Sitio Arqueológico de Chiapa de Corzo (Montículo 1)

Chiapa de Corzo's archaeological zone preserves the core of a Zoque settlement occupied continuously from approximately 1200 BCE through the Late Postclassic period, making it one of the longest-inhabited sites documented in Mesoamerica. Excavations by the New World Archaeological Foundation, beginning in 1955 and continued by successive INAH teams, established a ceramic and stratigraphic sequence that anchors chronological dating across the wider Isthmus of Tehuantepec and central Chiapas depression. The zone's principal visible structure, Montículo 1, is a stepped earthen and stone platform mound that formed part of a plaza group used for ceremonial and administrative functions; adjoining mounds delineate a ballcourt and residential terraces still under partial excavation. The site's most consequential single find, Stela 2, recovered from a plaza mound in 1969, bears a Long Count date corresponding to 36 BCE, the earliest securely read Long Count inscription known in Mesoamerica and roughly three and a half centuries earlier than any comparable date recorded at a Classic Maya lowland city such as Tikal. That discovery reoriented scholarly debate over where the Long Count calendar originated, pointing to Zoque or Epi-Olmec innovation on the Chiapas isthmus rather than an exclusively Maya invention later diffused outward. A small INAH site museum near Avenida Domingo Ruiz displays ceramic vessels, obsidian tools and a cast of Stela 2 (the original is held at the Museo Regional de Chiapas in Tuxtla Gutiérrez), organised chronologically from the Early Formative through the Spanish conquest. The open-air mounds themselves receive only light conservation, consisting of consolidated earthen cores exposed to seasonal rain, and INAH conducts periodic stabilisation campaigns rather than full reconstruction, leaving the platforms in a state closer to their excavated profile than a restored monument. Visitors walk freely among the grassed mound clusters, which sit within the modern town rather than behind a controlled perimeter, giving the zone an unusually informal, low-key character compared with better-known Chiapas sites such as Palenque or Toniná.