Learn about the earliest cocoa drinks

Drinks made from cocoa trees (Theobroma) were widely used in the Aztecs and various social and religious rituals of their contemporaries, and cocoa became one of the most precious commodities in Central America in the 16th century. The unique way of making cocoa in Central America includes fermentation, drying, selective baking, crushing and mixing with water to form a bitter suspension, which has spawned the modern chocolate industry because of the love of the drink by intrusive Europeans.

Researchers from Cornell University and the University of California, Berkeley, using chemical analysis of residues from pottery excavated in the Puerto Escondido region of Porto Ascontido (present-day Honduras), show that the earliest cocoa beverages originated in 1000 BC, advancing the determined date of cocoa use by at least 500 years. They collect residues absorbed in pottery fragments by boiling and heating fragments in distilled water, methane / methanol, or chloroform / methanol. Then liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry were used to analyze the residual substances. Through the detection of samples extracted from artifacts, 11 samples showed cocoa positive or boundary positive (borderline positive). Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry found that antiquities contain theobromine (3-dimethylxanthine), a compound unique to Central American cocoa trees, so it is used as a marker for natural products of ancient utensils. Two other samples were found to have theobromine boundary positive by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry.