Origins of Chocolate

Summary

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The Ancients – Origins of Chocolate

Podcast: The Ancients (History Hit)
Host: Tristan Hughes
Guest: Dr. Cameron McNeill, Associate Professor, City University of New York
Date: December 4, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the ancient origins of chocolate, focusing on cacao’s pivotal role in the cultures of Mesoamerica—including the Olmec, Maya, and Aztec (Mexica). Host Tristan Hughes and archaeobotanist Dr. Cameron McNeill delve into chocolate’s journey from its first domestication to its many ceremonial, culinary, and economic uses in the ancient world. The conversation reveals chocolate as much more than a sweet treat: it was a luxury drink, a ritual element, a culinary condiment, and even a currency and symbol of status.

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Key Points and Insights

1. What “Chocolate” Meant in Ancient Mesoamerica

• Cacao vs. Chocolate:
  • The ancient counterpart of our chocolate was a drink made from the seeds and fruit of the cacao pod.
  • The term “chocolatl” appears in print around 1580, likely from the Nahua but not commonly used by the Maya, who called it “cacao” or “caca” instead.
    [05:12 – 05:47]
  • “The word chocolatl...that’s not a word I use when I’m working in Mesoamerica ... we tend to think of it as the food that’s being consumed as cacao.” – Dr. McNeill (05:12)
• Varieties:
  • Different regions domesticated different strains of cacao, with Spanish chroniclers noting up to four kinds with distinct flavors.
  • There was likely significant regional diversity and trade driven by these preferences.
    [07:47 – 08:54]

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2. Origins and Domestication of Cacao

• South American Roots:
  • The cacao tree (Theobroma cacao) was first domesticated in the Amazon basin of South America.
  • The oldest evidence: 5,300-year-old cacao DNA found on grinding stones at Santa Ana La Florida, Ecuador.
    [09:52 – 10:23]
  • Mesoamerica adopted and further domesticated cacao after it was introduced via likely trade routes along the Pacific coast.
    [12:09 – 12:49]
  • “The oldest cacao that’s been found being used by people...is from a site in Ecuador...about 5,300 years ago.” – Dr. McNeill (09:52)
• Spread to Mesoamerica:
  • Early Mesoamerican adopters: the Olmec, Makaya, Lenka, and later Maya.
  • The Olmec word “kakawa” is the source for the term “cacao.”
    [13:01 – 13:25]

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3. How Ancient Peoples Used Cacao

a. As a Drink

• Preparation:
  • The traditional drink blended maize with cacao, sometimes with honey, fruits, or various flowers.
  • Preparation involved extensive grinding (often with ancestral metates), mixing, and whipping to achieve a hearty, foamy beverage.
  • Rarely sweetened – mostly “hearty,” “gruel-like,” “thick,” and “unsweetened.” [21:24 – 22:54]; [25:52 – 26:53]
  • “It doesn’t taste anything like hot chocolate today ... it’s kind of like a gruel, like an oatmeal sort of flavor ... extremely hearty.” – Dr. McNeill (25:52)
• Contemporary Tradition:
  • Many aspects of this preparation persist today in rural Mesoamerican communities. [23:24 – 24:08]

b. As a Food

• Culinary Uses:
  • Cacao featured as both sauce and ingredient, notably with tamales, meats (deer, turkey), and even fish.
  • Archaeological evidence: cacao residue found on tamale platters, meat dishes, and fish bowls from royal tombs at Copan.
    [15:29 – 16:53]
  • “My favorite discovery was a very small bowl full of riverine fish and cacao inside it ... a sweet sauce made of the pulp on fish sounds better to me.” – Dr. McNeill (16:17)

c. In Ritual and Ceremony

• Spiritual Role:
  • Frequently found in royal burials and elite tombs—sometimes perfectly preserved in painted vessels (notably the “Dazzler”).
  • Consumed during feasts and life events: birth, naming, marriage, death.
  • Associated with the underworld, rebirth, offerings to gods, and feasts of the elite. [27:41 – 30:19]
  • “There’s a...famous vessel that came out of a queen’s tomb ... and when they lifted the lid, there was just this thin, dark layer of perfectly preserved residue in it ... yes, it had cacao.” – Dr. McNeill (28:06)

d. As Currency and Tribute

• Economic Value:
  • Cacao seeds served as currency; a turkey could be worth 100 seeds.
  • Counterfeit cacao seeds (clay-filled husks) have been archaeologically documented.
  • Spanish chroniclers and early 20th-century accounts confirm its economic role.
    [35:16 – 36:32]
  • “A turkey costs a hundred cacao seeds...they could use it just like a form of money.” – Dr. McNeill (36:22)

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4. Cacao as a Symbol of Power, Fertility, and Rebirth

• Iconography:
  • Cacao imagery abounds in Mesoamerican temple art, sculpture, and ritual censers.
  • Often depicted as emerging from the body of the Maize God—a symbol of creation, fertility, and rebirth.
  • Cacao trees and pods were used in artistic representations of ancestors and the afterlife, believed to aid in the spiritual rebirth of elite individuals. [32:00 – 33:48]; [39:13 – 40:21]
  • “Cacao is often used as a tree that brings the dead back to life...they’re reborn as cacao trees.” – Dr. McNeill (39:13)

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5. Trade, Accessibility & Social Hierarchy

