Chocolate 1,500 Years Older Than Thought: Study

On This Site

Current Events

Share This Page






Follow This Site

Follow SocStudies4Kids on Twitter

October 29, 2018

Chocolate might be much, much older than we think.

Cacao

A study just out concludes that cacao, the prime ingredient in chocolate, was grown for food 1,500 years earlier and in a different place than has been thought.

Mexico in particular and Central America in general have long been thought to have been where cacao domestication originated. Both Aztec and Maya traditions mention chocolate (although not sugar, since they didn't have it). Their predecessors the Olmecs are known to have used chocolate as well.

Until now, archaeological evidence of people's growing cacao for consumption dated to 3,900 years ago in Central America. The authors of a new study have found evidence that South America was the location for the origin of cacao domestication and that the people who did it, part of the Mayo-Chinchipe culture, lived 5,450 years ago, in the Amazon basin, in what is now southeastern Ecuador. One of the prime pieces of evidence was traces of cacao tree starch in pottery from the period.

The site of the research was Santa Ana-La Florida, in Ecuador's Zamora-Chinchipe Province. The research team is from the University of British Columbia, and the study appears on the website Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Search This Site

Get weekly newsletter

Custom Search

Get weekly newsletter


Social Studies for Kids
copyright 2002–2018
David White

Social Studies for Kids
copyright 2002–2019
David White