The history of chocolate.

in case you cannot consider life without chocolate,

you are fortunate you weren't born earlier than the 16th century.

till then, chocolate only existed in Mesoamerica

in a form pretty extraordinary from what we know.

As a ways back as 1900 BCE,

the people of that area had learned to put together the beans

of the local cacao tree.

The earliest statistics inform us the beans were ground

and blended with cornmeal and chili peppers

to create a drink -

not a chilled cup of hot cocoa,

however a sour, invigorating concoction frothing with foam.

And if you notion we make a big deal about chocolate today,

the Mesoamericans had us beat.

They believed that cacao changed into a heavenly meals

proficient to humans by means of a feathered serpent god,

recognised to the Maya as Kukulkan

and to the Aztecs as Quetzalcoatl.

Aztecs used cacao beans as forex

and drank chocolate at royal feasts,

gave it to squaddies as a praise for success in struggle,

and used it in rituals.

the first transatlantic chocolate come across happened in 1519

whilst Hernán Cortés visited the court of Moctezuma

at Tenochtitlan.

As recorded with the aid of Cortés's lieutenant,

the king had 50 jugs of the drink introduced out and poured into golden cups.

when the colonists lower back with shipments of the strange new bean,

missionaries' salacious money owed of local customs

gave it a popularity as an aphrodisiac.

at the start, its sour flavor made it suitable as a medication for illnesses,

like disappointed stomachs,

but sweetening it with honey, sugar, or vanilla

quick made chocolate a popular delicacy inside the Spanish court docket.

and soon, no aristocratic home turned into whole without dedicated chocolate ware.

the trendy drink become difficult and time eating to produce

on a huge scale.

That worried using plantations and imported slave labor

inside the Caribbean and on islands off the coast of Africa.

the sector of chocolate could alternate forever in 1828

with the introduction of the cocoa press through Coenraad van Houten of Amsterdam.

Van Houten's invention ought to separate the cocoa's herbal fats, or cocoa butter.

This left a powder that could be combined right into a drinkable answer

or recombined with the cocoa butter

to create the solid chocolate we know today.

now not lengthy after, a Swiss chocolatier named Daniel Peter

delivered powdered milk to the mixture,

hence inventing milk chocolate.

through the twentieth century, chocolate become not an elite luxury

however had end up a treat for the public.

assembly the huge demand required more cultivation of cocoa,

that may handiest develop close to the equator.

Now, rather than African slaves being shipped

to South American cocoa plantations,

cocoa production itself could shift to West Africa

with Cote d'Ivoire offering two-fifths of the arena's cocoa as of 2015.

but along with the boom of the industry,

there have been terrible abuses of human rights.

some of the plantations during West Africa,

which supply Western organizations,

use slave and child labor,

with an estimation of more than 2 million kids affected.

this is a complicated problem that persists

regardless of efforts from foremost chocolate groups to accomplice with African countries

to lessen baby and indentured hard work practices.

nowadays, chocolate has mounted itself in the rituals of our present day lifestyle.

because of its colonial affiliation with local cultures,

mixed with the power of advertising and marketing,

chocolate retains an air of secrecy of something sensual,

decadent,

and forbidden.

yet knowing more approximately its captivating and often merciless records,

in addition to its production today,

tells us in which those associations originate

and what they cover.

in order you unwrap your subsequent bar of chocolate,

take a second to don't forget that no longer the whole lot approximately chocolate is nice.