• Limited Growth, Elite Consumption:

  • Cacao trees are finicky; only thrive in specific environments.
  • In areas where cacao wouldn’t grow, it was a privilege of the elite, often only accessible to rulers and high-status individuals.
  • Cacao’s value derived from both its restrictiveness and its ritual necessity. [34:00 – 35:07]

• Trade Networks:

  • Demanded as tribute, especially by the Aztecs (Mexica), who often imported it from Maya areas and traded it over long distances.
  • The Codex Mendoza documents non-cacao-growing regions forced to supply cacao as tribute through trade. [42:24 – 43:12]

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6. Rituals and Color: Blood, Sacrifice, and Symbolism

• Achiote Coloring:
  • Cacao drinks were often dyed red with achiote, making them resemble blood.
  • Spanish observers were unnerved by this, unaware of the deep cultural connections between blood, sacrifice, and cacao drinks in Mesoamerican society. [46:51 – 48:02]
  • “When you put it into cacao, it makes the cacao look like blood. And how freaked out they [the Spanish] are by seeing people drink this...and I’m sure that was the point ... blood is incredibly important to Mesoamericans.” – Dr. McNeill (46:51)

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7. Living Traditions & Enduring Recipes

• Continuity:
  • Some communities in the Pacific coast of Guatemala and Oaxaca still use cacao in daily and ritual contexts (e.g., offerings, festive arches, combining cacao with balam and coconut).
  • Ritual uses face challenges from modern pressures and cultural change. [44:13 – 45:45]
• Favorite Recipe:
  • Dr. McNeill’s favorite: “Tejate” from Oaxaca, a blend of Theobroma cacao, Theobroma bicolor (balam), and coconut—thinner, unsweetened, and crowned with a thick, foamy head. [45:52 – 46:33]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The beverage is always going to have maize mixed with cacao ... not what we think of as chocolate.”
  – Dr. McNeill (20:09)
• “They tout that they have indigenous Maya chocolate ... They absolutely don’t ... I’ve never been to a community anywhere and had it sweet ... Ritual beverages of cacao are never sweet, like absolutely not.”
  – Dr. McNeill (25:52)
• “The Spanish and Italians claim that they invented cacao sauce ... and honestly, that’s ridiculous. It’s really offensive to people in Mexico...”
  – Dr. McNeill (17:44)
• “Cacao is often used as a tree that brings the dead back to life—that they’re reborn as cacao trees...”
  – Dr. McNeill (39:13)
• “When you put [achiote] into cacao, it makes the cacao look like blood. And how freaked out they [the Spanish] are by seeing people drink this... I’m sure that was the point.”
  – Dr. McNeill (46:51)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introduction to ancient chocolate: [02:14 – 04:45]
• Definitions (“chocolate” vs “cacao”): [05:02 – 05:47]
• Cacao varieties and domestication: [07:47 – 08:54]; [09:48 – 10:23]
• Earliest uses in South America: [09:52 – 10:23]
• Spread to and adoption by Olmec/Maya: [13:01 – 14:07]
• Culinary & ritual uses (Maya evidence): [15:29 – 17:44]
• Drink preparation & taste: [21:24 – 22:54]; [25:47 – 26:53]
• Ritual importance/artistic representation: [28:06 – 33:48]; [39:13 – 40:21]
• Currency/tribute and counterfeits: [35:16 – 36:32]
• Trade (Aztecs, Maya, Codex Mendoza): [42:24 – 43:12]
• Modern traditions & Tejate: [44:13 – 46:33]
• Achiote & “chocolate as blood”: [46:51 – 48:02]

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Final Thoughts

This episode provides a sweeping and vivid picture of chocolate’s journey from a South American forest fruit to a Mesoamerican marker of status, spirituality, and sustenance. Dr. McNeill’s insights bring to life the diversity, significance, and enduring traditions of cacao, highlighting how fundamental—and how different—the ancient reality of “chocolate” was from our modern, sweet conception.

Recommended reading:
Dr. Cameron McNeill’s edited volume, Chocolate in Mesoamerica (mentioned at [48:27]).

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Transcript

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

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[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

Hello. I hope you're keeping well. I'm all good here and always wanted to hear from you the Ancients family. I've had a few messages sent in this week from listeners of suggestions for future episodes and we've added all of them down. And of course, if you've got any stories to tell about the Ancients and listening to the podcast over the years, well, we'd love to hear from you. Really keen to develop this idea of an ancient community too. Now with that all being said, let's get on to today's episode. We figured that it had been long enough since we last recorded an episode on the Weird and Wonderful origins of of particular foods and drink. We've done episodes on the origins of wine, the origins of olive oil, and the origins of beer in the past. And we decided that it was about time to do the next one. This time, it's the turn of chocolate. And we're off to Mesoamerica to explore names like the Olmec, the Maya, and even the Aztec. It was really interesting to hear just how highly valued chocolate are, or cacao was for these ancient societies. Now, our guest today is Dr. Cameron McNeill. She's an associate professor at the City University of New York. Cameron dialed in from the US for this chat, and I really do hope you enjoy. Let's go. Chocolate. For so many of us today, it's the sweet treat we can't live without. And its origin story takes us back thousands of years to those fascinating yet enigmatic ancient cultures of Mesoamerica. In Mesoamerica, the chocolate that they made was in the form of a drink. They made it from the seeds and fruit of a cacao pod, which grew on the cacao tree, its scientific name being Theobroma Cacao. Chocolate became a valuable commodity for peoples across Mesoamerica. It was traded far and wide. It was used in rituals. Cacao trees were depicted in art. Cacao beans were used as currency. The origins of chocolate is a fascinating story linked to so many different aspects of Mesoamerican culture. This is its story with our guest, Professor Cameron McNeil. Cameron, it is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Thank you.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

And to talk about the origins of chocolate. Kevin, I had no idea just how important chocolate was to these Mesoamerican societies thousands of years ago. It's a really interesting story and an archaeological story, too.

