A woman harvests cacao pods by hand at a company-owned plantation in Ghana. The main ingredient in chocolate, cacao is one of Africa’s largest export crops.
© Ron Giling from Peter Arnold, Inc.

On a cold winter night there is nothing better than a mug of hot chocolate to warm you up. Though it is a simple drink, there is a long history behind the warm treat. Many say the first people to drink chocolate beverages were the Maya. The Maya were an Indigenous (native) people who developed a civilization in Central America and southern Mexico. ​​As far back as 500 B.C., the Maya made a drink containing ground-up cacao, chili peppers, corn meal, and water. The word chocolate comes from chocolatl, a word Spanish conquerors may have created by combining the Maya word chocol, which means hot, with the Aztec word atl, which means water.

While there are many records on the history of hot chocolate, no one knows for sure who invented chocolate milk. Some historians believe Jamaicans had been making a hot drink with cacao shavings boiled with milk and cinnamon since the 1500′s. Some people credit the British physician and botanist Sir Hans Sloane. In the early 1700′s, Sloane lived in Jamaica. There, he was served cocoa to drink. Cocoa is made from a tropical tree called the cacao. Botanists believe the cacao tree originated in the northern Amazon River Basin in South America. Sloane added milk to the cocoa to improve the taste. Sloane brought the mixture with him when he returned to England. The beverage was originally marketed as a medicine. While you can heat up chocolate milk to make hot chocolate, it will not be as dense and creamy as traditional hot chocolate.

An Aztec sculpture found in Amatlan, Mexico, shows a man holding a cacao pod. The Aztec people ruled an empire in Mexico in the 1400′s and early 1500′s.
Museum Collection Fund, Brooklyn Museum

What most people call “hot chocolate” is actually hot cocoa. The difference is that hot cocoa is made from cocoa powder, sugar or sweetener, and hot water or milk. Hot cocoa does not contain the fat and calories of chocolate. Hot chocolate is made from melted chocolate, sweetener, and either dairy or non-dairy milk. In many places, hot chocolate is called drinking chocolate.

Manufacturers invented a press to force cocoa butter out of roasted cacao beans, forming dry cakes. The cakes are then ground into the reddish-brown cocoa powder that you can buy at the store. Dutch-processed cocoa powder is made from cacao that was soaked in a solution before being ground. The solution lowers the acidity of the chocolate. Dutch-processed cocoa powder has a darker color and a less bitter flavor than regular cocoa powder.

Whether you drink hot cocoa or hot chocolate, you can put some marshmallows or whip cream on top for some added sweetness. However you enjoy your warm chocolate beverage, stay cozy!

March 11, 2020

Tonight in Mexico, many communities will celebrate the eve of the Aztec New Year, an annual holiday that marks the beginning of the 365-day Aztec solar calendar. The Aztec were a native American people who ruled a mighty empire in Mexico during the 1400′s and early 1500′s. Aztec New Year celebrations include traditional songs and dances, fireworks, and the burning of aromatic ocote (pine resin) candles. The Aztec year, which begins at sunrise on March 12, consists of 18 months of 20 days each plus 5 extra days.

Quetzalcoatl was a creator god and a wind god worshiped by early peoples of Mexico and Central America before the Spanish conquest. Among other things, he was associated with fertility, learning, and the Aztec calendar. Credit: WORLD BOOK illustration by George Suyeoka

Aztec New Year celebrations take place in such cities as Huauchinango, Mexico City, Xicotepec, and Zongolica. The holiday is also celebrated by some Mexican-American communities in the United States. The Aztec New Year is called Yancuic Xihuitl in Nahuatl, the Amerindian language spoken by the Aztec as well as the modern Nahua people of central Mexico. Nahuatl belongs to a large group of Indian languages known as the Aztec-Tanoan or Uto-Aztecan family. Many Mexican place names, including Acapulco and Mexico itself, come from Nahuatl, as do the English words avocado, chocolate, and tomato.

The Aztec had one of the most advanced civilizations in the Americas. They built cities as large and complex as any in Europe at the time. They also practiced a remarkable religion that affected every part of their lives. To worship their gods, the Aztec developed a sophisticated ritual system, built towering temples, and created huge sculptures. They held impressive religious ceremonies featuring dancing, musical performances, and the bloody sacrifices of animals and human beings. In addition to the 365-day solar calendar, the Aztec had a 260-day religious calendar. Priests used the calendar to determine lucky days for such activities as sowing crops, building houses, and going to war.

The name Aztec is commonly applied to the people who founded the city of Tenochtitlan, the site of present-day Mexico City, in 1325. In the 1400′s, the city and its allies conquered many groups in central and southern Mexico, forming the Aztec Empire. Tenochtitlan became the capital. The empire was destroyed by the Spanish, who conquered Tenochtitlan in 1521. The Spanish forbade Aztec ceremonies, and the annual New Year holiday went unobserved until its revival in the late 1920′s.

March 7, 2018

Last week, on February 28, an exhibition of artwork of the ancient Americas opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Called “Golden Kingdoms: Luxury & Legacy in the Ancient Americas,” the exhibition features the arts of the Aztec, the Inca, and other pre-Columbian cultures of Mexico and Central and South America. American Indian art created before A.D. 1500 is called pre-Columbian because it was produced before Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World in 1492.

