Chocolate’s Arrival in North America Before Colonialism
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009Popular theory has it that chocolate did not make an appearance in North America until the Europeans had taken the cacoa bean from Central America to Europe and then back across the Atlantic to the new colonial settlements on the North American continent. But it seems that some 1,000 year old mugs from New Mexico can dispel that theory. Archeologists have found traces of theobromine, a signature chemical found in cacao and chocolate in a pair of mugs, which previously had confused researchers as to their purpose.
Of course, looking at the objects, they sure don’t scream out chocolate-drinking mugs. And not truly knowing what they are for, you could imagine they held any number of items including most probably food. But what kind of food or liquid was the question, as scientists can tell a lot about a forgotten people from their “tools”, which includes ceramics used to store and preserve food. However, these “mugs” were open-topped, so you’d assume they would be used not for storage or preservation, but for some other purpose, perhaps eating. But why something so fancy, thin and tall? Patricia Crown of the University of New Mexico saw some Mayan chocolate mugs and the light bulb lit up above her head. The Chaco Valley mugs had traces of chocolate’s chemical compound, theobromine.
Chocolate was a delicacy for Mesoamericans starting from 500 BC, and as that part of the world was not so far advanced in cultivation, the cacao bean and the process to make it into a tasty beverage were not something for everyday consumption — unless you were rich enough. Chocolate spread from the Mayans to the Aztecs, but may have come from the Olmecs to the Mayans in the first place, so it is perfectly plausible that having such a long history, the cacao bean would have made its way to North American before the Spanish showed up in the New World.
And now it seems that there is evidence for chocolate’s arrival to other parts of the Western Hemisphere via internal trade routes between Central America and North America. Of course, like today, when a trade route is long and treacherous, costs go up. And archeologists are thinking that chocolate was a, what else, luxury good, used by early North Americans in the Southwest.
What was chocolate doing so far north? In Pueblo Bonito, the cylindrical vases appear at only a few sites and there are not many of them. They also don’t show up in burial sites, which means that they probably belonged to the community, says Crown. Drinking chocolate was likely a part of elaborate ceremonies similar to those seen in Mayan culture, she says. –Science Magazine
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