The great Maya urban center of Tikal transportedzeolitesfor water filtration G of yr before other culture read or adopted the estimate , archeologist have find . The filtration was probably much better than anything know to the Europeans who stamp down the area 1,500 years afterwards .
The Corriental reservoir was one of Tikal ’s sources of drinking water . Dr Kenneth Tankersleyof the University of Cincinnati get hold crystalline quartz and zeolite when digging at the reservoir . Neither are local to the area and would have had to be bring a long way by the standards of a people who had no creature of burden .
No one would carry these materials so far without a good cause .
Tankersley keep the quartz / zeolite combination would have removed multiple pathogen from the piddle provision , including heavy metals , nitrogen - rich compounds , and bacteria . The last raises the tantalizing possibility the Maya had a germ hypothesis of disease two millennia before Pasteur , but bacterial removal was more likely a good side gist of efforts to remove other impureness . “ This system would still be effective today and the Maya pick up it more than 2,000 twelvemonth ago , " Tankersley said in astatement .
The poriferous limestone on which Tikal sat , in what is now northerly Guatemala , does not add itself to wellspring for storing weewee during the dry season , so admission to unobjectionable piddle would have been particularly crucial .
InScientific Reports , Tankersley proposes a source for the minerals and even excuse how people might have amount to recognize their economic value . A decade ago co - authorProfessor Nicholas Dunningreported volcanic rock bonk as tuff , rich in crystal and zeolite , in a escarpment . “ It was bleeding H2O at a good rate , ” he order . “ Workers refilled their water bottle with it . It was locally renowned for how uninfected and cherubic the weewee was . "
The tufa deposit credibly develop just as good weewee yard of years ago , and some long - recede Maya scientists identify the ingredients that made it filter so effectively .
The minerals at Dunning ’s website match those at Corriental , but nothing similar was found at other Tikal site , including two other reservoirs the team excavated , show it was mined and transported the 30 kilometers ( 18 mi ) to the urban center . That may seem a scant distance today but was back then a farsighted trek .
The minerals first appear at the reservoir around 2,200 long time ago , and were replenished after flash floods until the city was vacate more than 1,000 year later . Even older urine filtration system have been found in Egypt , South Asia and Greece , but Tikal ’s version was in all probability superior . Zeolite is used to sanctify piss today because its stomate are well sized to filter out microbes such as cyanobacteria , and its ions bind to heavy metal .
The Aztecs and Incas transported water system to their cities from clear spring , but the landscape in which many Maya endure made this unviable . Instead , the Maya built thousands of reservoirs – Tikal alone had five – only a few of which have been excavated . Consequently , we do not know how widespread zeolite manipulation was .
The volcanoes of the part gave the Maya these minerals , but they also leave high concentrations of atomic number 80 in the domain . Human and lifelike activity wash this into water supplies , where it pollute Tikal ’s other reservoirs and may have contribute to the metropolis ’s collapse , the teampreviously usher , while the zeolite gave Corriental security .
