Ross T. Christensen discusses cement among the Maya during Book of Mormon times; the Maya used lime cement, not portland cement.

Date
1963
Type
Book
Source
Ross T. Christensen
LDS
Hearsay
Direct
Reference

Ross T. Christensen, “Cement in Ancient America,” in Progress in Archaeology: An Anthology, ed. Ross T. Christensen (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University, 1963), 110-12

Scribe/Publisher
Brigham Young University
People
Ross T. Christensen
Audience
Reading Public
PDF
Transcription

A Question for the Editor.* Sir: Was the cement used by the Mayas and some other civilized peoples of ancient America the same as our own?

Answer. There are two main varieties of building cement in use in our present-day civilization: portland cement and lime cement. Ancient American cements definitely were not comparable to modern portland cement. Ut they were approximately equivalent to modern lime cements.

Portland cement is so named from the resemblance of the original product to stone form that place in England. It results from a series of inventions which have taken place largely in England during the last two centuries. So far as I am informed, it was unknown in ancient times in either hemisphere. The basic ingredient in limestone, which is raised to a clinker heart. Then the clinkers are pulverized. The resulting powder, when mixed with water and inert materials, such as sand and gravel, and allowed to set, hardens into a monolithic mass of great strength and durability.

Lime cements of various formulas have been known in the Old World form Egyptian times. Once again, the principal ingredient is limestone, but in this case it is raised only to calcine heat, sufficient to burn out the carbon. When pulverized and mixed with water and allowed to set, it draws carbon-dioxide out of the atmosphere and hardens into calcium carbonate, which chemically is essentially identical with the original limestone. The chemistry of lime cement is thus very different from that of portland cement, and while the former is much used for plaster, mortar, etc., the latter is preferred for foundations, sidewalks, roadways, bridges, etc. (Excellent articles on “cement” and “concrete” may be found in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.)

Lime cement is found in pre-Columbian America only in Mesoamerica (central and southern Mexico and northern Central America), or in other words only in the area of the most advanced ancient civilizations (Book of Mormon area). I know of nothing discovered in the Peruvian area of South America, where otherwise advanced cultures flourished, that could be called cement. Portland cement is not found in the ancient New World at all.

In Mesoamerica lime cement was used as early as Preclassic (Book of Mormon) times, as witness the example of the cement of Pyramid E-II-sub at Uaxactún. In the later Classic and Militaristic periods it was much used for floors, sculptures, highways, walls of pubic buildings, and facing of pyramids. It seems to have been the principal building material at the ruins of Aguacatal in southern Mexico, where excavations were conducted by the writer during the past winter (Newsletter, 48.0). Ralph Roys discusses its chemistry and the engineering principles employed in its use of his Engineering Knowledge of the Ancient Mayas (Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication No. 134, 1936). Sylvanus G. Morley describes the manufacture of lime cement among the modern rural Mayas in his The Ancient Maya (Stanford University Press, 2nd ed., 1947).

So far as I know, the use of cement in ancient America has never been comprehensively studied as to its antiquity, distribution, chemistry, methods of manufacture, etc. Few samples seem ever to have been analyzed. It may be that various formulas were used which we have never guessed. Some examples do seem to be extraordinarily hard. Comprehensive investigation of ancient American cements ought to be very fruitful.—R.T.C.

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