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.
Perspectives
Until 1965, the source of the palygorskite in the pigment was a mystery. Then, in 1965, I discovered that Maya potters in Ticul, Yucatan, knew about the mineral, knew its properties, called it sak lu'um ('white earth'), and mixed it with their clay to make pottery. I then learned that the mineral was also a cure for several maladies, and was also mined in a large mined-out cavity in the nearby village of Sacalum. Clay mineralogist, B. F. Bohor and I investigated the mine, mapped its interior and published the sketch map in 1978. Forty years later, the extent of the mine was relatively unchanged suggesting that it had been used for mining palygorskite for illness and Maya Blue for many centuries.
Dr Dean E. Arnold
Field Museum of Natural History
Read the Original
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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