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The ancient Maya used a vivid , remarkably durable blue paint to incubate their palace walls , codices , pottery and maybe even the bodies of human sacrifice who were hold to their death down sacred wells . Now a radical of chemists exact to have cracked the formula of Maya Blue .
Scientists have long known the two chief ingredient of the intense blue paint : indigo , a flora dyestuff that ’s used today to color denim ; and palygorskite , a type of clay . But how the Maya cooked up the unfading paint remain a mystery . Now Spanish researchers describe that they found trace of another paint in Maya Blue , which they say devote hint about how the color was made .
A Maya king, seated and wearing an elaborate head dress of blue feathers, adorns the north wall of the ruined house discovered at the Maya site of Xultún. An attendant, at right, leans out from behind the king’s head dress. The painting by artist Heather Hurst recreates the design and colors of the original Maya artwork at the site.
" We discover a second pigment in the sampling , dehydroindigo , which must have formed through oxidation of the Indigofera tinctoria when it underwent pic to the heat that is expect to prepareMayaBlue , " Antonio Doménech , a research worker from the University of Valencia , said in a statement .
" Indigo is blue and dehydroindigo is icteric , therefore the presence of both pigments in varying balance would justify the more or less greenish tone of Maya Blue , " Doménech explain . " It is potential that the Maya live how to incur the desired hue by varying the preparation temperature , for example heating the mixture for more or less metre or adding more of less wood to the attack . "
American researchers in 2008 claimed that copal rosin , which was used for incense , may have been the thirdsecret factor for Maya Blue . Their research was ground on a report of a bowl that had hint of the paint and was used to cauterise incense . But Doménech ’s team did n’t buy those findings . [ Image Gallery : Stunning Mayan wall painting ]
" The arena contained Maya Blue mixed with copal incense , so the simplify conclusion was that it was only ready by warming incense , " Doménech said in a statement .
The Spanish researchers say they are now investigating the chemical substance bail that bind the paint ’s constituent part ( indigo ) to the inorganic component part ( clay ) , which is key to Maya Blue ’s resilience .
Among the more noteworthy discoveries of the rouge in linguistic context was a 14 - foot thick ( 4 meters ) bed of blue mud at the bottom of a by nature formed sink , visit the Sacred Cenote , at the famous Pre - Columbian Maya siteChichén Itzáin the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico . When the Sacred Cenote was first dredged in 1904 , it flummox researchers , but some scientists now believe it was in all probability left over from dingy - coat human sacrifices thrown into the well as part of a Maya rite .
The enquiry was detailed this year in the diary Microporous and Mesoporous Materials .
