Volcanic Evidence Opens New Maya Mystery

LiveScience ^ | May 30, 2014 | Becky Oskin

[SunkenCiv]

Potters at Maya cities on the Caribbean side of Central America fused volcanic ash with local limestone to form household and ceremonial pottery, because the ash made their ceramics easier to fire. The distinctive recipe was a hallmark of the Late Classic Period from A.D. 600 to 900, Ford said.

With thousands of people living in cities such as El Pilar and Tikal, the Mayan potters burned through several tons of volcanic ash every year, Ford has estimated. But no one can figure out where the ash came from.

The mystery begins with the fact that there just aren't any volcanoes in eastern Central America. Nor have archaeologists found evidence the Maya mined ash locally...

Coffey zeroed in on Ilopango volcano in El Salvador as a likely source. A devastating eruption from Ilopango destroyed and buried nearby Mayan cities in the fifth century, similar to Mount Vesuvius and Pompeii, and coated Central America in ash...

But instead of solving the mystery, the researchers' findings ended up eliminating Ilopango from the list of sources

Zircons in volcanic ash and lava start to crystallize in the underground magma chamber, before the volcano erupts, so some are older than the actual blast. Some of the Ilopango crystals are as young as the eruption, while others are up to 250,000 years old.

The El Pilar potsherd zircons were much older; none were younger than 1 million years old, and one crystal was more than 1 billion years old. These ages present a new riddle for researchers to investigate: Where did this old ash come from? "It's very puzzling, because [the zircons] suggest these are much older volcanic deposits," Coffey said. "It's hard to preserve volcanic ash in the jungle," he added.

[SunkenCiv]

:’)

[SunkenCiv]

Microbeads are probably responsible for colony collapse disorder. :’)

Here’s Why the US Government Suddenly Banned a Bunch of Soaps, Bodywashes, and Toothpastes
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[HandyDandy]

Our only hope is that the microbeads don’t become airborne before the election. But on a serious note, is colony collapse disorder hoakum? I’d heard ten different reasons for it, but last I heard was that the bees are back in force.

[SunkenCiv]

There are loads of claims about it; my wild guess is and was that it’s related somehow to the throat mites which had become epidemic in the 1980s in the domesticated bee population. Domesticated bees have a moderately narrow genetic base, bred for a specific purpose. Other, wilder bees (Orchard Mason bees are or were popular among organic gardeners and farmers) have been taking over pollination duties. Even here in cold old Michigan, the “killer bee” hybrids are becoming the wild bee population. They are crossed with the domestic bee. The two breeds have the same number of hairs on their bodies, but the Africanized bees are narrower, so they look hairier.