Tagged “zapotec”
HIGH WONDERThe Rough Draft at Yagul
The mosaic fretwork that made Mitla famous appears here first — and it appears already working. Where are the failures, the practice panels, the half-learned attempts that a technique with no margin for error should have left behind?
c. 500-1521 CE — the ballcourt and first civic buildings around 500-900 CE, the palaces and fortifications from c. 1250 to the Spanish conquest · Yagul, Tlacolula Valley, Oaxaca, MexicoAdded September 2026
HIGH WONDERThe Stone Mosaics of Mitla
How do you cut and fit tens of thousands of stone pieces into geometric panels that hold together with no mortar at all — where every single piece has exactly one slot it can occupy, and a single mis-cut ruins the wall?
c. 850-1500 CE for the surviving palaces, on a site settled from around 200 CE and at its height around 1200 · San Pablo Villa de Mitla, Valley of Tlacolula, Oaxaca, MexicoAdded August 2026