Precious Chocolate

They traveled miles and miles for their precious chocolate, back in 1000 A.D. The Mayans had personalized cacao jars, the equivalent of "this is Bill's cacao vessel" and now we learn the early New Mexicans had theirs too, far from the source of their precious drink. Science News:

The findings, published online February 2 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, report the earliest known use of cacao north of the U.S.–Mexico border and may stir up debate regarding the Chaco Canyon culture and its relationship with Mesoamerican societies to the south.

Scientists have long puzzled over the purpose of tall, cylindrical jars found in the northwest New Mexico site known as Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon. Speculations range from vessels for corn beer or, with skin stretched over the tops, for drums.

Excavations in the late 1800s and 1920s uncovered 166 of the ceramic jars (fewer than 200 are known from all of the American Southwest). Pueblo Bonito is a multistory pueblo with an estimated 800 rooms, dating to roughly A.D. 860 to 1128. Much remains unknown about the people who dwelled there and their culture.

The scientists in New Mexico sent the jars to Hershey's researcher in Pennsylvania, where they confirmed the residue could only come from an ingredient of cacao, which doesn't grow north of Mexico.

Confirmation from thousands of years ago that man does not live by bread alone. Have some chocolate.