Listen to part of a lecture in an anthropology class.

Listen to part of a lecture in an anthropology class.

P: Chocolate is arguably the world's favorite confection, and producing chocolate isn't simple. It involves many steps, which vary depending on the end product. I won't get into too many details, but the process always begins with a cacao bean. Cacao beans grow on trees found only in tropical regions. First, you harvest, clean and roast the beans. Next, the beans are ground into a paste, which is then refined, mixed with milk and sugar, perhaps, and further processed into chocolate.

Given the sophistication of chocolate making, you might assume that chocolate was invented relatively recently, but it actually dates back at least 3000 years to Mesoamerica. Mesoamerica refers to a region that spanned, present day Central America and southern Mexico. It also refers to several ancient civilizations that occupied that region, including the Maya. We believe that it was the Maya who first developed chocolate from cacao beans, and their approach to processing cacao was similar to modern processing as far as appearance, taste and use, though, nowadays we generally prefer sweetened chocolate. In Mesoamerica, the Maya made a bitter chocolate beverage, a drink consumed primarily during rituals and ceremonies. It was special, not something that people drank every day.

We know that chocolate spread northward from Mesoamerica. Until recently, we thought that Maya chocolate reached what is now the United States about 1000 years ago, but a recent discovery suggests that chocolate actually arrived earlier, some 1200 years ago. This discovery was made at an archeological site in the state of Utah, a site that researchers have designated as site 13. What the researchers found at Site 13 was a group of distinctive red and orange bowls decorated with thick triangles and zigzagging lines. The colors and designs do not match other bowls typically found in the area, which are black and white. However, the researchers noticed that these red and orange bowls do resemble the bowls used by the Maya to prepare and consume chocolate. They tested the bowls, and sure enough, the bowls contain two chemical compounds that are found in cacao beans.

Another important food that spread northward from Mesoamerica is corn. Remember corn, or maize, as it's also known, was a staple food in Mesoamerica, and a whole culture was built around it. Corn reached site 13 long before chocolate did, and quickly caught on. And there's lots of evidence indicating the importance of corn to the people at Site 13, such as farm tools and pottery decorated with harvest motifs. But aside from the red and orange bowls, we haven't found any other evidence of chocolate consumption. And that's not too surprising, as the climate of site 13 was fine for growing corn, but not for growing cacao trees. So the chocolate eaten at Site 13 was either brought there, already processed from Mesoamerica, or was made on site from cacao beans that were brought from Mesoamerica. Either way, it's obvious that there was much more trade between these two regions than we previously thought.

It's interesting to note that around the time the chocolate arrived at Site 13, the use of chocolate in Mesoamerica was changing. Instead of using chocolate exclusively for ceremonial drinks, the Maya had started mixing it with corn. This mixture of corn and chocolate was ground into a paste, a paste that was consumed for nourishment. The tools and bowls that the Maya used to make this food were found in public spaces, not just in ritual spaces. There's even evidence that this paste was used by people traveling long distances in preparation for a journey. The paste would be rolled into a dry ball. This ball could be easily carried and transformed with hot water into a nutritious drink, which may be how Maya traders fed themselves on the long trip north.