Monte Albán, capital of the Zapotecs

Around 500 BC Zapotec communities levelled a mountaintop where the three arms of the Oaxaca Valley meet and built Monte Albán, which dominated the valley for over a thousand years. Its carved Danzantes stones, now read as slain captives, carry some of the earliest writing in Mesoamerica. The city waned after about AD 800; later Mixtec lords reused its Tomb 7 for rich burials, found in 1932.