Il Guardian riporta i risultati di ricerche archeologiche effettuate sui resti di una antica città zapoteca in Messico. Gli studiosi mettono in relazione la struttura delle abitazioni e delle coltivazioni con quella che ipotizzano fosse la struttura sociale della popolazione.

The peer-reviewed paper, published in Frontiers in Political Science, suggests that less extreme divides in wealth and power could help explain the city’s rapid population growth, as people sought both security and a higher standard of living. It indicates that collective processes directed from below may have significantly contributed to the 1,300-year period of relative prosperity. Globally, it is rare for a single settlement from that era to have endured so long, the authors add.

La città di Monte Albán, fondata nel 500 A.C., ospitava al massimo del suo splendore 17.000 persone, ed era la capitale della civiltà zapoteca.

“There is very little indication of highly autocratic or concentrated power, nor stark inequalities of wealth,” Gary Feinman, study co-author and the MacArthur curator of anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago, told the Guardian. “Plus, there are many indications of cooperation between households.” […] “There are no rich tombs, no great caches of household riches or other evidence of extreme wealth differences and no large, ornate palace that is clearly the ruler’s residence,” the study reports. “From early in the site’s history, the city’s core was centered on a large plaza that could have accommodated a significant proportion of the site’s population.”

Ricerche effettuate sui resti umani ritrovati nella città hanno mostrato minori indicazioni di malnutrizione, rispetto ai resti coevi di altre popolazioni vicine. Non esistevano silo o edifici governativi di stoccaggio del cibo, e sembra che venisse praticata una rudimentale economia di mercato. Non c’è consenso, invece, sulle ragioni dell’abbandono dell’insediamento:

From AD800 the city’s populace began to depart as inequality grew, though there is no consensus on the reasons behind the eventual abandonment. Tour guides at the Unesco world heritage site often attribute the decline to drought. But research suggests its inhabitants may have left for emergent independent city-states amid elite infighting and growing class divisions, with the wider populace excluded from public ceremonies and rituals.