The Origins of Chocolate



Cover, November/December 2010
Archaeology Magazine

 It was the Etruscans, baby!  Check out the cover on this month's Archaeology Magazine - GIANT CHOCOLATE ETRUSCAN WIFE AND MATE - still ready to eat after 1,600 years.

Nah, only kidding. LOL!  But they DO look like they're carved from chocolate :)  Check out this abstract of the article, which states that the origins of chocolate date back to at least 1500 BCE! 

I noticed her pointed finger - what that is all about?  A thousand years later, there are chess pieces of queens with the same pointed index finger, and later still, paintings showing Queens and Madonnas with the pointing index finger.  Also, she's left handed!  Hard to believe, but only about 30% of the entire world population is left-handed (included yours truly).  In the "old days", left-handed persons where often killed as "instruments of the Devil."

Earliest Use of Chocolate in U.S.A.

Ohhhhh, I could sure use some chocolate right now. i'm tired and hungry (supper is barely started on the stove at the moment). But earlier today I splurged and had a Hershey's special edition chocolate cherry kiss at the office so no more chocolate for me! I've been proud of myself, I hardly ever eat chocolate any more, it's helped with the weight loss, so when I do have an occasional piece of chocolate it explodes in my mouth like Mount Vesuvius! I want that chocolate because I am depressed at the moment. I have an appointment with a plumber on Saturday. There is a leak coming somewhere from the upstairs bathroom that can no longer be ignored and I just know it's going to cost a fortune, besides the first hour at $100. Sigh. CHA-CHING.... I wonder if the Native Americans drank/ate chocolate to make themselves feel better??? New Mexico canyon dwellers were earliest in what is now US to use chocolate By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID , Associated Press Last update: February 2, 2009 - 4:01 PM WASHINGTON - Chocolate for your sweetheart this Valentine's Day? Folks may be surprised to know how far back chocolate goes — perhaps 1,000 years in what is now the United States. Evidence of chocolate was been found in Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, N.M., the earliest indication of the tasty substance north of Mexico, Patricia L. Crown of the University of New Mexico and W. Jeffrey Hurst of the Hershey Center for Health and Nutrition report in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Drinking chocolate was associated with a variety of rituals in ancient Central America, including weddings, but Crown said she is not sure of its exact uses in her area. The discovery, dated to between A.D. 1000 and 1125, indicates trade was under way between the Chaco Canyon residents and cacao growers in Central America. But the nearest cacao plantation would have been more than 1,000 miles away, so importing the material would have been a major undertaking, she said. Chocolate was probably something not consumed often, she said in a telephone interview. It also probably tasted bitter compared with what is available today. Central Americans didn't sweeten their chocolate and sometimes mixed in hot peppers. Crown said honey might have been available in new Mexico but she didn't know if it was used. The research was prompted by a discussion about cylinder jars, when Crown was told the Maya used the jars for drinking chocolate. The new research was supported by the National Science Foundation, National Geographic Society, University of New Mexico and the Hershey Technical Center. ___ On the Net: PNAS: http://www.pnas.org

Like Chocolate for Beer

Ancient beer pots point to origins of chocolate 22:00 12 November 2007 NewScientist.com news service Jeff Hecht Chocolate was first produced by the ancients as a by-product of beer, suggests a new archaeological study. And evidence from drinking vessels left by the Mesoamericans who developed chocolate suggests that the source of chocolate, cacao, was first used 500 years earlier than thought. Mesoamericans – who flourished in central America before it was colonised by the Spanish – developed chocolate as a by-product of fermenting cacao fruit to make a beer-like drink called chicha still brewed by South American tribal people. The Mesoamericans before Columbus’s time, developed a taste for the chocolate, but their cousins down in South America stuck with the beer, says Cornell University archaeologist John Henderson, who led the new study. Unsweetened chocolate drinks became a central element of Mesoamerican cultures including the Aztecs, from whom Europeans learned of chocolate in the 16th century. Archaeologists have found pottery made to serve the frothed chocolate drink preferred by the pre-Columbians in earlier sites, and have found traces of chocolate in pots dating back to 600 BC. But the origins of the drink had been unclear. Chemical clues Chocolate's unique flavour develops only when the watery pulp of raw cacao fruit and seeds are fermented together, colouring the seeds purple. Grinding the seeds yields the chocolate. "It struck us that it wasn't obvious how to do this," says study co-author Rosemary Joyce at the University of California at Berkeley. The involvement of fermentation led her and Henderson to speculate that cacao beer might have been the originating process. Only now has hard evidence come to light in the form of pot sherds dating from 200 BC to before 1100 BC that they found in the ruins of an ancient village called Puerto Escondido in the Ulúa Valley in Honduras. Harnessing a technique developed by Patrick McGovern at the University of Pennsylvania, they were able to extract chocolate residues from the pores in the pottery. Tests found theobromine – a chemical signature of cacao – in 11 of 13 fragments, including one that Joyce estimates dates from 1100 to 1200 BC. 'Smoking gun' That pushed evidence for cacao drinking back 500 years. That pot, and others older than about 900 BC, also lacked any traces of the chilli pepper Mesoamericans used to spice up their chocolate. Pots designed for making a frothed chocolate first appeared after this date, the researchers report. The oldest fragment was the long neck of a bottle that could have held beer, but could not have been used to make the frothed chocolate beverage that became popular later. Joyce called that "the smoking gun" showing that beer had come first. She suggests that the key step in switching to chocolate came when ancient brewers ground up the cacao seeds remaining after fermentation and added them to thicken the beer – giving it a chocolate taste. Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0708815104)