Monte Albán

Yesterday we stopped by Monte Albán, a pre-Columbian archaeological site in the Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán municipality in southern Mexico. Archeological sites are interesting, I suppose, but also kind of boring. It was a little difficult for me to wrap my mind around because it was built so long ago. How can anyone know how it was built or for what it was built? The structures had very little meaning to me, thus very little fascination other than the fascination of looking at something that didn't really hold any meaning. Or maybe I was just experiencing information overload.

We arrived last night in Veracruz after a six-hour bus ride. It's very humid in the beach town on the Gulf of Mexico. We visited a school today and just finished a group lunch in the hotel. This is the first place we have stayed in which we get rooms to ourselves. We have the option of going to a museum today, but I am choosing to stay in the room and NOT TALK TO ANYONE.

Here's a brief description and some photos of Monte Albán. The site is located atop a hill, but the ground around the structures is completely level. How did they do that? Our guide (pictured below) told us that its bottom layer was built in 5,000 B.C. Later, other groups build over it, mostly using the ruins for tombs and such.

Our guide also showed us the medical school of the Zapotecs, supposedly the oldest known medical school ever. Images of people with all kinds of rare conditions were carved into huge stones, most likely used as teaching tools to show young doctors what types of ailments they might be treating. Check out the following photos and see if you can guess what they depict.

If you guessed that the first photo depicts a baby being born breech, you are correct. If you aren't sure about any of the rest, you got as much out of them as I did.