Did the Maya Really Invent Chocolate?

The Maya did not invent chocolate in the modern sense. They did, however, develop the most elaborate pre-Columbian cacao culture, cultivate the variety of cacao (Theobroma cacao var. Criollo) that is still the world’s most prized, and turn chocolate into a ritual drink, a daily beverage, a unit of currency, and an iconographic staple of Classic-period court art. The full story of cacao in the Maya economy is given in Cocoa, Salt, and Maya Trade Goods, and the kitchen that received the drink is described in Maya Cuisine: Food, Drink, and Preparation. The broader context is the Maya Agriculture, Food, and Cuisine and the trade economy in Maya Trade, Markets, and Economy.

The question “did the Maya invent chocolate?” turns out to be two questions: who first domesticated cacao, and who first cultivated it as a luxury crop? The two questions have different answers.

Cacao and its relatives

Theobroma cacao is a small understory tree of the family Malvaceae, native to the wet lowlands of Central America and the upper Amazon. Its wild populations occur from the Yucatán Peninsula south through the Petén, Belize, Honduras, and the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, and from the western Amazon east into the Orinoco. The fruit is a large, ribbed, football-shaped pod that grows directly from the trunk and main branches (a habit called cauliflory). Inside the pod, the seeds are embedded in a sweet, mucilaginous pulp.

The domesticated cacao is a different beast. It has larger, thicker-walled pods, a sweeter pulp, a higher fat content in the seed, and a less bitter seed. There are four principal cultivated populations: Criollo (Central American and Mexican), Forastero (Amazonian, especially the Amelonado and Trinitario subtypes), and Nacional (Ecuadorian). The first two are the most important for the history of chocolate.

The Cacao tree has a wild relative, Theobroma bicolor (the “pataste” of the Maya, balam-te’ in Yukatek), whose seeds are sometimes used to adulterate or substitute for cacao. Another relative, Herrania spp., produces a similar seed. The Maya and the Aztec both distinguished true cacao from pataste, and the colonial dictionaries preserve the distinction.

The Mokaya, the Olmec, and the earliest cacao

The earliest archaeological evidence of cacao consumption comes from the Pacific coast of Chiapas and Guatemala, in the Soconusco and the Mazatán region. The site of Paso de la Amada, occupied by Mokaya peoples from c. 1900 BCE (the Early Formative period), has produced a residue of theobromine in pottery from a feature dated to c. 1900–1500 BCE. Theobromine is a methylxanthine alkaloid characteristic of Theobroma and Herrania, and its presence in a pot indicates the use of cacao (or pataste) in a beverage.

The Mokaya of Paso de la Amada were not Maya, and the find does not prove Maya invention of chocolate. It does, however, push the earliest known cacao use back more than 1,500 years before the earliest evidence from the Maya area. The Mokaya were a pre-Olmec culture of the Pacific coast, closely related to the cultures that gave rise to the Olmec of the Gulf coast lowlands (modern Veracruz and Tabasco).

The Olmec (c. 1500–400 BCE) inherited and intensified the cacao tradition. Olmec iconography includes cacao pods and cacao-drinking scenes, and the Olmec heartland in the Gulf coast lowlands is the natural habitat of wild Theobroma and Herrania trees. The earliest evidence for cacao cultivation as opposed to mere collection may come from this region. Recent genomic studies suggest that the domesticated Criollo variety, in particular, may have been selected from a population of Theobroma in the area of the upper Amazon and the Pacific coast of Colombia and Ecuador, with subsequent diversification in Mesoamerica.

The net of the evidence, then, is that cacao consumption long predates the Maya. The earliest cacao use is Mokaya; the earliest cacao cultivation may be Olmec or a contemporary Pacific coast culture; and the domesticated varieties we know today were stabilized somewhere in the Mesoamerican / Pacific coast sphere during the Middle to Late Formative period (c. 1500–400 BCE). None of this was a Maya invention.

