The pulp of the cacao fruit was used by the Olmec people to make an alcoholic drink, according to researchers who examined pottery excavated from a site in Puerto Escondido, Honduras. “This development probably provided the impetus to domesticate the chocolate tree and only later, to prepare a beverage based on the more bitter beans,” one of the study's authors said in a Penn Museum press release. “An alcoholic beverage from the pulp, carrying on this ancient tradition, continues to be made in parts of Latin America.”
The actual origins of the practice of eating the seeds carried by the chocolate fruit–cacao beans–remains a mystery.
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