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Cacao trees are native to the Amazon rainforest. They are the basis of chocolate and Mesoamerican foods including tejate, an indigenous Mexican drink. The cacao tree was first domesticated at least 5,300 years ago by the Mayo-Chinchipe culture in South America before it was introduced in Mesoamerica. [2]
The history of chocolate dates back more than 5,000 years, when the cacao tree was first domesticated in present-day southeast Ecuador. Soon after domestication, the tree was introduced to Mesoamerica, where cacao drinks gained significance as an elite beverage among different cultures including the Maya and the Aztecs. Cacao was extremely ...
The Mokaya are likely contemporaneous to the La Venta Olmecs. The Olmecs were the first in Mesoamerica to have used cacao, the plant from which chocolate is derived. While Theobroma cacao is indigenous to the Upper Amazon, it was somehow present here in a domesticated form by approximately 1900 BC. Evidence suggests they were the first to ...
Food historian Lois Ellen Frank calls potatoes, tomatoes, corn, beans, squash, chili, cacao, and vanilla the "magic eight" ingredients that were found and used only in the Americas before 1492 and were taken via the Columbian Exchange back to the Old World, dramatically transforming the cuisine there. [17] [18] [19] According to Frank, [20]
Theobroma cacao (cacao tree or cocoa tree) is a small (6–12 m (20–39 ft) tall) evergreen tree in the Malvaceae family. [1] [3] Its seeds - cocoa beans - are used to make chocolate liquor, cocoa solids, cocoa butter and chocolate. [4] Although the tree is native to the tropics of the Americas, the largest producer of cocoa beans in 2022 was ...
Cacao. Another important crop in Mesoamerican agriculture is squash. Bruce D. Smith discovered evidence of domesticated squash (Cucurbita pepo), in Guilá Naquitz cave in Oaxaca. [1] These finds date back to 8000 BC, the beginning of the Archaic period, and are related to today's pumpkin.
Cacao thrives when rainfall totals between 1,500 and 2,000 millimeters, or about 59 to 79 inches annually, with no dry spells longer than three months, according to the International Cocoa ...
From left to right: The fruits of T. grandiflorum, T. bicolor, T. speciosum, and T. cacao. Theobroma bicolor was historically cultivated by the Aztecs alongside T. cacao for production of chocolate, although when chocolate was introduced to the Spaniards, they considered the product of T. bicolor to be of a lower quality. [6]