Maya blue is the durable blue pigment associated with Maya murals, pottery, sculpture, and other Mesoamerican artworks.
The pigment is a composite material rather than a simple mineral color. Its main ingredients were indigo dye, probably obtained from añil plants, and the clay mineral palygorskite. Heating these materials produced a vivid turquoise-to-azure blue whose structure made it unusually resistant to weathering, chemical attack, and fading.
Maya blue appears in works from sites such as Chichén Itzá, Bonampak, and Cacaxtla. Some murals painted more than a thousand years ago retain strong traces of the color. Researchers also associate the pigment with ritual activity at Chichén Itzá, where blue carried important religious meanings and was connected with Chaac, the rain deity.
The main confusion is with Egyptian blue, another ancient synthetic pigment developed in a different cultural tradition. Maya blue is specifically the indigo-and-clay pigment of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, although related techniques continued into the colonial period.