COCOA AND CHOCOLATE Etymology The word "chocolate" comes from the Aztecs of Mexico, and is derived from the Nahuatl word xocolatl which is a combination of the words, xocolli, meaning "bitter", and atl, which is "water". The Aztecs associated chocolate with Xochiquetzal, the goddess of fertility. Chocolate is also associated with the Mayan god of fertility. Mexican philologist Ignacio Davila Garibi proposed that "Spaniards had coined the word by taking the Mayan word chocol and then replacing the Mayan term for water, haa, with the Aztec term, at". However, it is more likely that the Aztecs themselves coined the term, having long adopted into Nahuatl the Mayan word for the "cacao" bean; the Spanish had little contact with the Mayans before Cortés' early reports to the Spanish King of the beverage known as xocolatl. William Bright noted that the word xocoatl does not occur in early Spanish or Nahuatl colonial sources. History Native to lowland, tropical South America, cacao has been cultivated for at least three millennia in Central America and Mexico, with its earliest documented use around 1100 BC. The majority of the Mesoamerican peoples made chocolate beverages, including the Mayans and Aztecs.
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