The Zapotec city of the dead — stone mosaic friezes of geometric precision that no pre-Columbian culture anywhere equalled
Mitla (Lyobaa in Zapotec — 'place of rest' or 'place of the dead') was the sacred necropolis of the Zapotec civilisation and the most important ceremonial centre in Oaxaca after Monte Albán. Unlike Monte Albán's grand hilltop platforms, Mitla was a place of elaborate interior architecture: its underground tombs, connected halls, and palace rooms are covered with geometric mosaic friezes — 14 distinct geometric patterns assembled from thousands of individually cut stone pieces fitted together without mortar, which archaeologists have never found anywhere else in pre-Columbian America to the sa…
Mitla was occupied from at least 900 BCE but reached its greatest development between 700-1521 CE as the Zapotec capital shifted from Monte Albán (abandoned around 700 CE) to the valley floor cities. The great high priest (uija-tào — 'great seer') of Mitla was one of the most powerful religious authorities in Mesoamerica — described by Spanish friars as rivalling the Pope in authority over the Zapotec religious world. The Spanish destruction of the site's oracle function (the burial chambers beneath the palaces were the centres of ancestral divination) was thorough: the underground passages w…