Chocolate From Beer: What Good Luck For Us All! — EngagingConflicts.com
Who says reading science reports isn’t fun? This reported this week by Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society, as a service for its members and the public:
Chocolate Inventors Were Trying for Beer [from the Times (London)]
Humanity’s love affair with chocolate began at least 500 years earlier than was thought previously, scientists have discovered.
Chemical residues found in pottery vessels from what is now Honduras have revealed that the ancient peoples of Central America were drinking chocolate beverages as long ago as 1150BC, probably to celebrate occasions such as births and weddings. The evidence suggests that they were alcoholic
drinks made from fermented pulp of cacao fruit.The frothy, chocolate-flavoured drink made from cacao seeds that is known to have been important in the culture of the Aztecs and the Maya did not emerge until later. The findings, from a team led by John Henderson, Professor of Anthropology at Cornell University in New York State, push back the origins of chocolate consumption by at least half a millennium.
To read more:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2859190.ece
Or: http://tinyurl.com/24fs8w\
