Ceremonial Cacao

Cacao was used before Mesoamerica took it up: in 2018 Sonia Zarrillo's team reported cacao starch, theobromine and ancient DNA about 5,300 years old at Santa Ana-La Florida in south-east Ecuador.

Sonia Zarrillo et al., 'The use and domestication of Theobroma cacao during the mid-Holocene in the upper Amazon', Nature Ecology & Evolution 2 (2018), 1879–1888

Raw cacao prepared and drunk in a ritual setting, marketed today as an ancient Maya spiritual practice.

Sources3 sources

Primary source

Allen J. Christenson (trans.), Popol Vuh: Sacred Book of the Quiché Maya People, 2007, the creation of humanity, Paxil and CayalaThe Popol Vuh's mountain of Paxil, source of the maize of human flesh, was crowded also with pataxte and chocolate; text written 1554–1558.
and chocolate, with countless zapotes

Scholarship

Sonia Zarrillo, Nilesh Gaikwad, Claire Lanaud et al., The use and domestication of Theobroma cacao during the mid-Holocene in the upper Amazon, 2018, Nature Ecology & Evolution 2: 1879–1888, abstractCacao starch, theobromine and ancient DNA about 5,300 years old at Santa Ana-La Florida, Ecuador: the earliest evidence of cacao use in the Americas.
dating from approximately 5,300 years ago
John S. Henderson, Rosemary A. Joyce, Gretchen R. Hall, W. Jeffrey Hurst & Patrick E. McGovern, Chemical and archaeological evidence for the earliest cacao beverages, 2007, PNAS 104 (48): 18937–18940, abstractResidues at Puerto Escondido, Honduras, show cacao beverages before 1000 BC, probably fermented from the pulp.
cacao beverages were being made there before 1000 B.C.