Historic Chocolate

From The Mary Sue:

Although these chocolate traces aren’t the oldest to our knowledge, preceded by beverage vessels found in excavations of Gulf coast sites of the Olmec culture which have dated back to 1,500 BC, they do date back to about 500 BC, long before archeologists thought any culture was cooking with chocolate. According to the anthropology institute, “this indicates that the pre-Hispanic Maya may have eaten foods with cacao sauce, similar to mole,” a sauce common to modern Mexican cuisine that often has chocolate in it. The primary piece of evidence that supports this theory is that the traces were found on a plate, and not a bowl or a grinding apparatus: ”This is the first time it has been found on a plate used for serving food,” archaeologist Tomas Gallareta said . “It is unlikely that it was ground there (on the plate), because for that they probably used metates (grinding stones).”