Question

For decades, early epigraphers studying Mesoamerican ruins assumed that the oldest writing systems in the region, such as the Zapotec glyphs dating to 500 BCE, served a primarily economic function—tracking agricultural yields and tributes. This hypothesis was bolstered by the prominent depiction of calendar dates and numerical counts alongside the glyphs. However, recent comprehensive analyses of monuments across the Oaxaca Valley paint a vastly different picture. While agricultural cycles and tributary lists are indeed recorded in minor, peripheral inscriptions on ceramic vessels, the grand stone monuments themselves—monolithic structures known as *danzantes*—were erected almost exclusively to legitimize the political authority of ruling elites during periods of intense warfare. These stone inscriptions record military conquests, the capture of rival lords, and the divine lineage of kings, using calendar dates not to coordinate harvests, but to anchor royal accessions and campaigns to auspicious astronomical alignments. Thus, the monumental writing was less an administrative ledger and more a tool of statecraft and elite propaganda, designed to project power outward to subordinate communities and inward to rivals. The focus on economic transactions in early scholarship arose from an over-reliance on portable artifacts, obscuring the ideological work performed by Zapotec public monumentality.

Which of the following statements best summarizes the author's primary argument regarding the function of early Zapotec monumental writing?