Mayan escape story from the largest city of antiquity

Guatemala is a country in Central America,which is famous for the abundance of volcanoes and rainforests. Thousands of years ago, on its territory were located the cities of the mysterious Mayan civilization, whose representatives invented the basics of mathematics, invented writing, and made many important discoveries for us. One of the largest cities of this people was Tikal, whose population was more than 100 thousand people. In this huge settlement, many pyramids, temples and residential buildings were built, but once all the inhabitants of this city began to run away from their homes. Scientists for a long time could not find out the reason for such a sudden flight, but recently, American scientists have found evidence that for some period of time it became impossible to live in this city. And the fault was poisoned water, which caused illness and even death.

Mayans looked something like this

The ancient city of Maya

Scientific work in the ancient citystarted back in 1848. Researchers managed to find hundreds of stone structures, and some of them remain uncovered even today. The city is truly huge - according to scientists, residential buildings occupy an area of ​​about 60 square kilometers. The Maya people built limestone structures that were mined directly in the city. After mining the rock, deep holes remained on the ground, which were subsequently used to supply residents with water.

Guatemala on a world map

Poison water

In the course of one of the scientific works, researchersdecided to study the chemical composition of the walls of 10 water reservoirs located in the vicinity of the ancient city. They were probably very surprised when residues of substances harmful to the human body were found in dirt samples. In particular, they found traces of the blue-green algae Planktothrix and Microcystis, which can enter the body and cause skin irritation, nausea, liver pain and other troubles.

Blue-green algae kills people and animals even today. Read about the latest incidents related to these plants in this article.

As a rule, blue-green algae is activelydevelop during droughts. But scientists already had the assumption that people ran away from the city just after the dry period. According to one of the authors of the study, Kenneth Tankersley, the water in the tanks probably began to look dirty and got a terrible taste. No one would drink such water, and it could be everywhere. People had to flee the city en masse - didn’t they die from dehydration?

Buildings in the city of Tikal

Mercury hazard

According to the science publication ScienceAlert, scientistsdiscovered another dangerous substance in tanks - mercury. At first, researchers believed that this toxic metal got into the tanks along with volcanic ash. But then it dawned on them that the residents themselves could have been the source of mercury. The fact is that they actively painted murals - paintings painted on raw plaster. And they made paints from cinnabar, which is considered one of the most common mercury minerals.

I wrote about mercury in an article about the most interesting metals on Earth

Most likely, the Mayans knew very well thatmercury is a substance poisonous to the human body. It may even be that they handled paints with extreme care and did not allow it to get on the skin. But they hardly took into account that during rains, part of the paint is washed off and gets into water tanks. Unaware of this, they could drink poisoned water for many years and thereby cause irreparable harm to their health. And if we take into account the appearance of poisonous algae in the water, it could reach an epidemic of some serious disease. Nobody wanted to die, so people decided to leave their homes and look for more suitable places for living.

Giant stone heads with Monte Alto - Mayan artwork

And where exactly the city residents fled is not clear. Perhaps some of them moved to the ancient city called Quirigua, which is also located on the territory of modern Guatemala. Only now there is evidence that around the time of hard times in Tikal, this city also fell apart. Because of what this happened, scientists still do not know. The city has been explored since 1840 and scientists have already managed to find many interesting artifacts. Perhaps the most interesting of them are sculptures of mythical monsters.

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Mayan civilization history is full of mysteries, and onAt present, scientists do not even know why it disappeared. My colleague Lyubov Sokovikova recently tried to understand this issue relatively recently - I recommend reading her material.