The World's Oldest Writing?

Researchers in South Africa have found what they believe might be the oldest human writing, or at least the oldest attempt to convey information graphically. The writings, 60,000 year old ostrich eggs with regular patterns of scratches in geometric shapes, look very intentional and quite different from random markings.

Linguists, pointing to the fact that current residents of the area used to mark ostrich shells with geometric patterns to show ownership, suggest that the decorated eggs are in fact an extremely early evidence of human language. The speculations, reported in New Scientist, contrast with the traditional view that true language began about 50,000 years ago.

While some have always held that some sort of symbolic representation of communication must have been present among homo sapiens as part of the definition of the species, putting the origin of language at about two million years ago, writing has been thought to be a much later development.

Having seen the images, we think that they may be the forerunners of the "Picturesque" design of Sweetique Chocolate Easter Eggs, which you can see in the photo above, on the right.

The Columbian Exposition

Among the Great Dates in Chocolate History is the year 1893, when the World's Columbian Exposition took place in Chicago. Among the exhibitors there was a German chocolatier, who demonstrated all the machinery involved in making eating chocolate.

At that time, chocolate had been available in the United States for more than a century -- but very few people knew about it. After observing the 1500 lb Venus de Milo sculpted of chocolate in the Agriculture exhibit, people couldn't forget it. A young man named Milton Hershey bought all the German machinery and began making chocolate himself.

Fortunately, there was more chocolate machinery available in Germany. Sweetique Eggs are made in Germany, with the attention to detail and the long tradition of chocolate-making for which German confectioners are famous.

The Beginning of Eating Chocolate

Just as with coffee and tea, chocolate was initially boiled up for drinking. Like coffee and tea, chocolate was sweetened and flavored, and eventually used for baking. Chocolate differs from coffee and tea, though, in containing more than 50% fat. This meant that it was possible to develop chocolate that could be eaten rather than drunk. It wasn't easy. Getting from cacao pods to the Sweetique Egg took centuries of technological innovation.

Chocolate was brought to Europe from the Americas in the 1500s, and by the 1700s it was a popular beverage all over Europe.

Dutch chemist Casparus van Houten developed a cocoa press in 1828 that could remove the cocoa butter and leave cocoa powder. His son Coenraad Van Houten developed the first approximation of eating chocolate over the next two decades, but Englishman Joseph Fry is generally credited with creating the first actual chocolate bar in 1847. Fry melted cocoa butter, combined it with cocoa powder, and molded a candy bar. In 1875, Daniel Peter and Henri Nestle added powdered milk to chocolate to create milk chocolate, and it was in 1879 that Rodolphe Lindt developed the conching process that led to chocolate that melts on the tongue.

Eating chocolate overtook drinking chocolate in popularity in the twentieth century, and now Americans eat ten to twelve pounds of chocolate a year -- though we still can't compare with Europeans. The British, according to the most recent figures, eat 35 pounds of chocolate per capita each year. They were the first to have eating chocolate available, after all, and we simply haven't caught up with them yet.

Regency Chocolate

It's hard to imagine it now, but there was a time when chocolate didn't come in bars, and was rarely eaten at all.

In 1674, a Frenchman opened the first chocolate house in London. Like today's coffee shops, chocolate houses were a place for the people of the Regency to hang out and talk. Those establishments that were primarily frequented by men were often gambling dens as well. We may find it hard to imagine those hard-drinking men gambling away the night with a cup of hot cocoa at hand, but chocolate in those days was considered a stimulating adult drink.

Chocolate pots, much like teapots, but with a place for a candle to keep the chocolate warm, were filled with hot milk and ground chocolate, and the resulting drink was whipped to a froth. Writing from the time suggests that people had different tastes in their hot chocolate -- sweet or bitter, strong or milky -- just as modern coffee shops offer lots of variations on coffee.

Chocolate was also used for baking in the Regency era. Cakes and rolls made with chocolate were the province of the rich, of course, and eating chocolate was not yet known, so the average Regency family would think of chocolate as something to drink.

As a beverage, chocolate was one of the most popular flavors of the day, for men and women both. The ladies in the picture above are probably on their way to get some.

Cocoa Beans as Currency

Columbus was the first European to report that cocoa beans were used as currency in the New World. He saw this in what is now Nicaragua in the early 1500s, but he didn't invest in cocoa. He apparently had other things on his mind at the time. Possibly the deliciousness of chocolate.

In Aztec culture, 400 cocoa beans equaled one zontli, and 20 zontli or 8000 beans made up one Xiquipilli, so the conversion rate might have been difficult for Europeans to express. Hernando de Oviedo y Valdez wrote about the purchases he made with cocoa beans, though -- one rabbit could be had for four beans.

Hernando Cortez didn't care for chocolate, so he wasn't distracted from its value as currency. Having received a cocoa plantation as a gift from Montezuma, he set about making cocoa beans profitable for Spain.

Jesuit Pedro Martyre de Angleria admired the use of cocoa beans for currency, on the grounds that it discouraged avarice. Cocoa beans wouldn't keep their usefulness if they were kept out of circulation for long, so there was no point in hoarding them.

Cocoa beans didn't catch on as currency in other parts of the world, but they have kept their value as the source of chocolate. There's no point in hoarding chocolate, either, but it makes a great choice for fundraising.

The Very First Chocolate

The Olmec were probably the first people to appreciate chocolate. They began cultivating cacao around 1500 B.C., according to Michael Coe, co-author of The True History of Chocolate. The Olmec are best known for their sculptures of giant faces, like this one from La Venta. Their civilization left little in the way of written records, and modern researchers feel that their influence on other Mesoamerican cultures may have been underestimated. This seems to be the case when it comes to chocolate.

The earliest hard evidence of chocolate's being consumed by humans comes from residue in a Mayan vessel dating from before 500 A.D. The Maya combined cocoa with honey, maize, and hot peppers to create a rich, foamy drink described by the Spanish in the 1500s. It was long believed that the Maya were the first to use chocolate.

However, Coe points out that the word "cacao" is derived from the Olmec rather than the Mayan language. Anthropologist Amber VanDerwarker has shown that the Olmec were agriculturalists, managing orchards of fruit trees. Then why not cacao as well?

Further study may be required to establish with certainty whether the Olmec were the very first to discover the food value of chocolate. We can say with confidence that by the time Europeans visited the Americas, chocolate was firmly established as an important food crop.

If you think you're addicted to chocolate...

When chocolate was brought to the Old World, the people of Spain added sugar and spices to it, creating a wonderful drink which we would recognize today as hot chocolate.

So desirable did the women of Spain and of New Spain find this drink that they had their maids bring cups of hot chocolate to them during mass. They couldn't do without chocolate even for the length of a sermon.

There were official objections to this perhaps excessive devotion to chocolate. Nonetheless, the church decided that chocolate was not a food, and therefore could be consumed on fast days -- just not in church.