What is it about?
Maya Blue is an unusual blue pigment uniquely created by the ancient Maya about 2500 years ago. It has fascinated archeologists, chemists and material scientists becasue it is a clay-organic complex, and unlike one of its constituents, indigo, its color has persisted unchanged for many centuries in one of the world's harshest tropical climates. Maya Blue was the color of sacrifice for the ancient Maya, symbolized the Maya god of rain, chaak, and was widely used on pottery sculpture and murals.
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Why is it important?
One of the mysteries of the pigment is the causes of its great stability and the chemical bonding between one of its constituents, palygorskite, and indigo although scientists are working on this question and have advanced several credible hypotheses.
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This page is a summary of: Maya Blue, January 2015, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-3934-5_10170-2.
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