Hundreds of years ago, only the world's elite could enjoy this joy from cocoa.

It was once a high-class "social" drink sipped by the nobles of the European courts, and before that, it was the strength water drunk by the chieftains of the pre-Columbian civilization.

At first, people drank all liquid chocolate, and it was not until 1849 that the British Fuller & Sons Chocolate Company produced the first delicious chocolate bar, and chocolate became a high-quality and inexpensive solid, and walked down the altar and approached the people.

The long history of the "Food of the Gods" is full of "traditional myths", but there is also an indisputable fact:

The first drink of a soccer-shaped fruit seed made into a drink by beating and baking it was made on the American continent, many years before the voyage of the navigator Columbus was lost in search of the coveted India.

There is evidence that Christopher Columbus returned to continental Europe in the 16th century with a fleet laden with treasures plundered by the conquistadors of New Spain (present-day Mexico).

At first, Europeans did not accept this cold, sour and spicy drink, so much so that in 1565, the Italian Tuscan traveler Girolamo Benzoni defined it as "pig drink" in his book "History of the New World".

Later, it turned out to be a drug. Later, it was heated and sweetened and drunk, and it was sought after by Westerners during the Ancien Régime in France, making it comparable to tea and coffee.

Finally, from the mid-19th century onwards, skilled artisans and diligent chocolatiers in England, Turin and Switzerland have been able to create a wide variety of tantalizing products to satisfy the middle class's thirst for desserts.

There is a myth about the origin of chocolate, which can be traced back to the Aztecs.

The pre-Columbian civilization that emerged in Mexico in the 14th century had a complex set of cosmological theories.

In the book, they tell how God gave this precious plant to mankind:

"The green-biting Quetzalcoatl, who rules the morning star and life", is the king and leader of the Toltecs;

From the 14th to the 16th centuries, all the administration of the city-state was carried out according to sacrificial rituals and ceremonies;

Among them, cocoa, which is used as a treasure store, plays an important role.

The Spaniards described it in detail in their travelogues about the New World, however, the magical aura that the Mesoamericans bestowed on chocolate was met with cold reception and suspicion from Europeans.

It wasn't until two centuries later, in the middle of the 18th century, that a Swedish scientist gave the "chocolate plant" a scientific name.

The famous botanist Carl Nelson Linnaeus introduced binomial nomenclature in botany and described this strange American plant in the 1758 edition of Natural Systems.

He classified the plant as a genus of therapeutics, cocoa species. Since then, people have called cocoa an exotic "almond" with a heavenly charm.

Around 1576, Bernandino de Sahagún described the worship of Quetzalcoatl to readers in his monumental work, A General History of Things in New Spain.

The Franciscan friar wrote 12 volumes of books on the worship of Quetzalcoatl in Spanish and Aztec.

These illustrated manuscripts contain 2,000 drawings by indigenous peoples, bringing to life religious rituals and social life through the eyes of indigenous Mexicans.

According to the book, Quetzalcoatl, realizing that his people were eating too poorly, wanted to give a plant to the Aztecs.

This plant, called Kushui, bears precious fruits that can be used to make hot and sour beverages that give people a boost of vigor and energy.

Legend has it that the Mexican princess stayed at home to guard this treasure while her husband was fighting to defend the empire.

The enemy took advantage of his unpreparedness and raided the princess's house.

They forced the princess to tell her where the treasure was hidden, but she kept her mouth shut and was eventually killed.

In the pool of blood grew a small cocoa tree, and in the fruit lay a true treasure—a seed, a seed as sour as bitter love, as strong as virtue, as red as the blood of a faithful martyr.

Later, Quetzalcoatl gave cocoa as a gift to the people to remind them of the princess's loyalty.

Legend has it that the white-bearded Quetzalcoatl God left his homeland and came to earth.

When the Spanish explorer Hernan Cortez arrived in Mexico, the Aztecs believed him to be the embodiment of Quetzalcoatl, offering him jewels and cocoa seeds.

