Chocolate—Food of the Gods in Mesoamerica
Did you know… Money grows on trees?

[January 30, 2023 | Montrose Mirror | By Kathryn R. Burke]

Did you know? The phrase, “Money doesn’t grow on trees,” was coined by the Spaniards in the 1500s when they saw cocoa beans used as currency by the Aztec, who considered it more valuable than gold. To the Spanish (who were after their gold, “A tolerably good slave was worth around 100 beans, a rabbit cost 10 beans, and a prostitute could be procured for as few as 8 beans.”^{(1, 15)}

Chocolate as a food source with magical stimulant properties dates back more than 5,000 years in Mesoamerica, (a term used to describe Mexico and Central America before the 16th century Spanish conquest). “The first known use of cacao is believed to have been discovered in southern Ecuador near Palanda at Santa Ana La Florida in the region of Zamora Chinchipe, where 5,500-year-old ceramic pots and a piece of a mortar were found to contain traces of theobromine, a marker for cacao. Shamans among the Shuar Indians are said to have used this equipment to prepare hallucinogenic potions.”⁽¹⁵⁾

The earliest image of preparing chocolate appears on a Mayan Vase…which also depicts human sacrifice; chocolate was a part of the ritual. The drink, a combination of chocolate and the blood of previous victims, was given to calm or “bewitch” the victim before they lopped of his head.⁽³⁾

The most notorious chocolate lover in Mesoamerica was the Aztec emperor Montezuma II. He allegedly drank gallons of it from a gold goblet every day…for energy and as an aphrodisiac. Unfortunately, Montezuma welcomed Hernán Cortés and the conquistadors with chocolate…thinking Cortés was reincarnated deity instead of a conquering invader.⁽⁴⁾ Big mistake. The Spaniards came for his gold, got it—over 8 tons by some accounts—and took a boatload (literally) of cacao with them when they sailed back to their homeland, leaving Montezuma dead in their wake. Adding insult to injury, Cortés, who didn’t care for the royal drink, described it as “a bitter drink for pigs.”⁽⁴⁾

Despite that old saying that money does not grow on trees, it actually does when it comes from chocolate’s origin, the tropical cacao tree of Central and South America. It was probably was first discovered as a food source in the Orinoco River basin, which flows from Columbia through Venezuela to the Atlantic Ocean⁽¹¹⁾ where the Maya lived. The Aztecs prized cacao, but they couldn’t grow it where they lived in the dry highlands (of Mexico). So they traded for it, using it as currency. By one account, a hen or a hare was worth 100 beans.⁽³⁾

Giant bean-like pods, the “fruit” of the tree, up to a foot long and weighing as much as a pound, grow directly from its trunk (or largest branches). The pods are whacked off, split open with a large knife or machete, and the seeds (called beans), as many as 60 at a time, scooped out of the pod’s fleshy interior. Interesting fact: cacao fruit is pollinated by tiny flies, not bees or butterflies.⁽⁹⁾

As the seeds dry, they turn a rich cocoa brown. The dry seeds are pounded into a powder with stone and mortar, and the result made into a bitter, frothy drink, often mixed with chilis and vanilla…but never sugar. Each seed is about 50% fat (the source of cocoa butter).

The fermented pulp can also be made into an alcoholic beverage. A recent discovery of cacao residue on pottery excavated in Honduras, that could date back as far as 1400 B.C.E., suggests that the sweet pulp of the cacao fruit, which surrounds the beans, was fermented into an alcoholic beverage, much as it is today.⁽⁴⁾ (Have you ever tried a chocolate martini? They’re lethal!)