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Earliest Chocolate Delivered Extra Buzz

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

Joan Steuer, president of Chocolate Marketing, the founder of Chocolatier magazine and a world-renown expert on chocolate, explained to Discovery News that the pulp, like grapes for wine, naturally ferments when left alone.

"When it ferments, it turns into a liquid that today is still consumed as a beverage," she said.

Other studies have found that fermenting the pulp destroys half of the beneficial nutritional components, including antioxidants, but "it would have tasted sweeter and less bitter, with a cocoa butter richness and alcohol content," she said.

Steuer, however, remains skeptical about the conclusions of the new study.

"How do we know that the beverage wasn't just poured into the pots?" she said. "It could have been a frothy hot chocolate drink made from the cacao seeds, so I don't think we've resolved that aspect of the findings."

Also skeptical is Elaine Gonzalez, author of "The Art of Chocolate." Gonzalez told Discovery News that other archaeological finds, as well as Mesoamerican tradition, indicate the Olmecs, predecessors to the Maya , were the first chocolate users. She doesn't think they traveled as far down as Honduras, but were instead more centered around Veracruz and Tabasco, Mexico.

Gonzalez added that slightly later hot chocolate drinks, made with the pods, were complex, ritualistic drinks.

Gonzalez continued, "While not always added, sometimes consumers would even incorporate the ground bones of their ancestors, or possibly hallucinogenic mushrooms and flowers, so it would have been quite a drink."

Henderson, however, believes that the brewing of the pulp was key to the drink, and possibly to today's modern chocolate industry.

He said, "If we're right about the earliest cacao drink being based on fermented pulp, then the discovery of the chocolate flavor, the ubiquity of chocolate drinks in later Mesoamerica, the use of cacao seeds as money, and the entire modern chocolate industry is a by-product of early brewing."

Related Links:

Jennifer Viegas' blog: Born Animal

Joan Steuer, chocolate expert

Chocolate: The Exhibition (Field Museum)

Chocolate Manufacturers Association