Chocolate Celebrates 3,100 years

As a confirmed chocoholic, I took a great interest in hearing today that chocolate had its origins at least 3,100 years ago in Central America not as the sweet treat people now crave but as a celebratory beer-like beverage and status symbol. Researchers identified residue of a chemical compound that comes exclusively from the cacao plant — the source of chocolate — in pottery vessels dating from about 1100 BC in Puerto Escondido in the Honduras.

This pushed back by at least 500 years the earliest documented use of cacao, an important luxury commodity in Mesoamerica before European invaders arrived and now the basis of the modern chocolate industry. <read more>