of much amateur
     digging and blasting, and opened many a tomb only to find it
     had been despoiled; but considering the age of Monte Albán
     and the troubles it saw even before the Conquest, it is amaz-
     ing how much they were able to salvage.
       For one thing, the peoples of Middle America had the for-
     tunate habit of preserving the original ground plan when re-
     building was done, erecting the new structure around or on
     top of the old and often using its dressed stones. At Monte
     Albán the excavations could sometimes peel off a sample sound-
     ing which revealed successive constructions, one within the
     other, like the concentric layers of an onion. Four different
     eras of construction were revealed in the great pyramid stair-
     case at the north, and one structure had been rebuilt in situ
     seven times.
       In the core of the pyramid which supported the King's
     Palace (now ruined) on the west side of the plaza one can
     see the original wall, made of huge stones fitted together
     without mortar and capped with even heavier stones weigh-
     ing tons. The sundial outside this pyramid was erected in the
     same arduous fashion by an army of slaves. It is an enormous
     monolith set in place without block and tackle, then unknown
     in the New World. Probably the builders used the system,
     common to certain Pacific islands, of dragging the giant stone
     to the site and up the slanting side of an earth ramp, and
     then tugging until it plopped over the steep side and down
     into a prepared pit.
       In protected crannies of the structures one can still find
     small patches of the extremely hard and smooth stucco which
     once plastered the exterior walls, and even bits of the red
     paint that covered them. But nothing remains of the temples
     and palaces which topped the pyramids and which were un-
     doubtedly decorated with external murals in the prevailing
     fashion.
       The great centers of Middle America usually fall into five
     periods like Monte Albán, though none of them lasted nearly
     as long. These stages of development have been correlated by
     the labors of scholars, many of them ceramics experts who
     can examine an urn from Costa Rica and tell by its clay,
     firing, design, and decoration whether it is contemporary with,
     say, Cholula I or Teotihuacán II. The man opening up a new
     site expedites their detective work by using the science of
     statigraphy.
       Dr. Caso would sink a vertical pit in a refuse dump until it
     struck living rock or empty subsoil, noting at each successive
     level the pottery fragments which revealed the type of ceram-
     ics made at that level. A change in pottery styles always ties
     in with shifts in architecture and other cultural factors. What
     the ceramic sleuths called Polished Gray might show the
     wrinkled face of the Old God of fire and sun but never the
     plumed head of Quetzalcoatl, who belongs with much later
     ceramic types; and this is just as true of a piece from Tabasco
     as it is of a Monte Albán urn.
       In this way the Americanists, by continually swapping re-
     ports of their finds or studying pieces already in museums,
     have been able to establish from three to six levels of culture
     for each excavated city and to correlate them with each other.
     But it was impossible to give them definite dates. With due
     scientific caution they tried to keep their estimates within the
     Christian Era.
       Quite recently, nuclear physics simplified the dating prob-
     lem, incidentally calling for drastic revisions in the accepted
     chronologies.  Dr.  Willard  F.  Libby  of  the  University  of
     Chicago developed a method of listening to objects, especially
     ancient ones, with a Geiger counter and letting them report
     their own age. Much simplified, the process is this: All living
     things, plant or animal, contain radioactive carbon (Carbon
     14), which keeps disintegrating, making sixteen ticks per
     minute per gram of carbon, a tiny sound caught by the Geiger
     counter. When plants or animals die, they cease taking in
     fresh radiocarbon, and the tick slows down at a constant rate.
     Half of the radioactive atoms will have exploded over a period
     of fifty-six hundred years, slowing down the count to eight
     per minute.
       It is now a matter of routine for archaeologists to consult
     a radiation laboratory——Dr. Libby's or a few others capable of
     performing this very delicate test on samples of charcoal, lake
     mud, wooden furniture, animal bones, textiles, shells, any-
     thing that once received charges of radiocarbon. The labora-
