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Oaxaca Valley
The Central Valleys () of Oaxaca, also simply known as the Oaxaca Valley, is a geographic region located within the modern-day state of Oaxaca in southeastern Mexico. In an administrative context, it has been defined as comprising the districts of Etla, Centro, Zaachila, Zimatlán, Ocotlán, Tlacolula and Ejutla. The valley, which is located within the Sierra Madre Mountains, is shaped like a distorted and almost upside-down “Y,” with each of its arms bearing specific names: the northwestern Etla arm, the central southern Valle Grande, and the Tlacolula arm to the east. The Oaxaca Valley was home to the Zapotec civilization, one of the earliest complex societies in Mesoamerica, and the later Mixtec culture. A number of important and well-known archaeological sites are found in the Oaxaca Valley, including Monte Albán, Mitla, San José Mogote and Yagul. Today, the capital of the state, the city of Oaxaca, is located in the central portion of the valley. History ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mexico
Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundary, maritime boundaries with the Pacific Ocean to the west, the Caribbean Sea to the southeast, and the Gulf of Mexico to the east. Mexico covers 1,972,550 km2 (761,610 sq mi), and is the List of countries by area, thirteenth-largest country in the world by land area. With a population exceeding 130 million, Mexico is the List of countries by population, tenth-most populous country in the world and is home to the Hispanophone#Countries, largest number of native Spanish speakers. Mexico City is the capital and List of cities in Mexico, largest city, which ranks among the List of cities by population, most populous metropolitan areas in the world. Human presence in Mexico dates back to at least 8,000 BC. Mesoamerica, considered a cradle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Complex Society
A complex society is characterized by the following modern features: * Organizational society wherein its economy is structured according to specialization and a Division of labour, division of labor. These economic features spawn a bureaucratic class and often lead to inequality. Leading to the rise of a Ruling class, ruling elite. * Archaeologically, features such as big architectural projects such as Temple, temples, Palace, palaces, public works etc and prescribed Funeral, burial rites. * Large scale agricultural development, leads to surplus food, which allows members of the society the time for developing and practicing specialized skill sets, other than farming. * Organized political structure and Institution, state institutions. The term is mostly used as shorthand to indicate a society with intricate political organization and using technology to expand economic production. Emergence of complex societies Before human beings developed complex societies, they lived in primi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elite
In political and sociological theory, the elite (, from , to select or to sort out) are a small group of powerful or wealthy people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or skill in a group. Defined by the ''Cambridge Dictionary'', the "elite" are "the richest, most powerful, best-educated, or best-trained group in a society". American sociologist C. Wright Mills states that members of the elite accept their fellows' position of importance in society. "As a rule, 'they accept one another, understand one another, marry one another, tend to work, and to think, if not together at least alike'." It is a well-regulated existence where education plays a critical role. Plantations As European settlers began to colonize the Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries, they quickly realized the economic potential of growing cash crops which were in high demand in Europe. Owned by the planter class, plantations, large-scale farms where large numbers of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Stratification
Social stratification refers to a society's categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender, occupation, social status, or derived power (social and political). It is a hierarchy within groups that ascribe them to different levels of privileges. As such, stratification is the relative social position of persons within a social group, category, geographic region, or social unit. In modern Western societies, social stratification is defined in terms of three social classes: an upper class, a middle class, and a lower class; in turn, each class can be subdivided into an upper-stratum, a middle-stratum, and a lower stratum. Moreover, a social stratum can be formed upon the bases of kinship, clan, tribe, or caste, or all four. The categorization of people by social stratum occurs most clearly in complex state-based, polycentric, or feudal societies, the latter being based upon socio-econom ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Village
A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighborhoods. Villages are normally permanent, with fixed dwellings; however, transient villages can occur. Further, the dwellings of a village are fairly close to one another, not scattered broadly over the landscape, as a dispersed settlement. In the past, villages were a usual form of community for societies that practice subsistence agriculture and also for some non-agricultural societies. In Great Britain, a hamlet earned the right to be called a village when it built a church.-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ... ''village'', from Latin ''villāticus'', ultimately from Latin ''villa'' (English ''vi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agriculture
Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to live in the cities. While humans started gathering grains at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers only began planting them around 11,500 years ago. Sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle were domesticated around 10,000 years ago. Plants were independently cultivated in at least 11 regions of the world. In the 20th century, industrial agriculture based on large-scale monocultures came to dominate agricultural output. , small farms produce about one-third of the world's food, but large farms are prevalent. The largest 1% of farms in the world are greater than and operate more than 70% of the world's farmland. Nearly 40% of agricultural land is found on farms larger than . However, five of every six farm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guilá Naquitz Cave