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Yes, certainly. It was one of the two most important foods.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

And before we delve into the ancient history of chocolate in Mesoamerica, there's no such thing as a silly question, but what do we mean by chocolate in ancient Mesoamerica?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

The word chocolatl, that's not a word I use when I'm working in Mesoamerica because we tend to think of it as the food that's being consumed as cacao, or caca as they called it. The word chocolatl appears in Mexico around 1580 in print, so there's some debate as to whether that's a pre conquest word or not. I tend to think it is a pre conquest word, but it's a word not used in all areas of Mesoamerica. So So it's a word that we associate with the Nahua of central Mexico, not a word that we associate with the Maya, who call this cacao or.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

Caca or cacaoa and so what is cacao? Where do they acquire it from?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Well, it's the seeds of the cacao tree. The process is that if you look at traditional communities, they will get a mazurka of cacao, the cacao pod. They open it up and they take out the fruit and the seeds, and they put that in some sort of container and they beat it with some water. And that actually makes a fruity juice. So some people consume that juice, other people like to put that juice away for three days, and it ferments and makes a slightly effervescent alcoholic beverage, which I've been told is also an important ritual offering. And then they take the seeds out of that and they let them ferment in the pulp that's still clinging to them. And the pulp is this really tasty, sweet fruit around the outside of the seed. It reminds me a little bit if you've ever had a mangosteen, which is a. Also not a common fruit, but like a delicious fruit. And then they ferment them, and then they clean them off once they're fermented and dry them. And then some people actually use untoasted cacao in their beverages. And some people use toast the seeds for their beverages. And some families make beverages that are half of toasted seeds and half not of toasted seeds. So there's many different ways, and they grind it to produce these beverages.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

And so can we call these beverages chocolate? Is that okay?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

You can call these beverages chocolate? I generally use the term cacao, but I understand people understand chocolate better.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

No, but I completely understand, because it's so different to our idea of chocolate today, isn't it, in the modern world? But actually, this is the original, you know, recipes harkening back thousands of years ago to the earliest, you know, creations of chocolate. It's getting it out of our heads what we think of chocolate today in the Western world to envisage where actually chocolate was in Mesoamerica and why sometimes it's easy just to say cacao instead.

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Exactly. Yes.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

So were there different types of cacao tree which produce different types of chocolate in different places across Mesoamerica, then I.

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Think a lot of places you would find people growing many different varieties of cacao, because as people adopted cacao as a beverage, they selected for specific traits. There are Spanish chroniclers that tell us that there are different kinds of cacao with different flavors, maybe four different types. I would imagine that in the Maya area, there was a tremendous amount of diversity in these extremely refined cacao trees. They were probably area specific. So different. My apologies. During the Classic period, for example, if we're going to go further back to, you know, 200 to 850 CE, we're going to see that different communities had different cacao trees that they had further domesticated over hundreds of years. And it may be that one group envied the other group's cacao or that they traded their special cacao, but we don't have a lot of that anymore.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

And so how do you learn more about the use of cacao in these Mesoamerican societies, you know, many centuries before the arrival of the Spanish? Is this where archeology really comes to the fore?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

It does. And there were two very important discoveries, I think, in the late 80s. One was David Storr, determined what the glyph was for cacao. And the other was a chemist named W. Jeffrey Hurst at Hershey Laboratories. He developed a method for identifying the presence of cacao in vessels. And that's opened up so much information.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

Well, let's go right to the beginning, Karen, if we may. I mean, do we have any idea which Mesoamerican people or culture, if we can use that word, were the first people to discover cacao, to discover chocolate? Who could we potentially say invented it?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Well, actually, we need to go to South America.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

Ah, okay, great.

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Because the cacao tree comes from South America. It's found in the Amazon basin, and it seems that people down there were the first to domesticate this tree. And along the way, it's been further domesticated in different directions once it was introduced to Mesoamerica. But the oldest cacao that's been found being used by people in grinding stones and in vessels is from a site in Ecuador called Santa Ana la Florida. And that dates to about 5,300 years ago.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

Wow. Okay. And what's that evidence of cacao, of chocolate at that time, 5,000 years ago. So has it been ground down from the seeds?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

They found the DNA ground into rinding stones. And that's really interesting because a lot of scholars had suggested that, of course, South Americans would be consuming cacao, but probably just the pulp. And even today in South America, you can get vinegar made of the pulp and you can get ice cream made of the pulp. But they thought that they wouldn't bother with the seeds because they have other plants that provide a Bigger kick than the limited caffeine that's in cacao. Mesoamerica doesn't have other stimulants, whereas South America has a lot of stimulants or more stimulants. So for Mesoamericans, the stimulant is going to be extremely attractive.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

It's the caffeine.

