page_title: Geography of Mesoamerica
section_title: Oaxacan
hierarchical_section_title: Geography of Mesoamerica / Cultural Areas / Oaxacan
caption_attribution_description: Panorámica de la Sierra Mixteca, a la altura de Nativitas Monte Verde (Oaxaca). Se trata de una de las regiones más pobres de México, tanto en recursos naturales como en monetarios.
context_page_description: The geography of Mesoamerica describes the geographic features of Mesoamerica, a culture area in the Americas inhabited by complex indigenous pre-Columbian cultures exhibiting a suite of shared and common cultural characteristics. Several well-known Mesoamerican cultures include the Olmec, Teotihuacan, the Maya, the Aztec and the Purépecha. Mesoamerica is often subdivided in a number of ways. One common method, albeit a broad and general classification, is to distinguish between the highlands and lowlands. Another way is to subdivide the region into sub-areas that generally correlate to either culture areas or specific physiographic regions.
context_section_description: The Oaxacan region has been one of the most diverse since the Mesoamerican epoch.  It is a completely mountainous territory, marked by the Sierra Madre del Sur and the Mixteca shield.  It includes a portion of the Balsas River basin, characterized by its dryness and complicated geographical relief.  Its river beds are shallow and of small capacity.  In this sense, it appears much like Central Mexico.
  There were two principal scenarios in the cultural history of the Oaxacan people.  On the one hand, the central Valley of Oaxaca saw the development of the Zapotec culture, one of the most ancient and well known of the Mesoamerican region.  This culture was developed by the chiefdoms that controlled the arable land (which was very fertile, albeit dry) of the small valleys of Etla, Tlacolula, and Miahuatlán.  Some of the first examples of great architecture in Mesoamerica were in this region, for example, the ceremonial center of San José Mogote.  The hegemony of this center in the Valley region passed into the hands of Monte Albán, the Classic capital of the Zapotec.  The fall of Teotihuacán in the 8th century CE permitted the great heights achieved by the Zapotec culture. However, the city of Monte Albán was abandoned in the 10th century CE, and gave way to a series of regional centers that fought among each other for political dominance.
  The other principal scenario was that of the Mixtec region, which lies to the west of the Central Valley. The Mixtec region has also been occupied since prehistoric times.  It has an extremely mountainous terrain of variable altitude, rising to more than 3,000 metres (9,800 ft).  The climate varies from mountainous and temperate to tropical and dry, and rain is generally scarce.  There is little running surface water, and presently, a good part of the area has become alarmingly deforested, a result of the ground-clearing agricultural practices of the ancient inhabitants of the region.
  By the Preclassic period there were already important population centers in the region, such as Yucuita and Cerro de las Minas.  However, the Mixtec capitals did not reach the magnitude of their Zapotec neighbors.  The summit of the Mixtec culture was reached in the Postclassic period, when Lord 8 Deer of  Tututepec and Tilantongo embarked on a campaign of political unification of the Mixtec city-states, and came to occupy the Central Valley of Oaxaca.
caption: La Mixteca mountain range
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