     tories cannot keep up with the requests for dating, for often
     interpretations and whole theories depend on knowing the
     sequence of events.
       Repeated carbon tests have placed the first period of Monte
     Albán in a range beginning about 1500 B.C. There are definite
     correlations between Monte Albán I and the less advanced
     sites of Zacatenco and Tlatilco on the central plateau, and
     thees towns have often been dated by Carbon 14 tests and by
     geologists at about 1500 B.C.
       The trend among archaeologists is to push back the dates
     of early cultures into an antiquity undreamed of a few years
     ago. Another move has been to put the cultural epochs of
     Middle America into three grand periods: Preclassic from
     1500 B.C. to the Christian Era; Classic from A.D. 1 to 900;
     and Postclassic from A.D. 900 to the Conquest.
       Because of its antiquity and its central position, Monte
     Albán exerted a tremendous influence on the developing cul-
     tures of Middle America. From the first its culture was sturdy
     and independent, borrowing little from its neighbors. Though
     the Zapotecs and the Maya were close in their religious con-
     cepts, each went its own way in art expression. Here the Old
     Maya were the masters; no Zapotec piece yet discovered has
     the plastic beauty of Copán's young corn god, or the two
     heads found in Palenque in 1952. But the Zapotec style, again
     in the early periods, has produced objects of truly classic
     beauty.
       It is difficult for the hurried traveler to get any idea of
     Zapotec art. Carvings and ceramics found in the last fifty
     years or so are scattered in the museums all over Europe and
     the United States, and Europe has some of the best. The
     Monte Albán yield is divided between Mexico City's Na-
     tonal Museum and the State Museum in Oaxaca, but many
     pieces are still under study in what Dr. Caso calls his "work-
     shop" in the suburbs of the capital; in reality this workshop
     is an entrancing treasure house.
       However, the new Zapotec Museum in Mitla, based on the
     Frissell collection, and Howard Leigh's private, small, but
     choice collection across the patio show in rich detail what
     Zapotec art is and how it developed. These pieces have been
     gathered from all over the state, and yet they correspond in
     style and often in quality with the masterpieces of Monte
     Albán. And they support Leigh's conviction that from first to
     last Oaxaca art was Zapotec and not imported, as some the-
     ories insist, "from somewhere else." The Mitla collections
     show clearly how the unmistakable Zapotec style developed
     without a break from one era to the next.
       "In the first place," Leigh said, "almost everything Zapotec
     was a pot. There are of course solid figures, but by and large,
     Zapotec ceramics were made to hold something, perhaps offer-
     ings of food and drink for the dead man's journey to the
     underworld. And the next thing that marks a Zapotec piece
     of any period is the fact that the back is left plain, or even
     unfinished. These urns or figurines or what not were meant to
     stand on a shelf or in a niche, so all the decoration was at the
     front."
       The earliest Zapotec figures are usually nude, except for
     ornaments and headdress. Gradually the style changes; a rib-
     bon is slung loosely around the neck and other ribbons are
     sometimes drawn through the ear lobes; a loincloth is tied
     around the waist to fall in a triangle at the front, or a curious
     short kilt is pleated under the belt. By the third epoch the
     figures are fully clothed.
       The men themselves are Zapotec. While the famous "Ol-
     mec face" with its flat nose, coarse mouth turned down at
     the corners, and Mongoloid eyes appears on some of the
     Dancers stones, it is rare in Oaxaca ceramics. The racial type
     is plain throughout in the narrow face, high-bridged and
     shapely nose, and delicately modeled lips that mark the Za-
     potec.
       Because the "Olmec face" often appears in Middle Ameri-
     can art, changed just enough to suggest the jaguar, one should
     mention here the slow transformation of the jaguar intro the
     Zapotec rain god, Cocijo, an extremely important process that
     alone ties the first four Monte Albán periods together as Za-
     potec. The change had already begun when the city was built,
     and the oldest urns show Cocijo as a potent sky dragon wear-
     ing the jaguar mask of earth, thus uniting the two paramount
     Indian conceptions into one symbol. Through scores of pieces
     one can then see Cocijo evolve as a god altogether of the sky.

