Unveiling the secret of ancient Maya masons: Biomimetic lime plasters with plant extracts
| Autor: | Carlos Rodriguez-Navarro, Luis Monasterio-Guillot, Miguel Burgos-Ruiz, Encarnación Ruiz-Agudo, Kerstin Elert |
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| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2023 |
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| Popis: | 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 organicscontaining ancient Maya plasters and demonstrate that, as in biominerals, in both cases, their calcite cement includes inter- and intracrystalline organics that impart a marked plastic behavior and enhanced toughness while increasing weathering resistance. Apparently, the lime technology developed by ancient Maya, and likely other ancient civilizations that used natural organic additives to prepare lime plasters, fortuitously exploited a biomimetic route for improving carbonate binders performance Santander Program for the Research and Conservation of Maya Sculpture, at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies(DRCLAS), Harvard University Spanish Government RTI2018-099565-B-I00 PID2021.125305NB MCIN/AEI ERDF Away of making Europe Junta de Andalucia University of Granada Unidad Cientifica de Excelencia UCE PP2016-05 Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action European Training network-Innovative Training Network (ETN-ITN), SUBlime 955986 |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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