Criollo cacao (Theobroma cacao spp cacao) is the name of a small tropical tree with large ovate fruit, native to the northern Amazon of South America but found in ancient planted groves throughout central America. The large fruits have a sweet pulp that can be pulverized and drunk as refreshing liquid. Alternatively, the juice can be fermented into a mildly alcoholic drink called chicha.
But the most famous use of the cacao involves the pips inside the fruit, called beans or seeds. Cacao beans, when dried, roasted and crushed, produce the raw material for chocolate. The earliest use of cacao beans is in central America, between about 3500 and 4000 years ago. Highly prized throughout Mesoamerica at the time of the European invasion, cacao was commonly consumed as one of a variety of spiced hot and cold drinks. The drinks had medicinal, ceremonial, and religious importance to most of the peoples of prehispanic central America.
Cacao gets its punch from nearly 200 different chemicals, including a dash of caffeine, but the primary jolt comes from quantities of theobromine, a mild stimulant and vasodilator.
Archaeological Evidence of Cacao
Five hundred years ago, Zapotec, Aztec, and Maya civilizations all had their own versions of cacao drinks. Archaeologists have also documented cacao use a thousand years earlier, at archaeological sites in the Toltec, Maya, Olmec, and Soconusco regions.
Archaeological evidence used to identify cacao on archaeological sites include the beans themselves, images from codexes which show the preparation of the liquid, lists of tribute for various kings, carvings on stele, the presence of specialized bottle forms and shapes for the making of cacao drinks, and, most recently, chemical analysis of residues on the insides of bottles or broken pot sherds.
Another strand of evidence for cacao use is the language used for cacao drinks, which also reflects its use throughout Mesoamerica. The word cacao is a Maya term (kakaw), borrowed from the Mixe-Zoqueaen (also spelled Mije-Sokean), the language of the Olmec and Soconusco region. But the word 'chocolate' as used by the Spanish probably comes from a colonial period confusion of terms. The Aztec (Nahuatl) term for chocolate was cacahuatl; the Maya name for hot water is chocol ha; and the word chocolate is (so Michael Coe surmises) probably a combination of those two.
Ancient Chocolate Recipes
Throughout Mesoamerica at the time of the European conquest, chocolate was served as a liquid, hot or cold, sometimes mixed with maize or manioc, often sweetened with honey and spiced with chili peppers, vanilla and other spices. The liquid was served at weddings and other ceremonies; and in some societies such as the Aztecs it was reserved for the elites, rulers, warriors, and traders.
The cacao pod was harvested and broken open, the seeds inside the fruit were dried and fermented, then (possibly) toasted to a dark brown or black color to shed their husks, and then ground between a mano and metate (sometimes over a fire). The paste was either then prepared right away or dried and stored as a dried tablet. This paste or tablet was dissolved in water and mixed with ground maize, chile or other spices.
Across Mesoamerica during the 16th century, preparing chocolate for visitors was a display itself. Grinding the beans, adding flowers and spices, and pouring the liquid from jar to jar to create a froth were all part of the ritual involved with cacao consumption.
Sources
For more information on the history of chocolate, see the article called Domestication of Chocolate. See Kaufman and Justeson 2007 for an in-depth look at the linguistic evidence for the origin of the word cacao.
Henderson, John S., et al. 2007 Chemical and archaeological evidence for the earliest cacao beverages. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104(48):18937-18940.
Joyce, Rosemary A. and John S. Henderson 2007 From Feasting to Cuisine: Implications of Archaeological Research in an Early Honduran Village. American Anthropologist 109(4):642-653.
Kaufman, Terrence and John Justeson 2007 Writing the history of the word for cacao in ancient Mesoamerica. Ancient Mesoamerica 18:193-237.
LeCount, Lisa J. 2001 Like water for chocolate: Feasting and political ritual among the Late Classic Maya at Xunantunich, Belize. American Anthropologist 103(4):935-953.
Norton, Marcy 2006 Tasting empire: Chocolate and the European internalization of Mesoamerican aesthetics. American Historical Review 111(2):660-691.
Motamayor, J. C., A. M. Risterucci, M. Heath, and C. Lanaud 2003 Cacao domestication II: progenitor germplasm of the Trinitario cacao cultivar. Heredity 91:322-330.
Motamayor, J. C., et al. 2002 Cacao domestication I: the origin of the cacao cultivated by the Mayas. Heredity 89:380-386.
Prufer, Keith M. and W. J. Hurst 2007 Chocolate in the Underworld Space of Death: Cacao Seeds from an Early Classic Mortuary Cave. Ethnohistory 54(2):273-301.
