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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 01 2018, @11:00PM (2 children)
They invented everything under the sun, over the sun, and then some.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @01:52AM (1 child)
Modern Chocolate milk was probably invented by trying to substitute orchid flour with cacao powder in Salep [wikipedia.org]. It accounts for both the milk and sugar. It would have been a natural recipe to try for an Arabian Spaniard. Especially to those who were also familiar with coffee and lattes.
As for the Chinese, some Asians believe the Native Americans to have been Asians originally so maybe some Chinese nutcase decided Indians were all his great great cousin's kids or something...
Regardless, idiotic and hypocritical culinary nationalism is nothing new or unusual. When Napoleon gave military ranks to his cooks (chief of the kitchen ~= chef) and had them follow strict procedures and so on, he didn't spare them the usual infantry brainwashing about them being the best army in the world. Alas, a few centuries of "the best food in the world" were detached from the militaristic nationalism over 100 years ago and now all your wine sipping bourgeois criticize their leadership over their involvement in whatever war that happens to be taking place over eating recipes learned from the French colonies and prepared following military procedures while occupying and enslaving the locals.
So, in the grand scheme of idiocy, you can't really blame the Chinese and Arabs for being the fools they obviously are when it comes to nationalism. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a plate of Freedom fries fresh out of the pan.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday November 02 2018, @07:49AM
Freedom fries where invented by the Athenians, to munch on something during long agora democratic debates. Sometimes, they would impregnate the short fries with hemlock, just for the lulz.
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford