Cacao

Phrase:  Sacred drink.

The Cacao was and still one of the most important fruits for the Mesoamerican cultures, because it is the base for the elaboration of chocolate. In the pre-hispanic era their seeds were used as an exchange, even some communities of Yucatán in the XIX century, still used it in this way. In Mayan art we found a lot of representations of their fruits and seeds, monuments and ceramic pieces, some of them vessels that contain hieroglyphic texts that indicates that the vessels was used to drink cacao, this was verifies when doing some chemical analysis of a vessel found in the Rio Azul area, which contained a text that indicated the name of the owner and the function of the piece, which was to drink his cacao, when making the analysis of its content, it was determined that it has been used to ingest this drink. According to Fray Diego de Landa in his book “Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán” indicates that the Mayans during the month Muan (between March and April), held a ceremony in honor of several gods, which seems to be related to this fruit, which shows us the importance that cacao had for the ancient Mayans (Source: Arqueología Mexicana 2012:24, Coe 1995:262 y Landa: 2003:83).

Bibliography

Arqueología Mexicana  2012. Mundo Maya: Esplendor de una cultura. En Arqueología Mexicana. Edición Especial No. 44, Junio 2012. Editorial Raíces S.A. de C.V., México D.F. PP 10-85

Coe, Michael 1995. El Desciframiento de los glifos mayas. Editorial Fondo de Cultura Económica, Primera Edición en Español. Mexico D.F. PP 333

 Landa, Fray Diego de 2003. Relación de las cosas de Yucatán. Estudio preliminar, cronología y revisión del texto de María del Carmen León Cázares. 1ª. Reimpresión México D.F. Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes. PP 123