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Concept
Zapotec peoples
Summary
The Zapotecs (Valley Zapotec: Bën za) are an indigenous people of Mexico. The population is concentrated in the southern state of Oaxaca, but Zapotec communities also exist in neighboring states. The present-day population is estimated at approximately 400,000 to 650,000 persons, many of whom are monolingual in one of the native Zapotec languages and dialects. In pre-Columbian times, the Zapotec civilization was one of the highly developed cultures of Mesoamerica, which, among other things, included a system of writing. Many people of Zapotec ancestry have emigrated to the United States over several decades, and they maintain their own social organizations in the Los Angeles and Central Valley areas of California.
There are four basic groups of Zapotecs: the istmeños, who live in the southern Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the serranos, who live in the northern mountains of the Sierra Madre de Oaxaca, the southern Zapotecs, who live in the southern mountains of the Sierra Sur, and the Central Valley Zapotecs, who live in and around the Valley of Oaxaca.
The Zapotecs call themselves Ben 'Zaa, which means "The People".
For decades it was believed that the exonym name Zapotec came from the Nahuatl tzapotēcah (singular tzapotēcatl), which means "inhabitants of the place of sapote". Recent studies carried out by UNAM argue that it may be a hybrid word and should be written Zapochteca or Zaapochteca and comes from "za / zaa" (cloud) and "pochteca" (merchant).
Zapotec civilization
Although several theories of the origin of the Zapotec peoples exist, including some possibly influenced in the post-conquest period, scholars largely agree the Zapotecs inhabited the Central Valley of Oaxaca as early as 500–300 BCE, during what is considered the Monte Alban I period. During this period, the Zapotecs established a significant system of governance over the population of the region. The Monte Alban periods, of which five have been categorized, lasted from 500 BCE to the time of conquest in 1521 AD.
Official source
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