The fruit of the cacao tree was first used by the Olmec Indians of South and Central America, the ancestors of the Aztecs, thousands of years before the rise of Aztec civilization. The Mayans further domesticated cacao, and also developed the first cacao beverage, a spicy, bittersweet drink, by roasting and pounding raw cacao beans with maize and Capsicum peppers, and letting the mixture ferment. The cacao tree was worshipped by the Mayans, who believed it was of divine origin (cacao is a Mayan word meaning God Food).

Later, it was the Aztecs who credited their god, Quetzlcoatl, with introducing the cacao bean to humankind. In reality, although the Aztecs valued the cacao bean as highly as the Mayans had, they could not cultivate the tree, since Aztec civilization had existed at much higher altitudes in the Andes, where the climate was not suitable for cultivation. Therefore, the Aztecs aquired the beans through trade, and through war.

The beans were revered by the Aztecs, and were used in religious services and given as gifts. The Aztecs reserved cacao consumption for their nobility and for warriors. It was not only used for nutrition, as a flavoring and as an ingredient in various beverages and kinds of confectionery, but also as a form of currency. 100 beans could buy a slave, and tribute or taxes were paid in cacao beans to the Aztec emperors.

The Aztecs roasted and ground cacao beans into a paste, mixed it with water and maize, flavored the drink with chilies and beat it to a froth. This they called xocolatl (pronounced shoco-latle). The great Aztec ruler Montezuma and his court consumed up to 50 pitchers of the xocolatl drink per day. In 1519 AD the Spanish explorer Hernan Cortes was introduced to chocolate by Montezuma. Finding the name of the Aztecs hard to pronounce, he called it Chocolat, which the English changed to Chocolate after its introduction to England in 1657. Montezuma, convinced that Cortes represented the prophesied appearance of a white god, presented the explorer with a royal plantation of cacao trees. Cortes traded many cacao beans for gold, which was much less treasured by the Aztecs.

In fact, Montezuma valued xocolatl so much more than gold and silver that after his defeat in 1519 by Cortez that when the conquistadors searched his palace, the Aztec Treasury, for gold and silver, all that they found there were large quantities of cacao beans.

Source: Hershey Foods Corporation.