Where lies the origins of Chocolate?

The Maya, Toltec, and Aztec people started cultivating the fruit of the cacao tree more than 3,000 years ago. Considered the “food of the gods,” the chocolate-making tradition originated in the Maya world, which encompasses modern-day Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, Mexico, and El Salvador.

Cacao—from the Olmec ka-ka-w—was traded as currency and valued for its purported medicinal qualities.

Trade beans: Esteemed as the ancient world’s most advanced horticulturalists, the Maya cultivated cacao trees and traded the valuable seeds (often called beans) as currency throughout Mesoamerica. 10 beans would buy you a rabbit. 100 beans would buy you a slave. Some clever person even came up with a way to counterfeit beans – by carving them out of clay. May be even Chocolate Laundering existed in the past! (jokes apart :P). The beans were still used as currency in parts of Latin America until the 19th century! 

If rupees bills were edible, would you eat them? Probably not, unless you had some to spare. The same was true of the Maya – usually only the rich drank much chocolate, although working folks probably enjoyed chocolate every now and then too. The rich enjoyed drinking their chocolate from elaborately painted chocolate vessels. Emperors were buried with jars of chocolate at their side. Clearly, they wanted to make chocolate history themselves.

So it’s no surprise that when the Aztecs conquered the Maya, they kept the chocolate tradition alive. From about 1200-1500, the Aztecs dominated the region and continued using cacao as currency. Because cacao could not grow in the capital city, Tenochitlan (where Mexico City is today), it had to be imported through trading and, what else? Taxes!

The Spaniards, kept the secret of chocolate to themselves for a while. Spain used the chocolate for the first time for its health food and medicinal use.The Church also backed the fact of its nutritious value.It had low caffeine content , only when consumed less in amounts.They initiate the frothing of chocolate by using a little stick ,keeping between your palms and giving a whirl.

From Beverage to Bar: “In 1894, English chocolate maker Joseph Storrs Fry produced what was arguably the world's first eating chocolate”