Mercury may have had a high value for the Maya. This is evidenced by at least sealed vessels found at various places of the people and containing the liquid metal. But the preference for the element and different colors containing mercury obviously came at a price. A study by Duncan Cook of the Australian Catholic University and his team shows that many Mayan cities were and are at least partially highly contaminated with it. This is confirmed by the working group with a study in "Frontiers in Environmental Science": Some samples clearly exceeded the threshold value for toxicological safety of one microgram per gram of sediment (equivalent to one ppm).
Cook and Co analyzed all the data on mercury loads from various Maya cities in Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, including famous sites such as Tikal or Cerén. These locations flourished in the 1st millennium AD. The bandwidth ranged from a small 0.016 ppm in Actuncan in Belize to exceptional 17.16 ppm in Tikal in Guatemala: values that can endanger archaeologists if they work in such a polluted environment must.
The contamination was probably mainly caused by mercury -containing colors such as tin top red, which the Maya used generously to decorate. »For the Maya, objects of Ch'ulel or soul forces who lived in the blood could contain. Therefore, the bright red pigment of the tin was an invaluable and sacred substance. But they didn't know that it was also fatal, and his legacy was preserved in the soils and sediments around the old Maya sites, «says Koautor Nicholas Dunning from the University of Cincinnati.
Since mercury is rare in the limestone that dominates much of the former Maya area, the high culture may have mined elemental mercury and cinnabar from known deposits on the northern and southern borders of their empire. Merchants then took it to the cities and centers, where it was further processed and used.
The liquid metal was a high health risk for people: the effects of chronic mercury poisoning include damage to the central nervous system, the kidneys and liver as well as tremors, visual and hearing disorders, paralysis and psychological problems. One of the last Mayan rulers of Tikal is presented on frescoes as pathological obese, which may also provide an indication of mercury damage. Obesity is a well -known consequence of the metabolic syndrome, which can be caused by chronic mercury poisoning. So far, however, there is no evidence of this assumption.
