{
  "id": 18359644,
  "title": "Ancient Maya mercury use may have come at a severe environmental cost",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/05/ancient-maya-mercury-use-may-have-come-at-a-severe-environmental-cost",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-11-05T19:20:08.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Phys.org",
    "slug": "phys-org",
    "url": "https://phys.org/news/2026-11-ancient-maya-mercury-severe-environmental.html"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": null,
  "summary": "Ancient Maya communities made extensive use of liquid mercury and a red, mercury-containing pigment called cinnabar to decorate buildings, pottery and burial sites. Unsurprisingly, as previous research has shown, this led to mercury contamination of soils and reservoirs at some Maya sites. And that pollution may have spread even farther into their territory and caused the collapse of two lake…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}