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Cacao in Ecuador
Earliest known use of chocolate's cacao
Traces of cacao on pottery at Santa Ana-La Florida in Ecuador date to about 5,300 years ago. That is earlier than any Mesoamerican evidence.
The study, by Sonia Zarrillo and colleagues, appeared in Nature Ecology & Evolution in October 2018. It examined pottery and stone tools from Santa Ana-La Florida, a settlement of the Mayo-Chinchipe culture in the upper Amazon of Ecuador, dated to about 5,300 years ago and a little earlier.
Three kinds of evidence were used: starch grains typical of cacao, theobromine, a chemical found in cacao seeds, and ancient DNA from the plant. They were found on pottery and in tombs, so the cacao was probably used in households and rituals. Previously the earliest known use had been by the Olmec and Maya in Mesoamerica about 1,500 years later.
What people did with it is not certain. It might have been eaten, drunk, used as a stimulant, or used in ceremony. The result also rests on a single site and a limited number of objects, and later peoples in Central America changed the plant further.
Cacao was later processed into drinks and foods in Mesoamerica, and the Aztecs and Maya used it widely. The Ecuadorian finds show that the plant's first use was probably in South America, though not necessarily as chocolate as we know it.