The term
Zacatecas

is according to our research related to proto-Indo-European
e.g. Latvian SAKA TEKAS

meaning "[the Sun] starts its path"

and refers to the Sun

at the Tropic of Cancer at the Summer Solstice
north of the Aztec, Maya and Inca
astronomical sites.

Harvard graduate Vincent H. Malmström writes in his book Cycles of the Sun, Myteries of the Moon,
University of Texas Press, Austin, 1997, p. 164, figure 46:

"About the first half of the fifth century A.D., it appears that the priests of Teotihuacán dispatched an expedition into the northern desert to determine the place where
 "the sun stood still"
in other words, the Tropic of Cancer.
The astronomical site which the expedition founded was Chalchihuites (also known as Alta Vista), where sight-lines marking the summer solstice were perpetuated as trenches in the earth. About the same time, and perhaps under the influence of Teotihuacan, the priests at Tikal may have sent off an expedition to locate the parallel of latitude at which the 260-day sacred almanac could be calibrated - the astronomical site of Copán."

Zacatecas as a name is surely much older.

Zacatecas was comparable to Philae in Egypt,
written PA-LI-K on hieroglyphs
which is proto-Indo-European e.g. Latvian PALIEK
"[the Sun] stops here", i.e. the northernmost declination
of the Sun´s ecliptic to the celestial equator at the Summer Solstice. These were marked by ancient surveyors.