ABSTRACT
Visible from the streets of Oaxaca City, covering the top of the near-by mountain of Monte Albán, were, until a few years ago, clusters of tantalizing artificial mounds, like green warts on the mountain ridge, the buried ruins of one of the oldest Indian metropolises on the continent. Monte Albán was the capital, the Mecca, of the Zapotecs so long ago that no record of it exists and even its original Indian name was forgotten. Barbaric treasure-hunters of long ago had blown up a few mounds, and enormous stone slabs had been uncovered many years earlier by haphazard archæologists. Some bore rows of large glyphs and numerals commemorating dates; others were carved in low relief showing eerie, life-size human figures with contorted faces, their deformed nude bodies in extravagant, loose poses that justified their popular name of danzantes.