In addition to mythology, cocoa is indispensable for special occasions such as births, weddings, and memorials for the dead, as can be seen in written documents and archaeological excavations.

Cocoa has long been thought to be produced in southern Mexico (Yucatan Peninsula and the states of Chiapas, Tabasco, Oaxaca), Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras.

These claims are supported by reports of conquistadors and archaeological finds, although they differ from the botanical findings that wild cacao plants grow in the wetlands of the Amazon forests and further south in Ecuador, Peru and Brazil.

One discovery confirms what naturalists believe:

During the excavations in Santa Ana-Florida, southern Ecuador, traces of the eclipse were found. It can be seen that the tribe of Maio Chinchipe, named after the local river, was the first to drink chocolate.

The news reported in November 2018 by the ugly science journal Nature Ecology and Evolution caused quite a stir among experts.

Excavated in Puerto Capus National Park, 800 kilometers south of Ecuador's capital, Quito, near the Peruvian border, has surprised Michael Black, an archaeologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

The vases have obvious traces of black liquid, and examining them by archaeologists from the Canadian expedition has shown that they are actually cocoa, dating back to 5,300 to 2,100 years ago.

This discovery has the potential to advance the first consumption of cocoa plants by 2,000 years.

Excavations in Honduras led by Berkeley archaeologist Rosemary Joyce also found vases with traces of cocoa, dating back 3,000 years.

Are they farmed or wild?

Joyce prefers the first version, although she believes that the Ecuadorians of Santa Ana did not start cultivating cocoa at that time, but simply cooked it as a wild fruit of the rainforest.

Genetic fingerprint evidence of cocoa "domestication" found in Mesoamerica can support this claim.

But there's still an unsolved mystery: How did the cocoa bean make it out of the Amazon rainforest and travel thousands of miles to complete the migration journey to the highlands of Central America?

After all, cocoa beans do not germinate after harvesting and storage.

This can be confirmed by the fact below.

When the Spaniards and Portuguese moved plantations from Mexico to Africa, they had to ship the plants from the fields alive to their destinations and transplant them.

Of course, it was extremely difficult to do this in 1000 BC.

Off the coast of Guanaja, Honduras, Europeans and chocolate met for the first time

Anthropological and historical research has shown that cocoa was consumed by three major ethnic groups in Central America: the Omecs, the Mayans, and the Aztecs.

The oldest are the Omeks. They settled not far from present-day Mexico City.

Their culture flourished around 1200 BC and lasted for about 5 centuries.

Little is known about this ethnic group because of the paucity of written documents.

Archaeological finds have shown that their artistic representation was exquisite, and their diet was largely based on tortillas, while women needed to add protein and fat to feed their children after childbirth.

As a result, they rely on dried and mashed cocoa beans for energy after meals.

Later, between 300 and 900 AD, the Mayan civilizations of Yucatan and Guatemala rose to their peak.

In a diary written in Spain in 1566, the Franciscan bishop Diego de Lauda – who sadly destroyed almost all the Mayan books – wrote that it was customary to make a frothy "salty" drink from mashed corn and cocoa.

After all, there was no sugar at that time, in fact sugar was later brought from Spain to the New World.

Despite the trials of heresy by the Spanish Inquisition, some of the Maya's books were included in the Codex Dresden.

In these books, there are depictions of Mayans carrying plates full of cocoa beans, and through these descriptive texts, it is possible to trace the origin and decode the etymology of the "yococoa" plant.

In 1984, in the Mayan tombstone of Azul in Rio de Guatemala, 14 ceramic plates and 6 elaborate water urns were found on the pedestal.

One of the water urns, now in existence at the Princeton Museum of Art in New Jersey, depicts an intricate ritual for preparing a drink:

They raised the urn to a height of about 3 feet (about 1 meter) and poured the liquid into another urn that was placed on the ground in order to form a foam.