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

I don't drink a lot of caffeine because I'm allergic to it. So when I do have caffeine, I really feel it. And chocolate can do. I can feel it in chocolate in a way that if you're drinking coffee every day, you're not going to notice it. Right.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

So actually, so that we could potentially imagine then the first people who realized the seeds of the cacao tree, you know, had these caffeine properties, the caffeine high you get from eating it. Do you think that was one of the main reasons why it then spreads? It gets very popular. It's not this idea that we have of chocolate bars today, you know, the sweet taste or anything like that. It was the caffeine nature of these grounded down seeds that made it so popular from an early time that made it start to spread north from the Amazon basin.

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Definitely, definitely. Also, it was an easily transportable form of caffeine.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

So it begins in South America, in the Amazon basin. And when do we see the spread almost of cacao further north into Mesoamerica? Do we know much about that journey?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

We don't know exactly how it got there. Some scholars have suggested that it was introduced coming up along the Pacific coast and maybe introduced also with ceramic technology. So, for example, at the site of Paso de la Amado, which is Macayo people, that site, which is in southern Mexico, has all of a sudden these beautiful ceramics. And one of them has been found to have cacao. So there's not a learning curve for creating ceramics. Suddenly they just are making these beautiful ceramics. And those ceramics look similar to ceramics coming from Panama. So perhaps they're trading up the coast and they introduce both the ceramic technology and cacao trees.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

So what are some of the earliest Mesoamerican cultures that very much embrace cacao trees once they go north from the Amazon basin? Because I've got in my notes here the Olmec.

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

I think everybody embraces cacao trees, but the Olmec are one of the early groups. So the Makaya, the Olmec and the Lenka all have cacao at an early date. I assume the Maya do as well. The word though, for cacao is believed to come from the Olmec language, Kakawa is Mihezhokian, and that's what the all my grab later spoken.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

And so how far back in time are we talking now? So if the 5,000 years ago in the Amazon basin is when you have that earliest evidence, so what time frame are we talking with these Mesoamerican cultures that also all seem to get fascinated and really interested in cacao and using cacao?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Well, the Olmec, there's been analysis done at the city of San Lorenzo, and the oldest possible date on the materials they analyzed was 3,800 years ago. So 3,800 to 3,000 years ago. That crosses over, though, with the site of Casa de la Mada, the one I told you about, where cacao was found in one of the vessels there.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

And so what do we know about how these early Mesoamerican societies were using cacao, were using chocolate.

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

We know they were drinking it. But at the Olmec site, there are vessels that we don't associate with drinking, so they were likely using it as food as well. And I'm an archaeologist, and for my dissertation research, I worked on a project at the UNESCO World Heritage site of Copan in Honduras. I worked on excavations that were directed by Robert Scherer, and he oversaw the excavation of tunnels into the Copan Acropolis. And there he discovered three royal tombs. I took samples out of all of the vessels, and I also took samples of pollen from the tombs to look at what kind of flowers were being used in ritual. I sent the residue samples to W. Jeffrey Hurst at Hershey Laboratories, and he found cacao in 11 of our vessels. And to this day, it's the only place where cacao has been found with animal bone. So we know that they are using it as some sort of sauce or component in foods.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

We've gone ahead to the Maya now and the side to Copan, which I know is important because that's your main area of research. So, as you mentioned, so evidence of it, them drinking it, which I'd love to learn a bit more about in a moment, but also consuming cacao, consuming chocolate as a food as well. So, yeah, can you please tell us about this evidence?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

So we have a tamale platter which had cacao in its residue. The tamales didn't survive. Tamales were the form in which a ruler would be consuming maize. In fact, what we think of today, tortillas as being common. They came along in a lot of areas much later. But we often see tamales depicted on elite Maya vessels there at the foot of the ruler. And if you look at these Mayan vessels, you see sauce often on the top of the tamales. So we don't know whether the cacao was in the sauce that's on the tamale, or it could also be a sauce mixed with whatever meat is in the tamale. So there is ethnographic evidence of deer meat being made, tamales with deer meat and cacao inside them. Many people make tamales with turkey and cacao inside them, so it seems like they probably had something like that as well. My favorite discovery was a very small bowl full of riverine fish and cacao inside it. What I don't know is whether that had a sauce of the pulp or of the seeds, because the chemical signature is the same. And honestly, I think the pulp might be. Appeals to me more. A sweet sauce made of the pulp on fish sounds better to me than ground seeds.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

If it is the pulp, should we be imagining that this fish was doused in. In chocolate sauce?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Almost, yeah. Yes, certainly. And also a sauce that has a little caffeine kick to it, and that.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

I'm guessing, was the main incentive behind it. Was it that caffeine kick?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

There's documents that say that it wakes you up. So certainly you eat something and it makes you feel more alive and more able to face the day. I think that's the appeal of caffeine. That's why so many people consume coffee every day.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

