Mesoamerica: southeastern periphery period By the 1200s these Mixtec states had extended their influence south and east into areas traditionally controlled by the Zapotecs—including periodic occupations of Monte Albán and Mitla The Postclassic Mixtec developed one of the most extreme systems of social stratification in all of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica While all Mesoamerican polities placed a high degree of emphasis on purity of lineage, birth order, and elite status, these attributes were especially salient among the Postclassic Mixtec For instance inscriptions record at least four cases of full brother-sister marriage among the descendents of the Mixtec lord named Eight Deer— an evident effort to retain purity of lineage Among both the Mixtec and Zapotec Postclassic polities, there was little of the elaborate administrative and bureaucratic hierarchy that characterized other states during this period, including the Aztecs Instead the word of the ruling lord was deemed law, carried out by a second tier of elite lords who ruled subject polities under the main lord’s dominion The Aztec state, which emerged in the Basin of Mexico during the middle of the Postclassic period, exhibited all of the principal features characterizing the Postclassic polities of the central and southern highlands, particularly the heightened emphasis on militarism, warfare, human sacrifice, and conquest of lesser polities in the formation of a tributary empire See also Mesoamerica: southeastern periphery Further reading: Davies, Nigel The Toltecs: Until the Fall of Tula Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977; Diehl, Richard Tula: The Toltec Capital of Ancient Mexico London: Thames & Hudson, 1983; Flannery, Kent V., and Joyce Marcus, eds The Cloud People: Divergent Evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec Civilizations New York: Academic Press, 1983; Spores, Ronald The Mixtecs in Ancient and Colonial Times Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985 M J Schroeder Mesoamerica: southeastern periphery Southeastern Mesoamerica has been so little understood that even the two Mayan sites in the area, Copán and Quirigua, which flowered from the fifth to the ninth centuries, were thought of as the creations of itinerant Mayans rather than having been created by the Mayans indigenous to the region However, as Dennis Tedlock, 275 the translator of the Popol Vuh, the holy book of the Quiché Mayans of Guatemala, has noted, the Mayan culture not only embraced Chiapas Province and the Yucatán in Mexico, but also Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras According to Tedlock, “inscriptions on stone monuments [sometimes called stelae] first appeared in the ‘highlands of Chiapas’ in the first century b.c.e.” Ultimately the inscriptions spread throughout the entire area While it was believed that the Mayans were essentially a peaceful people, more recent excavations, like that at Bonampak, have shown them to be as warlike as those who followed them, the Toltecs and the Aztecs Southeastern Mesoamerica, as noted in the Popol Vuh by Tedlock, became a fertile area for Mayan development Uaxactún, in the Petén region of Guatemala, became established as a ceremonial center in the first or second centuries, and El Mirador, in northern Guatemala, was founded around the same era The term ceremonial center is an ambiguous one in Mesoamerican studies Although it refers to an archaeological site that was used for religious ceremonies, certainly an urban population had to exist there permanently in order to provide the needed support for ceremonies in accordance with the Mayan calendar Contemporary with the Mayans, the Mixtec and Zapotec cultures flourished in the Oaxaca valleys in Mexico, while the great center at Teotihuacán dominated the Mexican highlands City-states flourished when a particularly strong and talented ruler held sway, much as the golden age of ancient Athens is associated with Pericles Mayan civilization was not driven by a great need for centralization, as was later seen with the Aztecs Instead, Mayans formed city-states like Copán and Tikal, which seemed to be locked in almost perpetual warfare with each other A comparison can be made to ancient Greece, with its wars among city-states like Athens and Thebes, and ancient Rome, with the centralization that would produce one of the world’s greatest empires With the end of the Classic period, Mayan culture gravitated away from the southeastern periphery of Mesoamerica to the Yucatán peninsula of Mexico Chichén Itzá, Uxmal, and Mayapán became the centers of Mayan culture in the Postclassic period, after 900 The civilization and form of government, however, remained virtually unchanged from the heyday of southeastern Mesoamerica Individual leaders dominated Mayan city-states Traditional accounts of Mayan civilization have usually referred to these rulers as priest-kings, since they presided over both affairs of