With its brilliant hues of blue and green, turquoise was a highly prized gemstone to the ancient Aztecs and Mixtec in the region that stretches from central Mexico to Central America known as Mesoamerica. They used the mineral to create armbands and nose plugs, for handles on sacrificial knives and also to design elaborate mosaics of warriors that adorned their ceremonial shields and fearsome statues of double-headed serpents.

For more than a century, archaeologists have questioned the origins of the turquoise used in these beautiful pieces of artwork and jewelry. Because scientists have found little evidence of turquoise mining in Mesoamerica, some researchers have used the presence of turquoise artifacts in the area as evidence of a long-distance trade exchange with ancient civilizations thousands of miles away in the American Southwest, where turquoise mines have been found.

But a recent geochemical analysis of Aztec and Mixtec turquoise suggests that the mineral did not originate in the American Southwest, but rather in Mesoamerica. The finding, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, also calls into question the idea that there was extensive contact between Mesoamerican and Southwest American cultures before the Spanish invasion in the 1500s.