So from that work you've done there at the site of Copan, do you think it's likely, then, that chakra was consumed almost as a source of, or as a condiment to go with certain foods in Maya cities all across Mesoamerica and potentially also in older places like mentioned the Olmec as well. And do you think this could have been a way that they consumed chocolate with food?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Definitely. I don't know if you know about this debate. The Spanish and the Italians claim that they invented cacao sauce and that cacao was only a beverage before they arrived to Mesoamerica. And there's this story about Spanish nuns, you know, by accident created sauces with cacao. And honestly, that's ridiculous. And it's really offensive to people in Mexico where this is particularly talked about, because clearly we have sauces at Copan, and those date to around 500 CE or a little before that. And of course, the Olmec, there's Olmec vessels that are for food, and they also have the signature. We also have an extremely interesting offering at CRO Pond that Dr. Scherer discovered. It's a stone lined box and it had a thick stone put over it, so it was completely sealed. And the materials in it were well preserved. And one of the vessels in there has two turkeys inside it, a male turkey and a female turkey. And the male's head was cut off and put to the side of the vessel, and that also had cacao in it. But that offering is extremely interesting because descendants of the Kopan Maya are the Chorti Maya. And today the Chorti continue to make an offering which is quite similar. They sacrifice a female turkey and they drop it into a sacred spring, and then they slit the head of a male and they drip the blood into the spring, but they don't put the male in death spring. It's a bit similar to that offering, and I really like that because I haven't read about any other Maya culture that makes an offering like that. And it's pretty incredible to think about this 500 CE offering with cacao being so similar to the practices that the Tortimaya are still doing today.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

So that seems like a way that cacao was being consumed as a food. But of course, there is that other key part in regards to consuming cacao, it being consumed as a drink in these Mesoamerican societies. Cameron, do we know much about how they would have consumed cacao as a drink, consumed chocolate as a drink back then?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

We know a lot because the Maya wrote inscriptions on their vessels during the Classic period.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

Fantastic.

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Tell us about what's in the vessel, what kind of cacao beverages in the vessel, and not all the same kind. Also, we know that in today that in different areas, different additives are put into cacao. Maize is always mixed with cacao, so there's not just a chocolate beverage. The beverage is always going to have maize mixed with cacao. But then there's all kinds of different adages. There's inscriptions that talk about honeyed cacao. So they're putting honey into it, fruity cacao. So they're putting some kind of fruit into it. Unless that means that they're using. They're making a cacao beverage of the pulp. Actually, they don't say vanilla on any of these vessels, but the Spanish tell us that vanilla was being added to cacao. And then there's a range of flowers that are added to cacao beverages as well. And that might be regional, depending which flowers are added. But some of those flowers are peppery and some of those flowers are perfumey. So it's not what we think of as chocolate.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

And so can we imagine with all of these ingredients, can we imagine them almost putting them in a big mixing bowl or something like that? So the cacao pulp, the regional flowers, the maize and so on, and then mixing it all together, Was that how they created the drink? Or what else do we know about the whole process?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Well, I've traveled all around Mesoamerica and gone to a lot of traditional communities and filmed the process of making cacao. And it always starts out with the metate grinding stone. People often have metates that have been in their family for many, many generations. Other people often get metates out of archeological sites and use those, though these have been used for over a thousand years by some people, or over 2,000 years. And it's a really long process. So you have to grind the maize, and then you grind the cacao, and you grind them together for a long period of time. You get it very, very fine. And only then do you put it into the vessel and mix it with water. And they also are going to toast and grind the flourish, usually. So everything is being ground first, and then it's put into the vessel. And then the vessel is either beaten or in some areas, people just use their hands and they whip it for a long, long period of time. And eventually the cacao butter, what we think of as cocoa butter. Right. Cacao butter separates from the watery substance, and people get really excited, and they say, the flour is coming, the flour is coming. They call the cocoa butter the flour. And when the beverage is done, they tend to pour that into vakal, a traditional gourd drinking cup, and then they put some of the fat on top.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

And then what happens next? Do they heat it up or then do they just consume it like that?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Well, they do sometimes heat it when they're making it. With the families I've looked at, they tend to consume it all day long. It's one of their that with tortillas, is their main food, and so it's room temperature.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

And do we get a sense that the way they're doing it today is a continuation of how it was done, let's say, back in classic Maya times, You can get a sense from these communities how these Mesoamerican cultures thousands of years ago would have consumed chocolate, would have consumed cacao as a drink?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Definitely. I certainly believe that they don't have as many additives because globalization has taken over land, for example, it's even hard to get cacao in many areas because the lands that were good for Cacao are good for coffee and so the cacao trees are long gone and now there's coffee plantation or there's sugar cane in some of the areas where a cacao once grew. So this tradition has been lost from some areas. But where people can still grow cacao, then there's many communities where cacao is a daily role.

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[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

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[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

I've got to ask, how does it taste? Does it taste anything like hot chocolate today?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

It doesn't taste anything like hot chocolate today. Not at all. It's kind of like a gruel, like an oatmeal sort of flavor. If you, if you blended your oatmeal so it's thick often and it tastes extremely hearty. But I've been to cafes in New York City, for example, and they tout that they have Jewish somite and chocolate and they don't. They absolutely don't. They don't usually sweeten it. I've never been to a community anywhere and had it sweet, although there are my inscriptions that say honeyed Cacao. But I don't think that's the common way to consume cacao. And someone told me that ritual beverages of cacao are never sweet, like absolutely not.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

So the original use of Chocolate in these Mesoamerican cultures, it's not a sweet delicacy in any sense of the idea. When it's consumed as a drink, this is very much hardy to wake you up, to make you feel more alive.

