| For the Chocolate Lovers |
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| ::darkshadows:: (bloody@mary.org) |
2007/11/14 04:45 |
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Subject: For the Chocolate Lovers
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Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 11:45:04 GMT
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Chocolate began as beer-like brew 3,100 years ago
By Will Dunham Tue Nov 13, 9:56 AM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chocolate enjoyed around the world today
had its origins at least 3,100 years ago in Central America not as the
sweet treat people now crave but as a celebratory beer-like beverage
and status symbol, scientists said on Monday.
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Researchers identified residue of a chemical compound that comes
exclusively from the cacao plant -- the source of chocolate -- in
pottery vessels dating from about 1100 BC in Puerto Escondido,
Honduras.
This pushed back by at least 500 years the earliest documented use of
cacao, an important luxury commodity in Mesoamerica before European
invaders arrived and now the basis of the modern chocolate industry.
Cacao (pronounced cah-COW) seeds were used to make ceremonial
beverages consumed by elites of the Aztecs and other civilizations,
while also being used as a form of currency.
The Spanish conquistadors who shattered the Aztec empire in the 16th
century were smitten with a chocolate beverage made from cacao seeds
served in the palace of the emperor. However, this was not the form in
which cacao had its beginnings.
"The earliest cacao beverages consumed at Puerto Escondido were likely
produced by fermenting the sweet pulp surrounding the seeds," the
scientists wrote in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences.
One of the researchers, anthropologist John Henderson of Cornell
University in Ithaca, New York, said cacao beverages were being
concocted far earlier than previously believed -- and it was a
beer-like drink that started the chocolate craze.
"What we're seeing in this early village is a very early stage in
which serving cacao at fancy occasions is one of the strategies that
upwardly mobile families are using to establish themselves, to
accumulate social prestige," Henderson said in a telephone interview.
"I think this is part of the process by which you eventually get
stratified societies," Henderson said.
The cacao brew consumed at the village of perhaps 200 to 300 people
may have evolved into the chocolate beverage known from later in
Mesoamerican history not by design but as "an accidental byproduct of
some brewing," Henderson said.
The chocolate enjoyed by later Mesoamerican civilizations like the
Maya and Aztecs was made from ground cacao seeds with added
seasonings, producing a spicy, frothy drink.
The Spanish brought cacao back to Europe in the 16th century. Many
innovations occurred in the ensuing centuries, including the advent of
solid chocolate treats.
The scientists used chemical analysis of residues extracted from
pottery vessels from the Honduran site to determine that cacao had
been used.
The style of the 10 small, elegant serving vessels suggests the cacao
brew was served at important ceremonies perhaps to celebrate weddings
and births, the scientists said.
Henderson said the first use of cacao may be earlier still by perhaps
a couple of centuries. He said the scientists intend to test earlier
pottery from the region for chemical proof.
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