What Mexico's inscribed archaeological properties record of its pre-Hispanic civilisations

Background

Several Mexican archaeological properties on the UNESCO World Heritage List describe the Mesoamerican civilisations in UNESCO's own words. Of Palenque, the World Heritage Centre writes that it is a prime example of a Mayan sanctuary of the classical period, at its height between AD 500 and 700, when its influence extended throughout the basin of the Usumacinta River. Of Uxmal in Yucatan it writes that the Mayan town was founded c. A.D. 700 and had some 25,000 inhabitants, and that the layout of the buildings, which date from between 700 and 1000, reveals a knowledge of astronomy. Monte Alban, inscribed with the historic centre of Oaxaca, was inhabited over a period of 1,500 years by a succession of peoples - Olmecs, Zapotecs and Mixtecs - whose terraces, dams, canals, pyramids and artificial mounds were literally carved out of the mountain. El Tajin, in the state of Veracruz, was at its height from the early 9th to the early 13th century, and its culture is attributed to the huastecos and totonacos, the latter being the indigenous people that are currently living in the area. For the Aztec record, the Historic Centre of Mexico City and Xochimilco was built in the 16th century by the Spanish on the ruins of Tenochtitlan, the old Aztec capital. Read together, these inscriptions put the Maya and the Aztec in different centuries and different regions, and the evidence cited is physical - site layouts, terraces and ruins - rather than written chronicle.