Mercury

Back at the lodge, I retire to the bar where there is satellite internet. Research is a bit tough to do over a 56K connection that drops every few minutes. Still, I can't complain: many rainforests don't have any beer or internet.

The first topic is mercury. 684 grams were found at Caracol. At 13.5 grams per cubic cm, that's about 50 cubic centimeters. Assuming a depth of 5mm, that's a surface of 100 square centimeters, or a puddle with a radius of about 6 cm.

That's pretty cool. Enough mercury to make a 4 1/2 inch reflector. And it turns out that mercury was found at a number of Mayan sites.

Note that the Maya were a stone age civilization. That means no iron, copper, or even gold or silver. Luckily, they had local mercury deposits. Small quantities of liquid mercury could have be obtained either directly as a liquid dripping from certain rocks, or by burning cinnabar.

The lack of gold or silver means the Maya could not have used mercury for precious metal extraction. There aren't many other uses for mercury in a pre-industrial society. Maybe desperate medicine or an ill advised attempt at eternal life. Unfortunately, the absence of practical applications of mercury provides little support of my theory because the null hypothesis (as every science nerd will attest, liquid mercury is just a fun thing to have around and play with) cannot be rejected.

It looks like the Maya had decent quantities of liquid mercury. Enough for liquid mirrors, anyway.