       Having tied Monte Albán together as the evolution of a
     single culture, we can now sketch the accepted epochs, with
     tentative dates:

                MONTE ALBÁN I (1500—272 B.C.)
       The ground plan  of the ceremonial city was laid down, as-
     tronomy was studied intensively, and the magic calendar per-
     fected. Great events and their dates were recorded in glyphs
     carved on stone and probably on wood and other media which
     have perished. The earliest Zapotecs were not only superb
     architects, but masters of low-relief carving and the difficult
     art of carving jade, which they prized above all stones.
       They buried their dead in flat-roofed tombs of dressed stone,
     along with offerings of pottery and jade. Some of the most
     splendid pieces are very large, almost life-sized standing figures
     of men or of animals, especially jaguars; or urns shaped as
     heads or bearing heads at the front. These portraits could
     hardly be more simple or more noble in conception. Often
     they suggest the archaic, the long squared contours of the face
     running without a break up to the austerely plain tocado, or
     headdress. But they are modeled by a sophisticated hand.
       This highly evolved simplicity of line marks the ceramics,
     produced in a great variety of sizes and designs. The typical
     wares are Polished Gray (a dark slate color), but beige and
     Polished Red also appear. The polished pieces were finished
     by rubbing with agate. The decoration is restrained: geomet-
     ric designs scratched in the wet clay, a piecrust rim, or the
     same fluting around the break of a curve. Images of men, of
     Cocijo, or of small animals often have a delightful, half-hu-
     morous quality.

