2024-04-17 16:39:39
This discovery enriches our understanding of pre-Columbian agricultural history, enhancing the importance of Ecuador on the cultural map and botanist of the world. The research was based on the analysis of residues found in ceramics up to 6,000 years old, which demonstrated that the use and cultivation of cocoa began in Ecuadorian territory, which is why it subsequently expanded to the north. This finding challenges the previous theory that Mexico was the cradle of this natural product.
Ecuador, the cradle of cocoa
Thanks to this publication, Ecuador manages to position itself as the starting point of the history of cocoa in the world. Studies of DNA and three chemical compounds related to it indicate that the first Ecuadorian societies not only cultivated cocoa, but that this product achieved its expansion thanks to trade routes after its domestication more than five millennia ago in Ecuador.
The dispersion of cocoa from Ecuador to Mesoamerica occurred thanks to interconnected political-economic networks. Photo: La Ibérica
Contrary to what was believed, Mexico received cocoa approximately 1,500 years later of its initial domestication in Ecuador. “It was previously believed that cocoa was domesticated in the lowlands of Mesoamerica (Mexico and Central America) and that from there it dispersed southward,” says the archaeologist and co-author of the study, Francisco Valdez. However, now “we can firmly affirm that the origin of cocoa and its domestication was in the Upper Amazon and not in the tropics of Mesoamerica,” the authors state.
Researchers suggest that the remains of cocoa found in ceramics indicate that the use of derived products spread among ancient pre-Columbian cultures. Of the 19 studied, the ceramics of the Valdivia cultures (Ecuador) and Port Ant (Colombia) show what would be the first ways of using cocoa. With this scientific evidence, there is no doubt about the importance of South America, particularly Ecuador, in the history of this plant.
Claire Lenaud, a molecular geneticist at the Agricultural Research Center for International Development (CIRAD) and lead author of the study, points out that “we still do not know at all about such an important domestication of cocoa trees along the coast.” of the Pacific in South America in pre-Columbian times, and so early. Furthermore, the mixture of genetics testifies to “the numerous interactions that could have occurred between the peoples of the Amazon and the Pacific coast.”
Mexico received cocoa approximately 1,500 years after its initial domestication in Ecuador. Photo: GoRaymi
From Ecuador to the world
Valdez assures that the dispersion of cocoa from Ecuador to Mesoamerica occurred thanks to interconnected political-economic networks, which allowed the rapid expansion of the product in various parts of the world. «It was quite fast and involved the close and long-distance interaction of the Amerindian peoples. Maritime contacts must have been as important as interior ones,” says the co-author.
«The Amerindian people used it in many ways. Raw, the pulp was sucked. (The cocoa bean) could be cooked, roasted, ground and converted into liquid and solid foods. The bark, branches and cob can be burned, and the ashes are an antiseptic. It is also used to relieve inflammation and skin or muscle inflammation,” concludes the expert.