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Exactly. And also it's consumed the entire day. That's what you have to eat. You have tortillas, and you have this atoll like a gruel of maize and cacao.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

And so how accessible do you think chocolate was? Cacao was for Mesoamerican cultures like the Maya, the Olmec, and so on, but let's focus on those for the moment. Do we have any idea how accessible they were? Would it be everyday families who would have access to this, you know, drinks several times a day?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

I believe that in areas where cacao grows well, people would be consuming it maybe daily. It was expensive. The rulers expected tribute of cacao. The rulers are certainly consuming it every day. But where cacao grows well, they also have the pulp, and they could be consuming the pulp to get the caffeine from it. And they could save the seeds to use for special occasions and to trade for things they need and to give to the ruler as tribute.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

What I found also very interesting that you mentioned there, Cameron, was the use of chocolates of cacao, not just for consuming privately, to stimulate you, to wake you up, but also for ceremonial purposes as well, for, like, you know, tribute to the kings and so on. So do we know much about. About this ceremonial importance of chocolate in Mesoamerican societies like the Maya?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Well, we do because of how often it's offered in royal tombs. For example, I worked on, again, Ecopan, on Robert Scher's project. And there's a. A very famous vessel that came out of a queen's tomb. It's one of the most touted vessels in Mesoamerica. And I know that at our university, art historians have to learn the 400 most important pieces of art in the world. And this vessel is on that list. 400 most important pieces of art. It's a very beautiful vessel that has an image of a burning temple with a face picking out of the burning temple with goggle eyes. This vessel is beautifully painted, and the project called it the Dazzler. And the Dazzler had a lid on it, which is wonderful. And it had layers of textiles, very fine textiles, wrapped all around it. And when they lifted the lid, there was just this very thin, dark layer of perfectly preserved residue in it. And we sent that to Jeffrey Hurst. And yes, it had cacao. I Don't know what else it had in it. The picture on it, which is believed to be of the first Maya ruler of the Classic period dynasty, whose name is Konich Ash Kokma, taking out of this what's a burning temple. So his funerary temple, which is being burned in his honor. So this vessel is sort of an embodiment of this ruler. And of course, it has cacao in it. It also has unbelievable amounts of burned charcoal in it and a little bit of pollen in it. I found some cattail pollen in it. And there are stories about how you collect the water for ritual. It says young virgin children must go out and collect. This is, of course, in the 1920s, but are sent out to collect sacred water to make, you know, ritual beverages. I like to think about that having been a tradition from long ago, and these children going and collecting this water from a spring surrounded by cattails and then making this beverage. And you still have a cattail pollen grain in there. And then you have the charcoal from the burning temple in there, because they only close it after they burn the temple. And then you get this perfectly preserved residue of chocolate.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

So you can imagine certain kind of ritualistic traditions being associated with chocolate, you know, back in Maya times, for particular ceremonies, as you say, almost in this case, for the preservation of it as well.

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Yes, I think so. There's really only one good account from when the Spanish first arrived of how the Maya are using cacao and they're using it in feasts. It's men, men at this feast, and it says it's served by beautiful young women. And they are given a vessel, and it has a little holder. They weave these little baskets, circular stands, so that the vessel, which is round, doesn't turn over. And so these beautiful young women serve the cacao, and then they turn their backs while it's consumed. And each person gets to take home their vessel with them. So they have this evidence that they attended this important ritual feast held by the Lord. And when we go back to a Classic period, there are these vessels with inscriptions that say the name of the Lord and often what's inside them. And we find them buried in elite graves, not necessarily the graves of the Lord's, but I think it's basically your trophy. I got to attend this special feast. I got this vessel, and then the vessel is buried with that.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

So do we get other indicators of chocolate, of cacao, either as a drink or as a food being used as a marker of status of importance in my society from any sites?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Not necessarily the consumption. But the importance of cacao we can see in sculptures on some of their temples in the form of sensors. So cacao iconography is abundant in Mesoamerica.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

And what do we see?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Cacao is always second to mate. And I think I have to start with work by Simon Martin. He wrote this excellent piece on cacao, where he suggests that cacao is the first food born of the maize God's body in the underworld. The maize God cyclically dies, just like maize dies and goes into the underworld and then is reborn. And all foods, fruits, vegetables, are born from the body of the maize God, but the first thing born from his body is cacao. And there's this beautiful, beautiful vessel which is at Dunbar Oaks in their museum of the maze gods swimming in the underworld. And coming off of his body are cacao pots. And we have an almost identical sensor at Copan, a lid with the maize God with a glyph that says tree, because they perceive of maize also as a tree and with these cacao pods coming off of its body. That's not my favorite sensor from Copan, though. My favorite sensor from Copan is a sensor that's in the form of a young woman's body, and her breasts are cacao pods, and her stomach is a giant cacao pod, and her skirt is covered in cacao, except she never had a head. And this is because at some myocytes, women are depicted in powerful positions. At Copan generally not. And so this is taking on the concept of fertility, of female fertility, and using cacao and the feminine form to depict that. But it's not actually a woman. It's just taking on that concept.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

Do you think they value cacao really highly because of, you know, all of the resources that they could get for it? You know, the caffeine, the stimulation, the food, the drink, the offerings and so on.

