The chocolate enjoyed around the world today had its origins at least 3,100 years ago in Central America. It was not the sweet treat people now crave but was enjoyed as a celebratory, beer-like beverage and status symbol, scientists said on Monday. Their findings were published in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researchers identified residue of a chemical compound that comes exclusively from the cacao plant - in pottery vessels dating from about 1100 BC in Puerto Escondido, Honduras.
The findings pushed back, by at least 500 years, the earliest documented use of cacao. It was an important luxury commodity in Mesoamerica before the European invaders arrived and is now the basis of the modern chocolate industry.
Cacao (pronounced cah-COW) seeds were used to make ceremonial beverages consumed by elites of the Aztecs and other civilizations. They were also used as a form of currency.
Furthermore, the Spanish conquistadors who shattered the Aztec empire in the 16th century were smitten with a chocolate beverage made from cacao seeds served in the palace of the emperor.
However, this was not the form in which cacao had its beginning.
"The earliest cacao beverages consumed at Puerto Escondido were likely produced by fermenting the sweet pulp surrounding the seeds," the scientists wrote.
One of the researchers is anthropologist John Henderson of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He said cacao beverages were being concocted far earlier than previously believed - and it was a beer-like drink that started the chocolate craze.
"What we're seeing in this early village is a very early stage in which serving cacao at fancy occasions is one of the strategies that upwardly mobile families are using to establish themselves, to accumulate social prestige," Henderson said.
"I think this is part of the process by which you eventually get stratified societies," Henderson said.
The cacao brew consumed at the village of perhaps 200 to 300 people may have evolved into the chocolate beverage known from later in MesoAmerican history - not by design but as "an accidental byproduct of some brewing," Henderson said.
The chocolate enjoyed by later MesoAmerican civilizations was made from ground cacao seeds with added seasonings, producing a spicy, frothy drink.
Questions:
1. How long ago was chocolate first enjoyed in central America?
2. In which Honduran town did researchers find residue of a beer-like chocolate drink?
3. Henderson said serving the cacao drink was a strategy employed by what type of families?
4. At the time of the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors, where was the beer-like drink served?
Answers:
1. 3,100 years ago.
2. Puerto Escondido.
3. Upwardly mobile.
4. The palace of the emperor.
（英语点津 Linda 编辑）
About the broadcaster:
Jonathan Stewart is a media and journalism expert from the United States with four years of experience as a writer and instructor. He accepted a foreign expert position with chinadaily.com.cn in June 2007 following the completion of his Master of Arts degree in International Relations and Comparative Politics.