What the Maya did invent

What the Maya did, from the Formative period into the Classic period, was build a cacao culture of extraordinary depth. The specific Maya contributions include:

The cultivation of Criollo in the Maya lowlands. The Criollo variety, the most prized of all cacao varieties in the modern chocolate industry, is associated with the Mesoamerican gene pool, and the Maya lowlands of the Petén, Belize, and the Yucatán were an important center of Criollo cultivation from at least the Early Classic.
The frothed drink. The Maya preparation of cacao, with its emphasis on the foam (wayij in colonial Yukatek) and the spouted cylinder-vessel used to pour the drink, is distinct from the Aztec preparation. The Aztec xocolātl is a related drink, but the Maya drink is the one most often described in Classic-period iconography.
Cacao as currency. The Maya are the first culture for which cacao beans as a unit of currency are explicitly documented. The 16th-century Relación de Yucatán and the colonial Books of Chilam Balam preserve a fully developed system of exchange: a rabbit costs 100 beans, a turkey hen 200, a slave 2,500. The system is described in Maya Trade, Markets, and Economy and in detail in Cocoa, Salt, and Maya Trade Goods.
The iconography of cacao. The Late Classic period, especially in the Petexbatún and the southern lowlands, produced a remarkable corpus of painted vases that depict the preparation, serving, and consumption of cacao. The vases include both generic scene types and specific ruler portraits, and they are the most detailed visual source for the Maya cacao culture.
The cacao in myth and ritual. The Popol Vuh, the K’iche’ creation narrative, and the Maya Religion, Mythology, and Cosmology more broadly, include cacao among the substances of ritual offering and creation. The Dresden Codex contains agricultural almanacs that include cacao, and the Madrid Codex shows cacao in scenes of harvest and trade.

The archaeology of Maya cacao

A series of recent archaeological studies have confirmed the importance of cacao in the Classic Maya lowlands.

Cacao residue on pottery — the detection of theobromine in the ceramic vessels of a household or palace is a direct indicator of cacao use. Studies at Copan, Tikal, Cerros, and Lamanai have identified cacao residues on elite-serving vessels, especially the spouted cylinder-vase.
Starch grains in dental calculus — maize, cacao, and chiles have been recovered from the dental calculus of Classic-period skeletons. The recovery of theobromine from calculus confirms cacao consumption at the level of the individual.
Cacao cultivation evidence — pollen of Theobroma in lake sediments, and pollen in the buried field surfaces of raised fields (see Water Management: Reservoirs and Chinampas), confirms the cultivation of cacao in the lowland wetlands.
Cacao in caches — the recovery of cacao beans in sealed ritual caches at Tulum and Punta Sur, and in the cenote offerings of Chichen Itza, confirms the role of cacao in ritual and in trade.

The combination of residue analysis, iconography, and ethnohistory gives a uniquely detailed picture of the Maya cacao culture, more detailed than for any other pre-Columbian culture.

The Maya lowland Criollo

The Criollo variety of cacao is a lowland form with pale, almost white, seeds inside thin-walled pods. The Maya cultivated Criollo extensively in the Petén, Belize, and the Pacific piedmont, and Criollo is the variety that the Spanish encountered in 16th-century Yukatek and Guatemala. The modern distinction between “fine” flavor cacao (the Criollo and Trinitario varieties) and “bulk” cacao (the Forastero and Amelonado varieties) maps closely onto the historical distinction between Maya-cultivated Criollo and the lower-quality cacao of South American bulk production.

The Criollo of the Maya lowlands is grown in the pet kot (forest garden) under the shade of taller trees, in association with Brosimum alicastrum (ramón), Pouteria sapota (mamey), and other canopy species. The modern cacao agroforestry movement in the Maya lowlands is a direct descendant of this system, and the genetic stock of the modern fine-flavor cacao industry is largely Criollo of the Maya area and adjacent regions.