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

I don't know. One thing that made cacao more valuable was that there were many areas it wouldn't grow in. So it's a finicky tree, and it likes moist, dark valley bottoms. And there are many parts of Mesoamerica where you cannot grow it. So highland Mexico, you cannot grow it. They have to import it. And for those areas, that makes it very valuable. That's why not everyone can consume it. Just men consume it. And only elite men, only people hanging out with the emperor are going to be consuming this. It's not for everybody. In areas where it doesn't grow well. In areas where it grows well, we look at Maya communities, looking at ethnographies and even work going back to some of the early Spanish friars like Thomas Gage. And they're saying that it's used for all important life markers. The birth of a child, the naming dates of the child, marriage, and of course, death. It has a role in every single one of those ceremonies. But in highland Mexico, that's not happening because it's too hard to get, too rare.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

So the more highly sought after by the elites where it doesn't grow as much. Was cacao also used as a currency amongst some of these cultures?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Yes, it was. We don't know how far that goes back. The Spanish write about what things cost and they. Some things are lewd things that you can buy with cacao seeds. Other things are. For example, a turkey costs a hundred cacao seeds. But I'm really interested by some of the accounts in the 1800s and early 1900s where people are still using cacao as a currency. And one of my favorite descriptions of this comes from the work of Charles Wisdom, who was working with the Torti in Guatemala. And people were no longer doing it by the 1920s, but they had been doing it like 20 years earlier. And so they explained to him how it worked. And they said they would bring anything they had to sell into town and they would go to a cacao seed broker and they would, with him or her, they would trade whatever they had for cacao seeds. And then they could just go into the market and buy, you know, a turkey, 100 cacao seeds. I don't know if it was the same price there, but they could use it just like a farm of money.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

And so in this case, it's the seeds, it's not the pulp, it's not the drink as it's being created. It's very much just the seeds that are used as a currency, just the seeds.

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

I mean, there's documents that say that people would make counterfeit seeds. So they would take the husk that's on the outside of the seed and stuck it full of clay. And there was a discovery in Guatemala, and I don't know the period or even the site right now off the top of my head, but where they found huge vessel and at the bottom of it were like five cacao seeds. And they were so excited that these had been preserved and they send them to be analyzed. And it turned out they were just clay in the exact form cacao seeds. And what I like to think of with that vessel is it was full of cacao with a couple of counterfeits in there. And the counterfeits. They survived. And of course, over you know, a thousand years, the seeds did not survive.

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[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

So we covered so many different things in regards to the Maya and the use of cacao, of chocolate in particular. And also hearkening back to earlier Mesoamerican cultures too, we've talked about like kind of drink, food use in rituals, depictions of cacao in sculpture, and so on in currency as well. Are there any other key things that we should mention about the use of cacao that we know from archeology in, let's say, the time of the Classic Maya that we haven't yet highlighted, that we should mention once again to signify the great importance, the significance of cacao for the Maya.

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Cacao is often used as a tree that brings the dead back to life, that they're reborn as cacao trees. We see that most famously at the site of Palenque, where a queen is depicted reborn as a cacao tree on the sarcophagus of her son Bacall. But at Copan we also see that there are sensors that are in the form of a cacao tree with cacao pots coming off of them and they have the faces of ancestors on the front. Sometimes they're offered so they're used at a temple, and then they're smashed and sometimes they're placed in elite structures. I often think that that vessel, the Dazzler, was an early form of that, that that vessel itself is helping to bring the ruler back to life, to take him through the process of rebirth.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

And so this idea of the ruler being recreated as a cacao tree. Could we potentially imagine there almost being sacred groves of cacao trees in certain Maya cities? You know, if they very much had that belief of linking certain cacao trees with the rebirth of deceased rulers, I.

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Don'T know if that's why the groves would be sacred. There is a tradition in highland Guatemala where trees are planted over the bodies of dead individuals, so the cemetery itself becomes a forest. And that's quite a wonderful idea. There are groves that are believed to be sacred cacao groves in Yucatan where cacao didn't grow well. And so for the rulers of Chichen Itza, for example, they might have gotten their cacao supply from these very limited areas where it could be grown. And people propose they may be sacred. The site of Chichen Itza, which is an important Maya site there. There's an area there called Chichen Viejo. And the buildings are just covered in cacao iconography. And cacao like dancing with monkeys. Like monkeys mixed with the cacao iconography. And quite wonderful. I don't know if it's open to tourism because I. I was able to go when we were first excavating it in central Mexico. The emperor of Mexico had a pleasure garden, a garden that was just for him. And he also had cacao trees that were tended and could grow there, because there were 200 or 400 gardeners every day to make sure it got watered and that it got what it wanted, that they received proper care. So very limited ways. Rulers could have access to cacao in places where otherwise it would be very difficult to get it. In the Yucatan, we know from the contact period they are trading people to Honduras. So slaves enslaved people for cacao.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

Because I was about to say, I can imagine that the trade of cacao from a place where they can grow the cacao tree to places where they can't. It must have been extensive at this time. The last chapter I was hoping to do in our chat potentially could be going to the Mexico Aztecs as well. But do we get a sense that the Maya became big exporters of cacao to other places in Mesoamerica and potentially beyond where they couldn't grow it and they really wanted it.

