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Drinking hot chocolate is such an everyday occurrence for most of us that it is strange to think that hundreds of years BC people were also enjoying hot cocoa, perhaps not in the same form as we do, but never the less they were brewing a drink with cocoa beans.
Anthropologists have found shards of pottery at sites in Puerto Escondido in northern Honduras to have traces of theobromine – which is an alkaloid specific to cocoa, and caffeine on them. By making use of innovative extraction techniques they can find traces of the contents of ancient pottery. It is not necessary to find a whole vessel in order to see what it was used for, as tests can be conducted on the shards.
Traces of a substance also found, indicates that these ancients brewed a type of wine by fermenting the mucous, which surrounds the cocoa seeds in the pods.
An interesting fact is that vessels with narrow spouts were used for drinking, but the vessels found that had cocoa residue on them, where all short, wide jug-like vessels. This indicates that they brewed the cocoa beans in the vessels. This was a strong, bitter and frothy drink, which would account for the wide-mouthed vessel to accommodate the froth. These discoveries indicate that people were drinking cocoa hundreds of years before was originally thought.
The Mayas of Central America appear to have been the first people to use the cacao trees seeds to make a drink. There could have been people doing it before their time, which we still have to learn about. Archaeologists found this information from ancient Mayan paintings. The drink was used for medicinal purposes, as they felt it gave them strength and vitality. For this reason, it was only preserved for the nobility. Poor, common folk were not permitted to drink the fruit of the cacao tree.
The custom of making a drink of cocoa beans boiled in water, carried on for centuries. Generation after generation planted the cacao trees and made use of the seeds. Some groups flavored the drink with chilies and pepper, and later years vanilla, berries and honey were added to make a sweet drink as opposed to the previous bitter one. The sweetness of the honey probably brought out the flavor and aroma of the chocolate. This was then more a social drink than a medicinal one, as in former years.
In 1502 Christopher Columbus discovered the cacao beans on a ship, which he seized off the coast of Honduras. Years later in 1521 Cortez introduced the cacao beans to the Spanish Court. This drink immediately became a firm favorite, but sugar and spices were added to it and they drank it warm. For about 100 years they kept the cacao beans a secret from the rest of Europe.
When the secret eventually got out the news spread through Europe. Once again it became a drink for the wealthy, as these beans had to be imported from tropical regions at great cost. Chocolate only became affordable to the masses during the Industrial Revolution in the mid 1700’s.