Guilá Naquitz Cave in Oaxaca, Mexico, is the site of early domestication of several food crops, including teosinte (an ancestor of maize), squash from the genus ''Cucurbita'', bottle gourds (''Lagenaria siceraria''), and beans. This site is the location of the earliest known evidence for domestication of any crop on the continent, ''Cucurbita pepo'', as well as the earliest known domestication of maize. Macrofossil evidence for both crops is present in the cave. However, in the case of maize, pollen studies and geographical distribution of modern maize suggests that maize was domesticated in another region of Mexico. Location The cave is northwest of Mitla at the base of a cliff that rises above a semiarid valley floor at an elevation of . There are five strata as deep as . The entrance to the cave is . It is at the very eastern end of the Oaxaca Valley. Occupation While the earliest human evidence in Guilá Naquitz Cave dates to about 10,750 years BP, inhabitation was no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mesoamerican Chronology
Mesoamerican chronology divides the history of pre-Columbian, prehispanic Mesoamerica into several periods: the Paleo-Indian (first human habitation until 3500 BCE); the Archaic (before 2600 BCE), the Preclassic or Formative (2500 BCE – 250 CE), the Classic (250–900 CE), and the Postclassic (); as well as the post European contact Colonial Period (1521–1821), and Postcolonial, or the period after independence from Spain (1821–present). The periodisation of Mesoamerica by researchers is based on archaeological, ethnohistorical, and modern cultural anthropology research dating to the early twentieth century. Archaeologists, ethnohistorians, historians, and cultural anthropologists continue to work to develop cultural histories of the region. Overview Paleo-Indian period 18000–8000 BCE The Paleo-Indian (less frequently, ''Lithic stage, Lithic'') period or era is that which spans from the first signs of human presence in the region, which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yagul
Yagul is an archaeological site and former city-state associated with the Zapotec civilization of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, located in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. The site was declared one of the country's four Natural Monuments on 13 October 1998. The site is also known locally as ''Pueblo Viejo'' (Old Village) and was occupied at the time of the Spanish Conquest. After the Conquest the population was relocated to the nearby modern town of Tlacolula where their descendants still live.Winter 1998, p.119. Yagul was first occupied around 500-100 BC. Around 500-700 AD, residential, civic and ceremonial structures were built at the site. However, most of the visible remains date to 1250-1521 AD, when the site functioned as the capital of a Postclassic city-state. The site was excavated in the 1950s and 60s by archaeologists Ignacio Bernal and John Paddock. Vestiges of human habitation in the area, namely cliff paintings at Caballito Blanco, date to at least 3000 BC. After the a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San José Mogote
San José Mogote is a pre-Columbian archaeological site of the Zapotec civilization, Zapotec, a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in the region of what is now the Mexico, Mexican States of Mexico, state of Oaxaca. A forerunner to the better-known Zapotec site of Monte Albán, San José Mogote was the largest and most important settlement in the Valley of Oaxaca during the Mesoamerican chronology, Early and Middle Formative periods (ca. 1500-500 BCE) of Mesoamerican cultural development. Situated in the fertile bottomlands of the Etla arm of the Valley of Oaxaca, the site is surrounded by the present-day village of San José Mogote, about northwest of the city of Oaxaca City, Oaxaca (Evans 2004:122). San José Mogote is considered to be the oldest permanent agricultural village in the Oaxaca Valley and probably the first settlement in the area to use pottery. It has also "...produced Mexico's oldest known defensive palisades and ceremonial buildings (1300 B.C.), early use of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mitla
Mitla is the second-most important archeological site in the state of Oaxaca in Mexico, and the most important of the Zapotec culture. The site is located 44 km from the city of Oaxaca, in the upper end of the Tlacolula Valley, one of the three cold, high valleys that form the Central Valleys Region of the state. At an elevation of 4,855 ft (1,480 m), surrounded by the mountains of the Sierra Madre del Sur, the archeological site is within the modern municipality of San Pablo Villa de Mitla. It is 24 mi (38 km) southeast of Oaxaca city. While Monte Albán was the most important politically of the Zapotec centers, Mitla became the main religious one in a later period as the area became dominated by the Mixtec. The name Mitla is derived from the Nahuatl name Mictlán, meaning the "place of the dead" or "underworld." Its Zapotec name is ''Lyobaa'', which means “place of rest”.Association for Archaeological Research and Exploration, Project Lyobaa - Result ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monte Albán
Monte Albán is a large pre-Columbian archaeological site in the Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán Municipality in the southern Mexico, Mexican state of Oaxaca (17.043° N, 96.767°W). The site is located on a low mountainous range rising above the plain in the central section of the Valley of Oaxaca, where the latter's northern Etla, eastern Tlacolula, and southern Zimatlán and Ocotlán (Oaxaca), Ocotlán (or Valle Grande (Oaxaca), Valle Grande) branches meet. The present-day state capital Oaxaca City is located approximately east of Monte Albán. The partially excavated civic ceremonial center of the Monte Albán site is situated atop an artificially leveled ridge. It has an elevation of about above mean sea level and rises some from the valley floor, in an easily defensible location. In addition to the monumental core, the site is characterized by several hundred artificial terraces, and a dozen clusters of mounded architecture covering the entire ridgeline and surrounding flanks. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