This is still popular in Latin America, but with a small wooden stick stirrer, similar to the champagne defoamer introduced by the Spanish conquistadors.

In the 13th century, the Aztecs brought the Maya under their rule and learned from them how to consume cocoa.

In their book The True Story of Chocolate, Sophie and Michael Cooe, an ugly couple who have been studying pre-Colombian civilizations for years, claim that the Mayans and Aztecs created "a wide variety of beverages, from flour-based beverages to porridge, powders, and even solid drinks, and they were able to add a variety of flavors to each drink."

The Aztecs also began hoarding cocoa beans.

Cocoa beans are used as currency in Tenochtilan (Mexico City), the capital of the city-state, where 960 million cocoa beans are stored.

Some people even falsified this black seed with clay and wax, which shows how precious it is.

In 1632, after the death of the Spanish officer Bernal Díaz del Castillo, the book "History of the Conquistadors of New Spain", which describes the arrival of Emperor Montezuma at the feast of the Aztecs:

"From time to time, they offered the emperor some cocoa drink in a cup, saying that drinking it would make an unforgettable impression on the woman."

The book also describes the emperor's booze:

"I saw that more than 50 large water urns were prepared, which contained a drink made of the best cocoa, and the emperor drank freely, and the women waited respectfully......

Everyone in the palace drank to their heart's content, even if not so much.

The Royal Guard, for their part, had to make two thousand cups of this black frothy drink every day for them to enjoy.

In 1502, off the coast of Guanaja, Honduras, Europeans and chocolate met for the first time.

At that time, the natives brought Christopher Columbus a few drinks, and he covered his nose without even tasting them.

It wasn't until more than 80 years later, in 1585, that dried cacao beans began to be shipped from Veracruz, Mexico, to the Spanish port of Seville (present-day Seville). Since then, the history of chocolate has changed completely.

The discovery of the Americas has brought about a real change in eating habits on both sides of the Atlantic.

Mexican food is dominated by tortillas and tortillas made from corn, a common crop, which is extremely lacking in fat;

Europeans on the Iberian Peninsula ate meat and fish, and did not like what they called Indian cuisine.

Since then, Mexicans have raised cows, cows, sheep, goats, pigs and chickens imported from Europe and learned how to cook with these ingredients.

Later, they discovered sucrose.

Neither the Mayans nor the Aztecs had a sweet tooth, although they knew about honey.

Years later, the potatoes that arrived began to be served on the tables of the Nordics, and the tomatoes that had crossed the ocean began to delight the southerners.

However, after the Spanish conquest of South America, there was a slow "hybridization" between customs and traditions because of women.

Many Mexican women married Spanish men or went on errands for Spaniards, learning to cook and make what we now call "combination dishes."

The nuns of Oaxaca, Mexico, may have been the first to heat ground cocoa beans and use sugar to make chocolate.

The chocolate they ate was similar to what later generations enjoyed today.

But until at least 1580, the cocoa drink that Spaniards drank in their mouths was sour and cold.

In fact, it was hard for the first explorers to swallow.

Thus, Girolamo Benzoni writes in his book:

"It (chocolate) looks more like something for pigs than a drink for people...... It tastes very bitter, but the good thing is that it has a refreshing health effect, it is not intoxicating, and it is revered by the Indians as a priceless treasure and regarded as a delicacy. ”

Dr. Francisco Hernández from Toledo, Spain, led the first scientific expedition to New Spain to study a variety of different plant species unknown in Europe.

He lived in the Americas for seven years, starting in 1570.

In the 15-volume landmark book "Botanical History of New Spain", he describes the local flora and fauna, and also talks about cocoa and chocolate.

He said the locals use the seeds of the cacao tree to make their drink because they "haven't discovered how to make wine yet."

The seeds are extracted from an oval-shaped plant that resembles a melon, but is "striped and red in color".

He wrote: "These tender seeds are rich in nutrients, a little sweet and sour, and slightly moist and cool. ”