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Zapotecan Civilization Research Paper

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The “Urban Revolution” started around 6,000 years ago, after 3,500 BCE, with the transition from Neolithic cultures to the establishment of the first of six different independent civilizations. Each of these civilizations arose independently from each other, were distinctly pristine in their beginnings, and principally located on or near major river tributaries and watersheds. They include the Tigris and Euphrates river basin known as Mesopotamia, which is present day Iraq, the Nile River basin in Egypt, the Indus Valley, and Ganges River systems in India; the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers in China in Asia and the Middle East. Additionally, the Amazon River basin in Peru; and the Sierra Madre Occidental - Del Sur Mountain Range watershed system …show more content…

The largest was the Zapotecan civilization (precursor to the Aztecs) in about 200 BCE in the Valley of Oaxaca in what is now central Mexico, that had created the city of Monte Alban and the city of Teotihuacan, which was the fifth largest urban area in the world at the time, with a three-mile main avenue and eight square miles of planned urban area. The ancient Mayan civilization around 100 BCE was located on the Yucatan peninsula and its associated wetland agricultural areas with its largest city being Tikal. The Mayans built massive temples and stepped pyramids and developed the most sophisticated mathematical, calendrical, and astronomical systems of any civilization within the Americas. Civilizations to the south, in South America, high in the Andes Mountains near Lake Titicaca and Machu Picchu in Peru were inhabited by the Inca civilization. These massive planned urban areas, road infrastructures, intricate aquaculture features, and irrigation systems covered millions of acres and were unrivaled by any in the Americas. They harvested the smaller rivers and aquifers that flowed towards the Pacific and with terraced fields they garnered the same yield of that of the Nile in

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