Chocolate is made from roasted cocoa beans. Cocoa beans grow inside large pods on cacao (kuh•KOW) trees in Mexico and other parts of Latin America.
This summer, scientists discovered chocolate that is 2,500 years old! They found it in a part of Mexico called the Yucatán Peninsula. These scientists study ancient, or very old, objects to learn about what life was like long ago.
The scientists found the chocolate on an ancient plate that they dug up from the ground. They think that the Mayan people used this chocolate as a sauce. The Maya lived in southern Mexico and in parts of Central America thousands of years ago. Some people from the Mayan culture still live there today.
The scientists already knew that the Maya drank a beverage made from chocolate. The beverage was a little like the hot chocolate that people drink today. But the scientists did not know that the Maya used chocolate as a food.
Today, some Mexican food is made with a spicy chocolate sauce called mole (MOH•lay). The chocolate found in the Yucatán tells us that the Maya probably made a sauce that was like mole. This means that the Mexican tradition of cooking with chocolate might be thousands of years old.
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