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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Ancient mud bricks show adobe’s foundations 5,000 years ago

The oldest known monumental adobe structure in the Americas provides clues to the origins of this versatile material.
The remains of The Temple of the Moon

The Shrine of the Moon in northern Peru was built thousands of years after the construction of adobe walls at the site called Los Morteros. Credit: Kike Calvo/Universal Images Group/Getty

For thousands of years, Andean people have used adobe bricks to build awe-inspiring structures, including towering pyramids that were hundreds of metres wide. The bricks are known to be made from a mixture of clay-rich soil, water and other materials, but researchers understood little about the technology’s origins.

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Nature 599, 534 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-03446-x

References

  1. Mauricio, A. C. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 118, e2102941118 (2021).

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