Cacao Tree

Early History

              The knowledge of the cacao tree is one of domestication rather than as a wild rainforest tree and dates back ten to fifteen thousand years ago (Young, 2007). The Mayans, Toltec and Aztec people have domesticated cacao trees, as early as 400 BC (ICCO). The first harvesting of cacao trees was not for the seeds, but most likely for the pulp, as mimicry of the forest animals. Once permanent villages were established, these societies could experiment with new uses of the local plants. The drink made from cacao beans, xocaotl (translated as bitter water), was mixed with chili, spices, honey, vanilla and maize (Howell, 2009, Young, 2007). Unfortunately, little archeological or paleontological evidence is available to shed light on the early domestication, cultivation, processing and trading of products of the cacao tree. However, there are a few instances of historical findings to support the importance put on cacao trees and its products.

The cacao tree is one of the oldest known cultivated plants from the American tropical rainforest (Young, 2007; West, 1996). A Mayan document, the Codex Mendoza, depicts sacks of cacao beans, being used to pay tribute and/or taxes to the Aztecs (Encyclopedia Americana, 1999; West, 1996). A discovery in 1984 of a pottery container that had cacao residue also had the Mayan glyph for ka-ka-wa, from which the Spanish derived the word cacao. Cacao pods and vine-like tree branches with pods appear in Mayan art as well as warrior-priests and nobles with cacao trees dating from 200-100 AD (Young, 2007). The last three rulers of the Mayan city Tikal in Guatemala were called Lord Cacao, and riddles within this culture associated chocolate as a symbol of blood (Young, 2007). A description of the Mayan origin of chocolate from Reverend Thomas Gage during 18^th century travels is as follows:

This name chocolate is an Indian name, and is compounded from atte, as some say, or as others, atle, which in the Mexican language signifieth “water,” and from the sound which the water, wherein is put the chocolate, makes, as chaco chaco chaco, when it is stirred in a cup by an instrument called a molinet, or molinillo, until it bubble and rise unto a froth. But the chief ingredient, without which it cannot be made, is called cacao, a kind of nut or kernel bigger than a great almond which grows upon a tree called the tree of cacao, and ripens in a great husk, wherein sometimes are found more, sometimes less cacaos, sometimes twenty, sometimes thirty, nay forty and above” (Young, 2007, p. 21).

In the Aztec language of Nahuatl, the cacao tree was known as cacvaqualhitl, the pods or fruit as cacvacentli, the beans as caahoatl and the drink made from the beans as chocotl. Only old beans were used as currency as the rest were so highly valued that they were stored as treasure. Ten beans would buy a rabbit, fifty beans a horse or mule, and one hundred a slave. Beans were still being used as currency as late as the 18^th century (Howell, 2009; West, 1996).

According to Mexican mythology, Quetzalcóatl, one of the major deities, left the cacao tree for humans (Howell, 2009). It may be this myth that gave rise to the scientific name of “food of the gods.” By Cortés’ time, cacao was throughout the Aztec empire and likely farmer in the Yucatán were cultivating it. This is based on the level of trade that would seem improbable without cultivation. Some early literature has attributed hallucinogenic properties to the cacao bean but this is likely due to the mixing with other plants for medicinal purposes. A complete early history of the cacao tree’s domestication and usages is scarce due to the conquistadors and Catholic missionaries presence in Latin America. Records were routinely destroyed in order to help eradicate native religious and social systems of the conquered (West, 1996).