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Sweet discovery: New study pushes back the origins of chocolate
As Halloween revelers prepare to feast on chocolate, a new study from an international team of researchers, including the University of British Columbia, is pushing back the origins of the delicious sweet treat.
The study, published online today in Nature Ecology & Evolution, suggests that cacao—the plant from which chocolate is made—was domesticated, or grown by people for food, around 1,500 years earlier than previously thought. In addition, the researchers found cacao was originally domesticated in South America, rather than in Central America.
Archaeological evidence of cacao's use, dating back to 3,900 years ago, previously planted the idea that the cacao tree was first domesticated in Central America. But genetic evidence showing that the highest diversity of the cacao tree and related species is actually found in equatorial South America-where cacao is important to contemporary Indigenous groups-led the UBC team and their colleagues to search for evidence of the plant at an archaeological site in the region.
"This new study shows us that people in the upper reaches of the Amazon basin, extending up into the foothills of the Andes in southeastern Ecuador, were harvesting and consuming cacao that appears to be a close relative of the type of cacao later used in Mexico—and they were doing this 1,500 years earlier," said Michael Blake, study co-author and professor in the UBC department of anthropology. "They were also doing so using elaborate pottery that pre-dates the pottery found in Central America and Mexico. This suggests that the use of cacao, probably as a drink, was something that caught on and very likely spread northwards by farmers growing cacao in what is now Colombia and eventually Panama and other parts of Central America and southern Mexico."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by suburbanitemediocrity on Thursday November 01 2018, @09:47PM (4 children)
is not sweet
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday November 01 2018, @09:56PM (3 children)
It is when prepared correctly; with copious quantities of sugar. At least an adequate amount of sugar anyway. Personally, I like to drink bitter cacao powder with French Vanilla Cappuccino powder, hot water to constitute, and a bit of milk to cool it off.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by suburbanitemediocrity on Thursday November 01 2018, @11:08PM (2 children)
Most things are sweet when mixed with copious quantities of sugar. Even pickles.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by requerdanos on Thursday November 01 2018, @11:29PM (1 child)
Coffee isn't sweet, tea isn't sweet, dill pickles aren't sweet, cacao isn't sweet, dirt isn't sweet. You can add something sweet to any of them (sugar, honey, etc.) and fool yourself, but a little known fact is that the bitter or sour thing still isn't sweet--it's the sugar you added that's sweet. You are one of today's lucky 10,000 [explainxkcd.com].
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Friday November 02 2018, @10:16AM
The final product of a recipe is sweet, nit necessarily the individual ingredients. Chocolate is, or can be, sweet, true, but the primary ingredient, cacao, is bitter,