Originating from the lowlands of the Amazon rainforest — the vast equatorial region that today connects Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and northern Brazil — the cacao tree carries an ancient and deeply rooted history. In these lush forests, bordered by the great Amazon River and its countless tributaries, cacao once grew wild beneath the canopy, protected by the humidity and tropical warmth. Its seeds spread naturally, carried by animals and flowing waters, long before humans began to cultivate it.

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​To journey into the heart of the cacao’s original forest, read our article dedicated to the Amazon, the living cradle of  cacao.

One of the paths cacao followed from its Amazonian birthplace led northward, along rivers and natural routes connecting ancient peoples. The earliest traces of Theobroma cacao in Mesoamerica are associated with the Olmec civilization — which appeared more than a millennium before the Maya and is often regarded as the “mother culture” of Mesoamerica. The Olmecs were likely the first to cultivate and consume cacao, before the Maya inherited this sacred plant and integrated it deeply into their daily life as early as 2000 BCE, if not earlier.These civilizations viewed cacao as a sacred offering, woven into their rituals, cosmology, and worldview. Its spiritual significance still echoes today in its scientific name, Theobroma cacao — a Greek term literally meaning “food of the gods.” (Carl Linnæus, 1753).

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​To discover more about the story of Criollo cacao, the ancestral variety of the Maya, read our dedicated article.

For the Maya, cacao was an integral part of daily life, regardless of social status.
Nobles drank it from richly decorated vessels, while kings and priests valued it primarily for its energizing, life-giving, and spiritual effects. The Maya are credited with developing the first artisanal methods of cacao preparation — a process still alive today: natural fermentation of the beans, sun-drying, and transformation into paste on the metate, a sacred stone used for millennia to grind cacao and other plants. They cultivated primarily Criollo cacao, an ancient and noble variety renowned for its aromatic finesse and medicinal potency.

To discover how the legacy of the ancient Maya continues today, read the story of Don Alfredo, guardian of the Criollo cacao rediscovered in the Maya Biosphere Reserve.

For the Aztecs, cacao held an equally important but rarer and more precious place.
They likely discovered the plant after conquering the Mayan regions of southern Mesoamerica. Since cacao trees could not grow on their high-altitude lands further north, Aztec merchants traveled vast distances on foot, carrying the beans in woven bags from present-day Guatemala to Tenochtitlan, their capital. Cacao beans served as currency — used to buy food, textiles, or even services. Drinking cacao became a privilege reserved for rulers, priests, honored warriors, and high-ranking traders. Prepared with water, chili, honey, or flowers, this sacred drink — called xocoatl — was regarded as a source of vital force, endurance, and clarity of mind.

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To explore recipes and rituals inspired by ancestral cacao, visit our section Recipes & Rituals.

In 1519, the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés entered the Mexican lands and, a few years later, ordered the killing of Emperor Montezuma and his people before seizing Tenochtitlan. This act of conquest did not open “a mere market” — it marked the domination of peoples and wisdoms, and the diversion of a sacred plant for the profit of European powers. According to archives, the first official shipment of cacao beans reached Seville in 1588. Very soon, cacao was stripped from its ritual contexts and absorbed into the circuits of trade and slavery — a system built on violence, deportation, forced labor, and land dispossession. At first, the Catholic Church permitted its consumption during fasting, until a theological debate arose: did this vibrant, intoxicating beverage nourish the body… or the soul? The real turning point lay elsewhere — in the erasure of memories, the reduction of the sacred into merchandise, and the integration of cacao into a colonial economy where value accumulated — still today — in the North, while the South bears the human and ecological cost.

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This reality — from conquest to today’s global supply chains — is examined without compromise in our interview with Dominique Ziegler, author of the play Choc! La Friandise des Dieux, which sheds light on the paradoxes and shadows of this story.

In Europe, cacao was rapidly transformed to please Western palates. Sugar — another colonial commodity born of Caribbean slave plantations — was added, and by the late 17ᵗʰ century, milk followed. Thus, chocolate was born — sweetened, whitened, sanitized: the sugary mirror of a bitter story. In France, the drink became the privilege of the royal court; in England, it opened to entrepreneurs in the new chocolate houses, the first of which opened in London in 1657. Everywhere, cacao ceased to be an offering and became a luxury good — a symbol of power, refinement… and forgetfulness.

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This history has been thoroughly documented by historian Nikita Harwich in Histoire du chocolat (Éditions Desjonquères, 1992), which traces with precision the passage from sacred cacao to globalized chocolate.

During the 17ᵗʰ century, other European nations were also captivated by the passion for chocolate. The beverage was first introduced in Italy, then spread among nobles and royal courts across Europe. To secure a steady supply of cacao, colonial powers established plantations in their overseas territories: the British in Sri Lanka and Ghana, the Dutch in Java and Sumatra, and the French in the Antilles and Côte d’Ivoire. Today, this tropical plant is cultivated throughout the Caribbean, Central and South America, tropical Africa, India, Sri Lanka, and many parts of Southeast Asia (see the red-shaded areas on the map below, source here). The global expansion of cacao remains intimately linked to the history of colonialism — and soon a new era began: that of machinery, productivity, and the transformation of taste.