Only five centuries ago, chocolate – now a mass-marketed sweet, gourmet fetish, commodity, and global icon – was enjoyed only by the Aztecs and their contemporaries in Mexico and Central America. Chocolate was central to social and ritual life in ancient Mesoamerica and it was a staple of Indigenous medicine. The seeds of the cacao tree from which chocolate drinks were made were, naturally, greatly valued, and their small size made them an effective form of money. Chocolate was not the only drink made from cacao, though, and the other ways in which it was prepared and served suggest one way in which the process of producing chocolate from the seeds of the cacao tree may have been developed.
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