Chocolate was being consumed at around 1,400 B.C. by the Native Amerindians

This Bodega burnished type bottle from an unidentified site in northern Honduras corresponds to a type produced between 900 and 200 B.C. at Puerto Escondido. It is part of the collection of the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia, Museo de San Pedro Sula in Honduras. (Courtesy of John S. Henderson)

This drawing shows a Barraca brown burnished type bottle from an unidentified site in northern Honduras that corresponds to a type produced between 1400 and 1100 B.C. at Puerto Escondido. The bottle is part of a collection at the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia, Museo de San Pedro Sula in Honduras. (Courtesy of Yolanda Tovar)

Chocolate, who doesn't love chocolate? Well, thanks to the Meso-american Natives, we can enjoy anything from a chocolate bar, to a frothy hot chocolate. According to new discoveries in Puerto Escondido, Honduras, Chocolate was probably being consumed at around 1,400 B.C. instead of 600 B.C. as previously thought. That's a heck of a lot of years; about 3,500 years old tradition.
The favorite form of consumption was of course as a fermented drink, and is thought to have been used at special occasions by the elite and royalty; because cacao was valuable in those days (no $.99 chocolate bars at the store). As always, the rich get the longer end of the stick :)


Chocolate drinks - probably fermented ones - popular long before previously thought, says anthropologist

By Kathleen Maclay, Media Relations | 13 November 2007

BERKELEY – Mesoamerican menus featured cacao beverages - probably fermented ones - at least as early as 1100 B.C., some 500 years earlier than previously documented anywhere, according to new research published in the latest issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences...

"The findings of this study take us near the time of the probable initial use of cacao in Mesoamerica," they write about cacao's introduction to the region of Central America and southern Mexico that was home to Olmec, Mayan and Aztec civilizations. A previous investigation confirmed the earliest consumption of cacao at 600 B.C. in Belize.
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/11/13_cacao.shtml

Ventarron: the 4,000 years old temple in Peru

The temple has been recently unearthed at a place about 470 miles from Lima, Peru. The murals are the oldest known in Cemanahuac (American Continent) to this date. Carbon dating performed in the US, dated the temple at about 2,000 B.C. That's roughly the time Egypt's pyramids were presumably built.
Notice the level of detail of the paintings, and the variety of colors. It has an impressive level of artistry for the time. Just how they manufactured the paints, which are still intact is still a mistery.
They also found Amazonian parrots and monkey bones, which must have been brought by traders from hundreds of miles away. The temple is made of river sediment bricks (not rocks) which hints at a higher level of knowledge. The building harmoniously points to true north, according to the lead archeologist, which is consistent with the majority of ancient buildings of the area.
One of the paintings depicts a deer being hunted with a net, which again points to a higher level of tool knowledge for the time. They certaily were not cave dwellers, nomadic hunter-gatherers but probably an agrarian society with knowledge of farming.
Its fair to regret the Europeans' despising of the Native Amerindians as a group of "savage" people. Nothing is further from the truth.

National geographic:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/11/photogalleries/Peru-pictures/index.html

The associated press:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gqVny7Ylhq-1TruZdhU0Z9n-B6CwD8SSFE7O0