[Rockhounds] story: mysterious Mayan blue dye revealed

[DonH]

Pmodreski at aol.com wrote:

>  
> In a message dated 2/27/2008 3:02:34 PM Mountain Standard Time,  
> donhalterman at verizon.net writes:
> 
> http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080227/sc_nm/maya_blue_dc
> 
> 
> I see that the story refers to the blue dye components as "healing  
> elements", but of course they were just "healing" in a spiritual sense--relating  to 
> prepping the victims before human sacrifice.  Oh,  well...


Isn't palygorskite the mineral that occurs as "mountain leather?"  We 
were talking about that in soil mineralogy class the other day, but the 
professors weren't familiar with that term... then again these are ag 
sci folks and are usually concerned with what appears in soils.

Best,
Don