“Maya Blue” was a blue pigment invented by the Maya culture around 800 A.D. This unique pigment resists fading and is resistant to many chemical solvents. It was used on murals, buildings, ceramics, sculptures and codices. Here is an example of Maya Blue:
Here’s a little Maya Blue statue from Jaina Island .
Here is Maya Blue on a mural from Bonampak, a Maya site in Chiapas.
The use of Maya Blue spread from the Maya to other Mesoamericans, and survived the Spanish Conquest. In the colonial period it was still used in Catholic artwork which combined Indian and European artistic techniques. Here is a colonial-era painting of Jacob’s Ladder by Juan Gerson, a Nahua artist, which utilizes Maya Blue. This work is found in the the monastery church of Asuncion Tecamachalco in the state of Puebla.
The use of Maya Blue died out in Mexico in the colonial period, but curiously, the technique survived in Cuba until the mid-1800s.
Finally, it died out there too and was rediscovered by researchers in the twentieth century.
So how was the Maya Blue pigment produced?
From LiveScience.com: “For decades, scientists tried to decode the precise method of manufacturing Maya blue, but they did not succeed until 2008. By analyzing traces of the pigment found on pottery at the bottom of a well at Chichén Itzá, a Maya site in the Yucatán Peninsula, a team of researchers led by Dean Arnold, an adjunct curator of anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago, determined that the key to Maya blue was actually a sacred incense called copal. By heating the mixture of indigo, copal and palygorskite over a fire, the Maya produced the unique pigment, he reported at the time.”
Now Arnold has discovered another method that was used: “But at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Denver on April 25, Arnold presented his discovery of a second method for creating Maya blue. The new research has been published in Arnold’s book “Maya Blue” (University Press of Colorado, 2024).”
“After closely examining a dozen Maya bowls found at Chichén Itzá, Arnold realized that white residue in the vessels was probably palygorskite that was ground when wet, which would have left traces in the tiny fractures that grinding tools left in the pots. Microscopic examination of the 12 bowls further revealed tiny, burnt plant stems, and the bases of the bowls showed that they were heated from below, his detective work showed.”
” ‘Consequently, the observations of these bowls provide evidence that the ancient Maya used this method as a second way to create Maya blue,’ Arnold said in the presentation.”
As Arnold aptly describes the Maya’s invention of Maya Blue, “This is a genius discovery that they made.”
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