The colonial and modern transformation

The Spanish conquest of the Maya area, beginning in 1517 on the coast of the Yucatán and consolidated in 1521 by the fall of Tenochtitlan, transformed the Maya cacao culture. The Spanish adopted the Maya cacao drink, sweetened it with sugar and honey, flavored it with cinnamon and vanilla (often at the expense of chiles and achiote), and exported the recipe to Europe. By the 17th century, cacao was a major trans-Atlantic trade good, with the Maya and the highland Guatemala lowlands supplying the bulk of the European market.

The colonial cacao economy was, in turn, devastating to the Maya. Cacao plantations, often worked by forced Maya labor, were established on the Pacific piedmont of Chiapas, Soconusco, and Guatemala. The colonial cacao trade enriched the Spanish and criollo landowners, but the demographic catastrophe of the conquest — the 16th-century epidemics that killed 80 to 95 percent of the Indigenous population — destroyed the labor base of the pre-Columbian cacao culture. By the 18th century, the Maya cacao culture had been reduced to a small, regional, ritual tradition, and most of the world’s fine-flavor cacao came from the few surviving Criollo populations in Central America, Venezuela, and the Caribbean.

The broader history of the conquest and its demographic consequences is treated in Spanish Conquest and Colonial Era and in How Did the Spanish Conquest Change Maya Society?.

Cacao in the modern Maya world

Cacao has been undergoing a 21st-century recovery in the Maya area. Maya-led cooperatives in the Soconusco, the Lacandon Jungle, the Petén, and the Atlantic coast of Honduras are reviving Criollo cultivation, producing small lots of high-quality fine-flavor cacao for the specialty chocolate market, and reinvesting the proceeds in cultural and educational programs. The Smithsonian’s Maya Cacao Project at Cornell and at the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala has documented the genetic diversity of the surviving Criollo populations and has worked with the cooperatives to preserve the most valuable landraces.

The recovery of cacao in the Maya area is part of a wider movement to recover the Maya Languages: From Classic to Modern and the Maya Textiles: Weaving and Huipil of the post-conquest period, and to restore the Maya cosmovisión as a living tradition. Cacao, in this sense, is not only a food and a drink but a thread of cultural continuity that runs from the Mokaya of Paso de la Amada to the Maya of the 21st century.

Conclusion

The Maya did not invent chocolate in the sense of being the first to use cacao. The earliest cacao use is Mokaya, c. 1900 BCE, and the first cultivation of cacao may be Olmec. The Maya, however, developed a cacao culture of unique depth: the cultivation of Criollo in the lowland rainforests, the frothed drink with its distinctive wayij foam, the use of cacao as a unit of currency, the rich iconography of cacao in Classic-period vase painting, and the integration of cacao into the Maya Religion, Mythology, and Cosmology of ritual and myth. The Maya cacao culture is the most elaborate of any pre-Columbian society, and it is the direct ancestor of the modern fine-flavor chocolate industry. To “invent” chocolate in the strictest sense is to give the credit to the Mokaya and the Olmec. To give the credit for the tradition of chocolate as we know it, however, is to give it to the Maya.

Sources

Fedick, S. L., ed. (1996). The Managed Mosaic: Ancient Maya Agriculture and Resource Use. University of Utah Press. — link
Beach, T. et al. (2017). Ancient Maya wetland fields in Belize: Measuring, modelling and managing ancient tropical environments. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 13, 476–487. — link
Wilkinson, T. J. et al. (2006). Classic Maya Water Management at Tikal, Guatemala. Journal of Archaeological Science 33 (10), 1362–1384. — link
Re Cruz, A. (1996). The Two Milpas of Chan Kom: A Study of Seasonal and Year-round Labor Force Organization in a Mayan Community. University of Texas Press. — link
Cancian, F. (1972). Change and Uncertainty in a Peasant Economy: The Maya Corn Farmers of Zinacantán. Stanford University Press. — link