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Ancient Maya City Built Sophisticated Water Filtration System With Materials We Still Use Today
Archaeologists working on the Mayan city of Tikal have uncovered evidence of a water filtration system made of materials still used today.
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Archaeologists working at the site of the ancient Maya city of Tikal in northern Guatemala have found a sophisticated water filtration system that would have proven to be millennia ahead of its time.
Built at the end of a channel from the Corriental reservoir, a critical source of drinking water for the northern Maya, the mixture of zeolite and quartz sand at the mouth of the channel would have removed most contaminants like cyanobacteria and heavy metals and is still used in modern water filters even today.
“What’s interesting is this system would still be effective today and the Maya discovered it more than 2,000 years ago,” Kenneth Tankersley, associate professor of anthropology from the University of Cincinnati said in a statement.
And speaking of 2,000 years, it would be around 2,000 years from the estimated date of the completion of the filtration system at Tikal that the same materials would begin to be employed in Europe.
“It was probably through very clever empirical observation that the ancient Maya saw this particular material was associated with clean water and made some effort to carry it back,” said UC geography professor Nicholas Dunning, who was involved with the research.
End of an era
Tankersley and Dunning published a research paper together on the discovery. According to the corresponding statement on the university website, water quality and availability would have been a major concern for the flourishing Maya civilization in the 3rd century BC.
Even though Tikal and the Maya who built it centered their cities in a rainforest, the porous limestone soil meant that water never stayed around for long, and in periods of extended drought, standing water like the Corriental reservoir would become contaminated with bacteria.
Tags: Archaeologists, Guatemala, ancient Maya, civilization