Unveiling the secret of ancient Maya masons: Biomimetic lime plasters with plant extracts.

ABSTRACT: Ancient Maya produced some of the most durable lime plasters on Earth, yet how this was achieved remains a secret. Here, we show that ancient Maya plasters from Copan (Honduras) include organics and have a calcite cement with meso-to-nanostructural features matching those of calcite biominerals (e.g., shells). To test the hypothesis that the organics could play a similar toughening role as (bio)macromolecules in calcium carbonate biominerals, we prepared plaster replicas adding polysaccharide-rich bark extracts from Copan's local trees following an ancient Maya building tradition. We show that the replicas display similar features as the organics-containing ancient Maya plasters and demonstrate that, as in biominerals, in both cases, their calcite cement includes inter- and intracrystallin

SUBMITTER: Rodriguez-Navarro C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10115411 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature