Aquila peers into the past at . . .
THE FIRST CHOCOLATE
We love chocolate – in Britain we eat nearly 700,000 tonnes of it a year. That’s
the equivalent of 165 45g bars per person! But we weren’t the first to enjoy a
cup of hot chocolate. That’s been popular for nearly 4,000 years.
THE FIRST CHOCOLATE
Archaeologists have found chocolate
remains dating back to c.1900 BC. Dried
traces of it were discovered in tall
beakers in tombs of the Olmecs, who
lived in South Mexico. They called it
kakawa, which became ‘cacao’ and, later,
‘cocoa’.
FOOD OF THE GODS
Two thousand years later, another
ancient civilisation, the Maya, lived in
Mexico and northern Central America
from AD c.250–900.* Although the tree
that the cocoa beans grow on is short
and scruffy and is nothing special to
look at, its beans are so marvellous that
the Maya thought it was ‘food of the
gods’. They even painted pictures of the
purplish seeds, and carved images of
them on temple walls.
The Maya religion was bloodthirsty and
sometimes required human sacrifice.
Archaeologists have discovered that the
victims’ last meals included chocolate as
a final treat. Gruesomely, though, it was
mixed with the blood of other, recent
victims. Chocolate may even have taken
the place of blood in some rituals!
More happily, at weddings, brides and
grooms exchanged cocoa beans as gifts.
They drank hot chocolate as part of the
ceremony.
A DRINK FIT FOR KINGS
Maya rulers were buried in their grand
tombs with tall jars of chocolate beside
them. It was worth so much that only
the rulers, warriors, priests and nobles
usually enjoyed chocolate at their
special ceremonies.
They didn’t eat chocolate bars though.
Instead they roasted the cocoa beans
and ground them into a paste. Then they
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made hot, frothy drinks by pouring it
from a height between containers. The
Maya called this drink ‘xocolati’; sound
familiar?
Sometimes the drink was spiced up by
adding hot chilli peppers to it. On
ocassion, honey and vanilla pods were
also used.
CHOCOLATE MONEY
Cocoa beans were so valuable to the
Maya that they even used them for
money; this wasn’t like the chocolate
coins you enjoy at Christmas; this
chocolate really WAS money. Four
beans could buy you a pumpkin for
dinner, and ten beans could buy you a
rabbit.
Some people even made fake money
by creating pretend beans out of clay!
AZTEC BEAN COUNTING
When Aztec warriors conquered the
Maya in AD c.1200, they adopted the
Maya habit of using cacao beans as
currency. The beans didn’t grow in
their capital city of Tenochtitlan
(modern-day Mexico City), and so they
demanded that taxes were paid in
beans. It was said that their ruler,
Montezuma, had a billion beans in his
stores.
Times had changed though; now a
rabbit cost 30 cacao beans, and a
turkey might cost 200 beans.
A DIVINE GIFT
Aztec legends told that the god
Quetzalcoatl gave the cocoa plant to
humans. The gods were angry with
him and, as punishment for sharing
their godly food, they threw him out of
heaven. It was a gift from the gods and
they believed that drinking hot
chocolate gave mortals some of the
gods’ wisdom. In fact, the scientific
name that was given to the cocoa tree
centuries later is Theobroma cacao,
which means ‘cocoa, food of the gods’ in
Greek. The Aztecs’ name for it, though,
was chocolatl - which gives us our word
‘chocolate’.
FOR MEN ONLY
Chocolate contains caffeine, which is a
stimulant – it can block certain
receptors in the brain to make
dopamine work more efficiently, and
that makes us feel awake and bouncy.
The ancients didn’t know this, but they
did recognise that chocolate had an
effect on mood. The emperor drank it to
make him strong and wise. Women were
forbidden to drink it though; it was
considered far too powerful for them!
COLUMBUS MISSES OUT
When Columbus arrived in America, he
brought back many treasures and lots of
gold but he missed out on chocolate. In
1502, he seized a canoe that was full of
riches; when some beans spilled out and
the locals eagerly snatched them up, he
remained baffled. The Europeans had to
wait a little longer before they could
learn to love chocolate.
EUROPEANS’ FIRST TASTE
OF CHOCOLATE
In 1519, Hernán Cortés led the Spanish
into the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan. The
Aztec ruler, Montezuma, thought that
this strange foreigner was a god, and
offered him hot chocolate in a golden
goblet. The drink was too bitter for
Cortés’ taste; he said it was ‘more a drink
for pigs than a drink for humanity’
(RUDE, ed). The Spanish only liked it after
they mixed it with honey. Later they
added sugar from the newly-explored
(not to mention, exploited) Caribbean
islands.
*Today, Maya is a collective term for the indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica (from South Mexico to Honduras), who share a certain
degree of heritage, but includes many different ethnic groups who have their own cultural and historical traditions and identities.