The Origins of Chocolate

For many the birth of chocolate cultivation is associated with the Mayan (250 - 900 AD) and Aztecs (AD 800 -1520) civilisations of Central America. Indeed the appropriation of Aztec pictographic symbols is now commonplace across the chocolate world and has even extended into Hollywood as witnessed by the iconic shop sign in the film Chocolat. This however is not entirely accurate with archaeological evidence suggesting domestication of the cacao tree extends further back to the Olmec civilisation (1150-300 BC) of Gulf Coastal Mexico. Residues in shards of ancient pots made a chocolate drink which was probably served cold with the addition of local spices. Regardless of how the drink is served, the Aztecs liked it cold the Mayans hot, the stimulating qualities were recognised by all three cultures. A stimulating pick me up it shares with it’s spiritual cousins coffee and tea thanks in no small part to the three constituents shared by all three namely the new mid-morning trinity of caffeine, theophylline and theobromine.
Although commonplace across modern culture these stimulating properties were for the Mayan and Aztec civilisations a sign of cacao’s Divine providence. For the Mayans, cacao was provided to the newly created humans by the gods on the appropriately named ‘Mountain of Sustenance’. In Aztec culture cacao was an ever present in depictions of the gods and a prerequisite for any journey into the afterlife. On the more prosaic side in Mayan culture cocoa was a drink for the elite and despite or possibly because of its spiritual connotations it became valued to such an extent that the cocoa pods and nibs were used as currency.
The first Europeans disliked the drink and particularly it’s froth so much it was described as loathsome and were incredulous of the value and cultural significance the Aztec culture attached to this apparently cold and unpleasant drink. New World Spanish women found that a combination of roasting the cocoa bean and adding sugar released the sublime flavours we now associate with modern interpretations of the cacao trees’ divinity, but more of that later…