2,000 years ago, they found it! Deep in the rain forest's of the America's, they found something that would change mankind and be very popular. Cocoa(kah KOW) trees with seeds that can be ground down to powder and made into the mouth watering food chocolate.
The monkeys were the first to find these tree's but they would only eat the sweet pulp which tasted kinda like apricots or melons inside the pods and would spit out the bitter seeds. Ancient people saw this and followed what the monkeys did, never thinking that they could use the beans/seeds on the inside. It is not known when they decided to use the beans. I could have been an accident, an great accident
The first known to have made chocolate were Ancient cultures of Mexico and Central America. These people (examples were the Aztec and the Maya) would grind down the cocoa seeds and mix them with many spices making a spicy drink. Toltec's saw cocoa as a divine gift the god Quetzalcoatl given the bean to man and taught them how to cultivate it. when Cortes, the spanish conquistador (spanish soldier) showed up in the 16th century the Aztec king, Montezuma thought it might have been Quetzalcoatl coming back. The Aztec led an empire of 15 million between the 14th and 16th centuries. The cocoa been was prized so much that it was also their form of currency(money).
The beans were the Aztec's "coins" 1 small rabbit = 30 cacao beans 1 turkey egg = 3 cacao beans 1 large tomato = 1 cacao bean Other beans went into the king’s chocolate drinks—and he drank A LOT of chocolate. Montezuma was rumored to enjoy 50 cups a day.