I have read, or seen a documentary, on the Maya that said they were crazy over STUCCO!
They STUCCOED EVERYTHING, INSIDE AND OUT!
They also liked ‘red’ paint to create murals, stain the stucco mix and their own bodies.
CINNABAR, a mercury ore, is bright red and they probably used it everywhere, ground into powder.
Oxides of mercury affect the brain as in Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter of Alice in Wonderland. Hatters of the time were known to suffer mental breakdowns because they used mercury in their trade.
So all the Maya may have just gone insane and their civilization collapsed..............
Sounds all too modern...the insane part....maybe our population is polluted with ethanol...marijuana...meth...opiates...SSRI’s..sexually active hormones....which could help explain the illogical reasoning we witness on a daily basis...
Sounds plausible. BTW, Stucco Marx would be a cool name for a high-end homebuilder in northern LA.
The article itself pointed out that the sediments also contained algae with cyanobacteria which were also toxic and not affected by boiling. So cyanide and mercury!!