Hey, chocolate lovers: new study traces complex origins of cacao
WASHINGTON, (Reuters) - Scientists are getting a better taste of the early history of the domestication and use of cacao - the source of chocolate - thanks to residues detected on a batch of ancient ceramics from South and Central America.
Using evidence from these artifacts, the researchers traced the rapid spread of cacao through trade routes after its initial domestication more than five millennia ago in Ecuador. They showed cacao’s dispersal to South America’s northwestern Pacific coast and later into Central America until it eventually reached Mexico 1,500 years later.
A tropical evergreen tree called Theobroma cacao bears large, oval pods containing the bean-like cacao seeds that today are roasted and turned into cocoa and multitudes of chocolate confections. In these ancient times, cacao was consumed as a beverage or an ingredient with other foods.
The researchers tested more than 300 pre-Columbian ceramics spanning nearly 6,000 years for traces of cacao DNA and three chemical compounds related to it, including caffeine. They discovered cacao evidence on about 30% of them. The findings indicate cacao products were used more widely among these ancient cultures than previously known.
The ceramics themselves offered an artistic glimpse at the cultures, some displaying wondrous anthropomorphic designs.
A study published in 2018 revealed the domestication and use of cacao beginning about 5,300 years ago in Ecuador, based on evidence from ceramics at the Santa Ana-La Florida archeological site. The new study builds on that by tracking cacao’s spread through 19 preColumbian cultures. Some of the earliest use was shown through ceramics made by the Valdivia culture in Ecuador and Puerto Hormiga culture in Colombia.
The ancient DNA found on the ceramics also indicated that various cultures cross-bred cacao trees to adapt to new environments.
“The first steps of cacao domestication correspond to a more complex process than the one we had previously hypothesized,” said molecular geneticist Claire Lanaud from the AGAP unit of CIRAD, a French agricultural research center for international development, lead author of the study published on Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.