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Yes, definitely. One thing that's interesting about the Mexica is there's a document called the Codex Mendoza, and it's a early colonial document made in the 1500s. But it's basically a guide for the Spanish to understand what the Mexica, how they were exploiting their provinces, and each province has to give a certain amount of tribute. And it tells you everything that that province had to give. And in some cases, they had to give large baskets of cacao. But those aren't areas where cacao grows at all. It didn't matter what you grew or what you had, you had to get those things. So you have these provinces that have to trade often into the Maya area to get cacao and then to deliver as tribute to the emperor.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

So do we think the Mexica, do we think that they imported cacao then from the Maya world extensively?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

I think so, yes.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

And so, like, by the time we get to the likes of the Spanish arriving, just how widespread is cacao and the consumption of cacao? And in Mesoamerica by this time, how you know, from its beginnings some 5,000 years ago, as you mentioned, right near the beginning to this time now, in the last 600 years or so, just how much has it exploded into across Mesoamerica and become popular?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

I mean, I think it's everywhere. I think that even in places where it doesn't grow, you need to have it for ritual. It's something that's fed to the gods. For example, rain ceremonies often require cacao. I think that everyone is going to have it in the marketplace, but they may not consume it in areas where it doesn't grow well, but they're going to offer it to the gods.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

And so, Cameron, how are people still using cacao in rituals today?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

It's particularly used in areas where they can still acquire cacao. I've been doing research along the Pacific coast of Guatemala for more than 15 years and going to communities and learning about how cacao continues to be used in daily life and also in ritual life. And my very favorite ritual location on the Pacific coast is an area where people have gathered together three sculptures that are more than a thousand years old. And they make daily offerings of cacao to these sculptures. And they're surrounded by this cement block enclosure on three sides. Also, along the Pacific coast, during Easter, and I think at some other times of the year, they make these constructions over the road that are called arcos. And they have this striped pattern on them that is similar to images of vessels of the entrance to the underworld. And these seem to be ceremonially entrances to the underworld, and they're hung with cacao fruits and sometimes potashte fruits, also balam, the cousin of cacao, along with other fruits that are endemic to that area. I think that's just incredibly wonderful to have this ongoing Tradition, unfortunately, more and more evangelical people along the coast say that that's associated with the devil. And there's communities I've been to where there were many articles one year, and now they're not doing that.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

And I must ask, given you said all those recipes, Cameron, do you have a particular favorite cacao recipe that is endured?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Yes, my favorite recipe is certainly Tahate, which is from Oaxaca. It is just so flavorful. It tends to be thinner than other areas where I've consumed cacao beverages. But it has the addition of. It mixes both Theobroma bicolor and theobroma cacao. So balam or bata, if you want to call it that, and cacao. And it also has these native coconuts in it. So it's coconut chocolate. It's not sweet. There's only one place where I've had sweet cacao beverages. But it is, you know, absolutely delicious. And it feels so healthy. And it has this really thick foam on it that is full of that mix of cacao and coconut. It's delicious.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

Just getting my head around this idea that, you know, these cacao recipes, they give you a healthy feeling and not a sweet feeling. It's such an alien idea to what we used to when someone mentions cacao or chocolate today. Well, Cameron, is there anything else you want to mention about the use of cacao by these Mesoamerican societies that we haven't yet covered?

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

I was thinking about the fact that they often colored their cacao beverages with achiote, which is a red pigment from the Bixa Orellana tree. And basically the outside, this waxy outside of the seeds is. It's pink and it looks like lipstick. And people even for fun, you know, kids play with it and put it on their lips. But the Spanish write about the fact that when you put it into cacao, it makes the cacao look like blood. And how freaked out they are by seeing people drink this. And then they have this, like, blood left on their upper lip from consuming this. And I'm sure that that was the point. I mean, blood is incredibly important to Mesoamericans, and it is something that they personally sacrifice. They practice autosacrificial rite. They cut their penises, if you're men, and their ears, areas that will bleed. Well, the women, the elite women we know would cut holes in their tongues and drag thorns embedded in rope. Is it the Maya? At least through their tongue. But blood is very, very important. So I like to think of that image of the Spanish, like, are they drinking chocolate Are they drinking blood? Like, what's going on?

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

They're drinking chocolate and blood. Chocolate and blood linked together in these societies, in these, these various rituals. I mean, it's so absolutely fascinating. Cameron, this has been really, really interesting, shining a light on the use of cacao and chocolate in Mesoamerican times and how different it was to what we think of chocolate today. I'm really grateful for your time. Last but certainly not least, you have edited a book all about this which.

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Is called Chocolate and Mesoamerica.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

And Karen, it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today.

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

Thank you.

[Host (Ancients Podcast Host)]

Well, there you go. There was Professor Cameron MacNeill talking you through the mysterious origins and the many uses of chocolate in Mesoamerica of cacao. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Thank you for listening. Please follow the ancients on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favor if you'd be kind enough to leave us a rating as well. Well, we'd really appreciate that. Now don't forget, you can also sign up to History hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. Sign [e-mail] subscribe. That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.

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Savings versus Comparable Verizon plans plus the cost of optional benefits. Plan features and taxes and fees vary. Savings with three plus lines include third line free via monthly bill credits. Credit stop if you cancel any lines. Qualifying credit required.

[Dr. Cameron McNeill (Guest Expert on Chocolate and Mesoamerica)]

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