Eastern Otomanguean

Eastern Otomanguean is the eastern grouping of the Oto-Manguean family, a cluster of tonal, verb-first languages whose common ancestor was spoken in southern Mexico more than four thousand years ago, perhaps by the early farming peoples of the Tehuacan Valley.

Its speakers included the Zapotecs, who founded Monte Alban around 500 BCE and carved one of the region's first writing systems, and the Mixtecs, who call themselves Ñuu Savi, the people of the rain, and painted genealogical codices on deerskin. Aztec armies defeated the Mixtecs and Zapotecs in 1458 and built the Huaxyacac fortress in 1486 to enforce tribute; Zapotecs fought at Guiengola until around 1500.

Both peoples submitted to Francisco de Orozco in 1521, and their lands entered the Marquessate of the Valley of Oaxaca held by Cortes. Repeated epidemics reduced the indigenous population by roughly nine tenths within little more than a century.