The Golden Kingdoms exhibition includes this burial mask recovered from an ancient site known as Dos Cabezas on the northern Pacific coast of Peru. The gilded copper mask features eyes inlaid with shell and violet stone. The mask covered the face of a young man–no doubt someone of significance–wearing gold nose ornaments (see image below). Credit: Burial mask (A.D. 525–550), gilded copper, shell, and stone; Museo de Sitio de Chan Chan, Perú; Christopher B. Donnan/Metropolitan Museum of Art

Gold working in the ancient Americas began in the Andean cultures of South America and later developed farther north in Mesoamerica (what is now Central America and Mexico). Gold—considered an earthly remnant of the divine sun—and other precious metals were used more for decoration and ritual than for currency, tools, or weapons. Fine arts in the ancient Americas often connected people to ancestors, to the natural world around them, and to the gods and legends of their individual mythologies. Decorative objects were also used used in games and music and to celebrate fine harvests or rites of passage.

The Golden Kingdoms exhibition pays particular tribute to gold working. However, it also shows numerous works of bronze, copper, and silver, as well as precious objects made of cinnabar, jade, malachite, sea shell, turquoise, and feathers—materials often considered more valuable than gold. Noble textiles and fine pottery are also featured in the exhibit, which explores how materials were selected and transformed into art, what gave the objects meaning, and how they were used in sacred rituals.

These nose ornaments on display at the Met were found beneath the burial mask seen above. The deceased young man wore a rectangular gold ornament with a silver border. The hammered gold owl was compressed and placed in his mouth. The other ornaments depict a bat and a monkey. Credit: Clockwise from top left: Nose ornament (A.D. 525–550), gold and silver; Nose ornament (A.D. 525–550), Gold; Nose ornament (A.D. 525–550), Gold and stone; Nose ornament (A.D. 525–550), Gold; (Museo de Sitio de Chan Chan, Perú/Christopher B. Donnan/Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The Met exhibition features more than 300 works of newly discovered archaeological finds as well as established masterpieces from museums in Europe, Latin America, and the United States. Objects on display include bells, belts, collars, masks, and various forms of jewelry. “Golden Kingdoms: Luxury & Legacy in the Ancient Americas” runs through May 28.

November 6, 2017

Quetzalcoatl, whose name may be translated as feathered (or plumed) serpent or precious twin, was a great Mesoamerican god. He was also a culture hero, a legendary figure who represents the ideals of a cultural group. As a god, Quetzalcoatl «keht SAHL koh AH tuhl» was worshiped by early peoples of pre-Hispanic Mexico and Central America, including the Toltec and the Aztec who succeeded them in central Mexico. Quetzalcoatl was a creator god and a wind god. He also was associated with learning, with the Aztec zodiac, and with fertility, water, and vegetation. As a culture hero, Quetzalcoatl taught humankind how to make arts and crafts and measure time. He was also a Toltec priest-king called Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl—an embodiment of the god.

The great Mesoamerican god Quetzalcoatl. Credit: WORLD BOOK illustration by George Suyeoka

There are various stories and versions of stories about Quetzalcoatl, both the god and the semidivine ruler. Many of these tales place Quetzalcoatl in conflict with his brother Tezcatlipoca «tehs KOT lee POH kuh». For example, one myth describes how Quetzalcoatl and his three brothers, including Tezcatlipoca, were given the task of creating the world. At first, they cooperated, making fire, the heavens, the waters, a great fish whose flesh became Earth, and half a sun. The half-sun did not give enough light, so Tezcatlipoca decided to transform himself into a sun. A long struggle followed, with the brothers knocking each other out of the sky and placing different deities there as the sun. After causing great destruction with fire, floods, rampaging giants, and a tornado—and collapsing the heavens themselves—the brothers finally reconciled, repaired the damage, and created a new sun by sacrificing Quetzalcoatl’s son.

Other stories about Quetzalcoatl tell how Tezcatlipoca corrupted him by giving him an intoxicating drink. In some accounts, a disoriented Quetzalcoatl coupled with his sister Quetzalpetatl «keht SAHL pa TAH tuhl». Out of remorse, Quetzalcoatl set himself on fire. After he had burned up, Quetzalcoatl’s heart rose into the sky to become the planet Venus, called the “morning star” when seen before sunrise. For this reason, Quetzalcoatl sometimes is referred to as “lord of the dawn.” Xolotl «SHOH loht», the Aztec god of the evening star (Venus after sunset), is sometimes referred to as Quetzalcoatl’s twin brother. Some stories tell that Quetzalcoatl descended to the land of the dead, where he obtained bones from which he created human beings. In some versions of the tale, Quetzalcoatl sailed away to the east on a raft and was prophesied to return one day.

When a Spanish expedition led by Hernán Cortés arrived in Mexico in 1519, the Aztec emperor Montezuma II might have associated Cortés with Quetzalcoatl, returned from the east. Montezuma allowed Cortés to enter the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan <<tay nohch TEE tlahn>> (now Mexico City). The Spaniards eventually took Montezuma prisoner and tried to rule the empire through him. The Aztec people rebelled in 1520. However, Tenochtitlan fell to the Spaniards in 1521, and Spain soon controlled the entire Aztec empire.

The Maya people of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula also worshiped a form of Quetzalcoatl called Kukulkan. The famous step pyramid in the ancient Maya city of Chichén Itzá is dedicated to the plumed serpent god.