Scientists are trying to understand how some ancient buildings have lasted for centuries in hopes of making modern buildings more durable
A stucco relief is seen inside the"Jaguar Tunnel" at the Acropolis of Copan, an ancient Maya site in western Honduras, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2023. In the quest to build better for the future, some are looking for answers in the long-ago past.
This reverse engineering has turned up a surprising list of ingredients that were mixed into old buildings — materials such as tree bark, volcanic ash, rice, beer and even urine. These unexpected add-ins could be key some pretty impressive properties, like the ability to get stronger over time and “heal” cracks when they form.
Even in harbors, where seawater has been battering structures for ages, you’ll find concrete “basically the way it was when it was poured 2,000 years ago,” said John Oleson, an archaeologist at the University of Victoria in Canada. In a study published earlier this year, Admir Masic, a civil and environmental engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, proposed that this power comes from chunks of lime that are studded throughout the Roman material instead of being mixed in evenly. Researchers used to think these chunks were a sign that the Romans weren’t mixing up their materials well enough.
The ability to keep adapting over time “is truly the genius of the material,” Jackson said. “The concrete was so well designed that it sustains itself.” When scientists zoomed in, they saw that bits of organic material from the tree juice got incorporated into the plaster’s molecular structure. In this way, the Mayan plaster was able to mimic sturdy natural structures like seashells and sea urchin spines — and borrow some of their toughness, Rodriguez-Navarro said.
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How are ancient Roman and Mayan buildings still standing? Scientists are unlocking their secretsScientists are trying to understand how some ancient buildings have lasted for centuries in hopes of making modern buildings more durable.
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How are ancient Roman and Mayan buildings still standing? Scientists are unlocking their secretsScientists are trying to understand how some ancient buildings have lasted for centuries in hopes of making modern buildings more durable.
Weiterlesen »
How are ancient Roman and Mayan buildings still standing? Scientists are unlocking their secretsScientists are trying to understand how some ancient buildings have lasted for centuries in hopes of making modern buildings more durable
Weiterlesen »
How are ancient Roman and Mayan buildings still standing? Scientists are unlocking their secretsScientists are trying to understand how some ancient buildings have lasted for centuries in hopes of making modern buildings more durable.
Weiterlesen »
How are ancient Roman and Mayan buildings still standing? Scientists are unlocking their secretsScientists are trying to understand how some ancient buildings have lasted for centuries in hopes of making modern buildings more durable
Weiterlesen »