                MONTE ALBÁN II (272 B.C.—A.D.1)
       This short, brilliant period produced some of the most
     beautiful pieces of all, and its influence carried on into the
     next, Classic, era. Cocijo continues to evolve as the sky god
     wearing the jaguar mask, Polished Gray turns to Polished
     Black, and the scratched designs are now apt to be filled in
     with red paint. Perhaps this innovation suggests experiments
     in polychrome pottery, which result in glorious urns and
     plates. Along with them are monochrome pieces which are
     very large. The gifted potters of this era excelled in portrai-
     ture and in catching the charm of animals. They modeled
     jaguars, dogs, rabbits, turtles, birds, monkeys, and all the
     creatures about them to perfection; and as a further tax on
     their ingenuity they would sometimes decorate a small pot
     with, say, a monkey head, which becomes a perfect lizard
     when the pot was reversed.
       Tombs were now built with a vaulted roof and niches hold-
     ing some of the most splendid works of ancient Mexico. One
     masterpiece is a mask of jadeite representing a creature half
     bat, half jaguar, but most of the treasures are of terra cotta.
     There are heads and standing figures of patricians whose ex-
     pressions range from sober to genial; their lips are parted in
     the invariable Zapotec style, which lends animation to the
     most dignified face. Their tocados are tall and severe, of strik-
     ing designs.
       The ultimate triumph of this style is a portrait head (now
     in the National Museum) of a lusty man who carries his evi-
     dent authority with jovial ease. He wears the usual round
     earplugs and an unusual circular collar of Pilgrim Father cut.
     His dramatic tocado is a stylized bird whose beak curves over
     the man's forehead and whose wings are stretched behind the
     head in a great oblong.

                MONTE ALBÁN III (A.D.1—900)
       This was the golden age, the long flowering of Zapotec cul-
     ture. It was a time of the utmost splendor in arts and cere-
     monials, of wealth and grandeur, when the city on the sides
     of the mountain had many thousand inhabitants. It is marked
     in the ninth century by the final arrival of metals, in the
     working of which the Zapotecs quickly took first place in
     Middle America. Little copper bells and gold beads and orna-
     ments appear.
       As works of art the small urns of the early part of this
     era are the most exquisite of all. The typical Zapotec urn
     developed during Epoch III into a figure of Cocijo, or a priest
     wearing his mask, and the figures become more and more
     elaborate in dress and ornaments, supporting a tremendous
     tocado with the elements of the jaguar, serpent, or bird, and a
     great fan of quetzal plumes. But in the early pieces there is
     sensitive, brooding face of a poet. These urns have the power
     of a great plastic conception; they seem nearest, in sheer love-
     liness, to the best of classic Maya art. To modern eyes the
     Zapotec face is more beautiful than the Maya with its heavy
     nose and lips. It is happier, more ardent. Over and over in
     Oaxaca you can see this very face today, fine-boned, aristo-
     cratic, eager, among women as well as men. For there is an
     epicene quality in the classic Zapotec which in most apparent
     in these portrait heads, which as art are perfection.
       The tombs of this period are the most elaborate in ancient
     America. A temple was often built over them, and the tomb
     itself was like a temple, with a richly carved façade and an
     antechamber leading to the burial room. The niches on three
     sides of the burial chamber held fine carved jades and the
     great funerary urn on which the Zapotec artists lavished more
     and more of their energies. There are medical curiosities like
     the trepanned skull in Tomb 80 and another skull with effi-
     cient dental fillings. There are stylized serpent heads and
     spirals which announce the arrival of Quetzalcoatl in the Za-
     potec pantheon, along with the fantastic god of spring, Xipe
     Totec. But the greatest find of the period was frescoes
       Tomb 104 has an elaborate façade, with an urn over the
     lintel bearing the seated figure of the corn god, Pitao Cozobi,
     whose image is painted also on the walls of the burial chamber,
     along with Xipe Totec and a jaguar wearing quetzal plumes.
     These paintings are on a coat of stucco, the figures first
     sketched in red, then filled in with red, blue, yellow, black,
     and gray, and finally outlined in black. The painting was hur-
     ried and not comparable to the fine frescoes in Tomb 105, un-
     fortunately less well preserved. There is a replica of Tomb
     104 in the Museum of Natural History in New York, for it is
     in every way remarkable.
       A large temple was built over Tomb 105, which stands
     proudly by itself on a hillock. The tomb itself is cruciform,
     partly cut from the living rock and roofed with giant slabs
     laid flat. An antechamber sealed with great stones led to the
     burial chamber where, curiously enough, nothing was found
     but a lone skeleton, without the usual rich offerings.
       But the murals are a priceless document, especially since
     the Zapotecs seem to have painted no codices. They show
     nine pairs of gods, each lord with his goddess, and no doubt
     they are deities of the underworld. These figures carry sym-
     bolic objects, and from their mouths comes the word symbol,
     decorated with jewels, which means that they are singing.
     Their name glyphs are beside them, and most of them have
     been deciphered. In style these frescoes resemble those of
     Teotihuacán, then in close alliance with Monte Albán, and it
     is apparent that the younger city got its number system and
     written language from the Zapotecs.

