12. Chocolate as Wine or Other Treat?
John Henderson
John S. Henderson, Anthropology, and research colleagues discovered that our infatuation with chocolate began at least 500 years earlier than previously believed. The group analyzed shards of pottery from one of Henderson’s excavations in the Ulúa Valley region of northern Honduras (Puerto Escondido), revealing that the first people to consume a product of the cacao tree used the pulp around the seeds instead of the seeds—the cacao beans—to create a fermented, wine-like drink. The chocolate taste we know today was discovered later. The researchers found traces of caffeine and theobromine, an alkaloid similar to caffeine but specific to cacao, in 11 shards dated to 1100 B.C.—chemical evidence for the world’s earliest cacao consumption. In the past, chemical detection in ancient pottery required an intact vessel—a great rarity—and a substantial amount of residue. To detect much smaller chemical traces on broken shards, the researchers used new extraction techniques along with liquid chromatography, gas chromatography, and mass spectrometry—techniques that could be used for sensitive chemical testing on many more remnants in the future. For centuries, the cacao drink was traded, shared, and used in ceremonies, creating social networks across the region and beyond. The shift from wine made from pulp to chocolate made from seeds means that all the pomp and luxury that surrounded chocolate in later years was an unintended consequence of early brewing experiments.