 |
|
|
 Entertainment | Restaurants & Dining | November 2007 
Alcoholic Chocolate Drink a Thing of the Past
 Christine Chen - the Daily Californian
go to original
| | (Kelly Tsou) |
Alcoholic chocolate drinks were used in Central America as early as 1100 B.C., 500 years earlier than researchers had previously recorded, according to a recent discovery by a team of scientists, including one from UC Berkeley.
The team of scientists found the fermented chocolate after analyzing artifacts—mostly broken pottery—found near Belize and Honduras, since they knew that the use of chocolate was widespread in that region.
“One of the things pottery lets you do is (get information about) what people were cooking and eating by the shapes of the pots ... (to see) what a bottle like that is being used for,” said Rosemary Joyce, a UC Berkeley anthropology professor who participated in the project.
The team recovered traces of the chocolate drink that was stored in the pottery by analyzing the chemical traces that had soaked into the pots.
“We found the pottery had cacao or chocolate in it. The date comes from looking at the pottery and radiocarbon dating it,” said Patrick McGovern, senior research scientist and adjunct associate professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
The discovery revealed that chocolate was used before it was employed by the Olmecs, an early Mexican civilization, Joyce said.
“Most textbooks say that chocolate was invented by the Olmecs in Mexico, but that doesn’t work anymore, so now we have to rethink that,” she said.
Chocolate drinks were long thought to be seasoned with chili peppers and honey, as noted by the Spanish arriving in Central America during the 16th century.
“Our study suggests that the earliest chocolate was actually a kind of alcoholic chocolate,” Joyce said.
Natural chocolate fermentation occurs when yeast from the fruit of the cacao tree ferments the chocolate bean’s sugary pulp, creating the alcoholic portion of the drink, McGovern said.
“What we’re saying is that humans would be very attracted to high sugar in alcoholic beverages,” he said. “That would have been the incentive for getting interested in the cacao tree, and then later they figured out ways to process the bean that had all sorts of special flavors and medicinal value.”
Joyce said the idea of studying the alcoholic aspect of chocolate drinks was prompted by its mention in Aztec texts.
“Thousands of years earlier, the beginning of consuming chocolate was with fermented beverage,” she said. “The form of the bottle changes after 900 B.C., so that it would be more appropriate for the non-alcoholic beverage.”
The team said they hope to continue their study of chocolate by examining even older artifacts.
“The next step is to test some even earlier pottery,” Joyce said. “We want to see whether between 600 and 1100 B.C. there was more use of cacao.”
Christine Chen cchen@dailycal.org. |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us