HISTORY

storia

storia

The Maya
The Maya civilization developed in the south of the Yucatan from 250 to 900 AD. It ‘very likely that the Maya have received from the Olmecs teaching to cultivate and use the cocoa. The Maya had many ways to prepare foods and beverages, such as “Theobroma cacao” means a mixture, drink hot cocoa beans, hot water and corn flour cooked. Spouses, American anthropologists, Coe studied for a long time pre-Columbian and Spanish archives, arriving to establish that the Maya were the first to use the term “cocoa” and not as the Aztecs for many years he had claimed. Recently, in fact, have been discovered in tombs in the city of Colha in northern Belize, traces of cocoa within pottery vessels even 2600 years old. This makes us think that the plant of chocolate would be much older than you think.

The Aztecs
In the thirteenth century, the Aztecs subdued the remnants of the Mayan population and placed them on payment of heavy taxes on cocoa beans. From that time onwards, the seeds became an asset coveted and reserved for the noble class and a sign of wealth. The plants became even more important for the Aztecs when, with their wars, they managed to conquer lands well cultivated with cocoa beans. On these plantations for three hundred years the Spaniards were able to source the best quality of cacao criollo.
The Maya were probably the first to cultivate it and then to make a wide use. Cacao beans gaining significant economic value as a bargaining chip for both the Maya to the Aztecs. Furthermore, the seeds took on a wider significance both mystical and religious, they were infact offered to the gods during the most important ceremonies such as weddings, baptisms and funerals.

Christopher Columbus
The first European to discover this “luck” was Christopher Columbus during his fourth voyage to the Americas, August 15, 1502 when he landed on the island of Guanaja.
But the cocoa was not so much appreciated by either him or the court of Madrid. Instead, it was a military man like Hernàn Cortés, landed in those lands twenty years later, open the way for cocoa; he imported sugar cane and made the bitter drink of the Aztecs, a lot nicer. Since then, the chocolate began to be appreciated in Spain and developed an intense traffic of cocoa from across the ocean.