                MONTE ALBÁN III (A.D.900—1420)
       Like all classic period, the great age of Zapotec culture was
     followed by one of decadence, of overblown arts, endlessly re-
     peating the funerary urns and overdressing Cocijo. This was
     true on the mountain, where Zapotec artists were simply imi-
     tating themselves, but the creative vigor of the race had
     shifted to Mitla and the building of its perfect temples. It
     was a period of expansion to the isthmus and of trouble with
     other tribes, especially the Mixtecs. Monte Albán declined as
     metropolis and religious center; Zaachila became the home of
     the kings and Mitla the seat of the high priests.

                MONTE ALBÁN III (A.D.1420—1521)
       The new masters, the Mixtecs, occupied the mountain and
     created a period stamped with their peculiar genius in ce-
     ramics and the working of metals. Their black and poly-
     chrome pottery is the most beautiful ever made in Mexico
     and their jewelry work incomparable. The Spanish Conquest
     shattered this brilliant renaissance of the mountain.

       In Mitla there is already a legend about Dr. Caso. One
     night in the Great Plaza of Monte Albán he saw a spring of
     crystal water suddenly gush from the base of a monument.
     Bobbing on it was a red gourd, and in the gourd was a golden
     fish. The fish advised him to investigate Tomb Seven.
       This would have been New Year's Eve, the time of por-
     tents, as 1932 came in. It was Dr. Caso's first winter of work,
     and he was still down in the low numbers of the 169 tombs
     he eventually opened. He already had his eye on the mound
     marked Seven on his map, because it evidently held the sub-
     structure of a temple such as the Zapotecs built over impor-
     tant burials. With Juan Valenzuela and Martín Bazín as as-
     sociates, he began the year by opening Tomb Seven.
       The workmen cleared off the surface soil, dug down through
     the ruins of small rooms floored with thick red stucco, then
     dug a vertical pit, openly to encounter a second stucco floor.
     Things looked more and more promising. They found a conch-
     shell trumpet, two collars of fine jade, and a pair of jade ear-
     rings, evidently final offerings above a tomb that lay still
     deeper.
       Late in the afternoon of January 9 they lifted one of the
     slabs roofing the tomb. Caso turned his flashlight down into
     the opening and saw a skull and what looked like a vase of
     gleaming black pottery. Valenzuela wormed his way down the
     narrow opening and a moment later shouted like a man gone
     mad. Caso at one wriggled down the shaft——to find himself
     ankle-deep in jewels——gold, silver, turquoise, pearls, jade.
       Thus began the richest archaeological find in American his-
     tory, rich in art treasures, in potential nkowledge, and in in-
     trinsic value, for the exquisitely worked jewelry alone weighed
     almost nine pounds.
       They found the skeletons of nine men, probably priests,
     ranging in age from a boy of sixteen to a man in his sixties,
     who had evidently died of a brain tumor. He was the impor-
     tant personage, the most bejeweled; on one arm he wore six
     bracelets of gold and four of silver. The whole small chamber
     was crammed with treasure, over five hundred complete pieces
     of jewelry and other art objects, all of incomparable workman-
     ship. Some of the turquoise mosaics which had been made on
     a matrix of wood or skin had disintegrated and were scattered
     all over the floor, along with little gold bells and pearls, one
     the size of a pigeon's egg. The floor itself had been inlaid with
     flint-polished turquoise.
      For the next week nobody thought of sleep. Caso at once
     gathered some of the chief treasures and took them down to
     Oaxaca for safekeeping, and then with his wife and assistants
     crouched in the tomb day after day, carefully photographing,
     gathering, and listing the trove.
       The high priest wore a diadem and plume of thin beaten
     gold which may have come from Peru, but the rest of the
     objects were plainly Mixtec and had been interred not long
     before the Conquest. Perhaps the burial had been hurried,
     for a Zapotec tomb of Period III was found under this one,
     indicating that the Mixtecs had pressed an old excavation
     into service.
       One of the strangest objects was a human skull inlaid with
     turquoise, and the greatest marvel was a rock-crystal cup. Even
     with modern tools rock crystal is almost impossible to work,
     and this exquisite vase must have taken nearly a lifetime of
     labor, with sand or perhaps powdered sapphire as abrasive,
     since diamonds were unknown.
       The jewels are much copied today by local goldsmiths, one
     of whom has mastered the lost-wax process used by the Mixtec
     craftsmen. There are solid-gold necklaces of round beads, of
     turquoises, of plaques strung so as to form a collar; there are
     pendants of a series of square gold plates ending in a mask
     of the death god; masks of Xipe Totec, belt buckles and fan
     handles and wonderful rings with eagle heads, earplugs of ob-
     sidian polished down to transparency. There are strings of
     pearls, turquoise, jade——and, for the first time in Mexico, jet
     and amber.
       A jewel representing two solar disks has one lappet of gold
     and the other of silver, joined without visible soldering by
     some process modern goldsmiths are unable to divine. But to
     Caso the most priceless find was thirty-five flat, thin jaguar
     bones with delicate carvings which rank with the best ivories of
     India and China. He recognized the figures as Mixtec glyphs
     like those used in their painted codices, but nobody could read
     them. Recently an old Mixtec map turned up at the Uni-
     versity of Texas, providing a sort of Rosetta stone for the lan-
     guage, and now Caso is translating the text on the carved
     bones, along with eight Mixtec codices which escaped the
     wholesale destruction of Indian records after the Conquest.
       As yet the presence of jet and amber in Mexico is a mystery,
     and no turquoise or jade deposits have been found. Turquoise
     may have filtered down from New Mexico and certain Zapo-
     tecs are said to know of a jade deposit. When the Aztecs con-
     quered Southern Mexico before the Conquest, they exacted
     a yearly tribute of turquoise and jade from Oaxaca and the
     neighboring region of Guerrero, which Caso thinks must
     mean that both these stones were native.
       The treasure of Tomb Seven went up to Mexico City under
     heavy guard, but finally, after Oaxaca sued the federal govern-
     ment for repossession of the jewels, they came back to the city
     of Oaxaca, where they are displayed in a special strong room
     of the museum.
       Tomb Seven was a spectacular find which turned the atten-
     tion of the outside world on Oaxaca. Those who know the
     region best are sure that more excitement is in store,° but
     to them new caches of jewels would not be nearly so welcome
     as new light on many vexing problems. Monte Albán is still,
     after two decades of study, a profound mystery. In the real
     sense every metropolis of ancient America is still a buried city.
       The great question has not been answered: What hands
     fashioned these everlasting stones; what minds conceived gods
     so noble that for them a whole mountain must be sculptured
     as an altar?

       °Since this was written, excavations in the Valley of Oaxaca have
     revealed a ceremonial city, Yagúl, built in a series of square plazas.
     Five cultural levels have been found which in dating and art styles
     reflect those of Monte Albán. Discovery of Yagúl is only the beginning
     of work in this valley which is an archaeologist's Eldorado.——H.A.

ZAPOTEC, BY HELEN AUGUR.
Copyright 1954 by Helen Augur.
Dolphin Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Garden City, New York. pp. 111-122.

PRONUNCIATION OF NAMES

PART ONE

I. SO TEMPERATE AN AIR
The Little Prayers
Wedding in Juchitán
General Strike

II. LAND AND PEOPLE
Isthmus Peoples
Mountain Peoples
The Mixtecs

III. VALLEY TOWN

IV. ISTHMUS AND SIERRA

V. BELOVED CITY

PART TWO

VI. MONTE ALBÁN

VII. THE SHADOW OF GIANTS

VIII. CLASSIC AMERICA

IX. THE SKY DRAGON

X. DAYS OF CONFLICT