The cacao

The cacao was a sacred plant, an offering, a delicacy, a ceremonial beverage, a muse to artists and writers, an article of tribute and a currency in Mesoamerica in pre-columbian.

The elites maya appreciate this remarkable fruit that many of them were buried with vessels such as the publication, decorated with references carved cocoa and probably once filled with a chocolate drink
to nourish the spirit of the deceased.

The bowl in the picture is decorated with various images in bas-relief, the figure in the publication has tattoos and you are growing cocoa pods in the body. Wears earrings, a necklace of beads, bracelets, anklets, a belt, and is seated on a throne tissue covered with skin of a jaguar.

This beautiful character can impersonate as a cocoa plant, or possibly a God of chocolate. The maya used several types of containers to serve chocolate, but apparently favored the bowls like this for their drinks, who liked to keep fresh.

Consumed chocolate in various ways as a beverage, meal, powder or solid substance, often mixed with other ingredients or flavorings, including chilies, an herb called itsimte and taste yet unidentified labeled as yutal in the writings of the classic maya. Like the aztecs, the noble maya preferred a chocolate drink was frothy and felt that the foam was the most desirable part of the drink. To create large amounts of foam, the mayan women poured liquid chocolate, repeatedly, in a tall container to another.

In the last picture you can see the trades now the chocolate, the root of which is absolutely ancient

Images and some of the information obtained from the on-line collection of Dumbarton Oaks