The Indigenous civilization of the Valley of Oaxaca in southern Mexico, builders of the mountaintop city of Monte Albán, which ruled the valley for over a thousand years from around 500 BCE and produced some of the earliest writing and calendar systems in the Americas. Spain conquered the Zapotec in the 1520s, but "decline" misleads: nearly half a million people speak Zapotec languages in Oaxaca today and call themselves the Be’ena’a — the People — a continuity unbroken from the mountain city to the present.
To build their capital, the Zapotec did not choose a hill. They chose a mountain — and then cut its top off, leveling a ridge four hundred meters above the Valley of Oaxaca, with no metal tools and no draft animals, to raise the city of Monte Albán. Its people never vanished: their descendants still fill Oaxaca today, and call themselves the Be’ena’a — the People.