Cocoa was domesticated much earlier than we thought, and not by the Mayans. This points to research into old cocoa residues. The Mayo-Chinchipe people from Ecuador already cultivated the cocoa tree 5300 years ago. It is important evidence that agriculture also existed in ancient cultures in the rainforest.
We already knew from the Maya that they loved chocolate. As a drink, as a sauce, with honey or with chili… About 3600 years ago, the Mayan predecessors in what is now Mexico domesticated the cocoa bean for the first time. Archaeological finds now show that the cocoa bean was already grown in Ecuador 5300 years ago. The cocoa bean would have traveled north via traders, the researchers think.
Chocolate Money
We know the stories of the Spanish conquerors about the popular drink and the archaeological finds of Mayan cups and bowls with cocoa leftovers in them. “It is known that cocoa was an important cultural product for Maya societies, but also for other peoples from the region thousands of years before them,” said Jaime R. Pagán-Jiménez, researcher in neotropical paleo-ethnobotany and Caribbean archaeology (Leiden University) and not associated with this study. “Cocoa was an important component in the ritual life of the Maya, with public and religious festivals. The beans were also currency among many Mayan societies, before and during the European invasion of the continent after 1492.”
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It now appears that the early inhabitants of Ecuador, who belonged to the recently discovered Mayo-Chinchipe culture (about 5500-1700 BC), already 5300 years ago started using the cocoa of the home-grown cocoa tree (Theobromine cacao, or T. cacao). ) were seated. Dozens of scientists from multiple disciplines participated in the research, published in the scientific journal Nature. They did not act overnight, but used three independent methods to prove that this was older cocoa.
They examined pottery finds containing cocoa remains from the main Mayo-Chinchipe settlement of Santa Ana la Florida in Ecuador. It turned out that the starch granules could only come from the cultivated cocoa tree. The researchers also found remnants of theobromine, the bitter substance that provides the typical taste of cocoa and chocolate. Theobromine is only made by T. cacao and not by its wild relatives. The researchers also found pieces of ancient DNA (or 'genetic material') whose sequence is unique to T. cacao.
Complex culture
According to Pagán-Jiménez, this research changes the simple picture we have of rainforest inhabitants, because it shows that the emergence of complex cultures was indeed possible in the Upper Ecuadorian Amazon. “The people who used cocoa in Santa Ana were among the earliest cultures to establish settlements in the Americas. This clashes with the idea that the Great Amazon is not a suitable region for the development of advanced societies. The area would lack the required ecological conditions for innovation and cultural development. In that sense, this research is a historical justification for the people of the Mayan Chinchipe culture and for their living descendants.”
The Maya and their southern neighbors did use the cocoa beans for different purposes. The researchers are thinking of drinks and dishes for the home or at important moments such as a funeral, because of the pottery finds with cocoa residues in houses and tombs. This is in contrast to the ritual and religious drinks used by the Maya, who also prepared the drink differently. “The Maya first dried and roasted the beans and then made fermented drinks from them,” said Pagán-Jiménez. So no tasty sweet chocolate as we know it.