Historical Pottery Reveals the Earliest Recognized Traces of Chocolate East of the Mississippi, Portray a Image of Connection within the Americas

A brand new archaeological discovery suggests that individuals in present-day Georgia have feasted with cacao for 1,000 years

Joshua Rapp Be taught

| Science Correspondent

October 2, 2026

The pleasure of chocolate carried throughout the continent might have fueled the builders of earthen monuments in Georgia a millennium in the past. A brand new genetic evaluation of residues left behind on items of pottery close to the Etowah Indian Mounds has revealed the earliest recognized traces of cacao east of the Mississippi River, increasing archaeologists’ understanding of the unfold of products and concepts within the historical Americas.

“The Indigenous world of the Southeast was a world world, the place individuals have been very linked,” says Adam King, an archaeologist on the College of South Carolina.

Cacao, which produces beans which are fermented and roasted to create chocolate, originated in Mesoamerica. A few of the earliest proof for the plant’s domestication dates to about 5,300 years in the past in Ecuador. By 1500 B.C.E., the Olmecs of southern Mexico have been making fermented chocolate drinks. Cacao beans have been even used as a forex by the Maya within the Basic Interval, and in 1050 C.E., chocolate was widespread within the area.

However solely restricted proof from the time had recognized the substance in North America. The brand new discovery, printed on August 26 in PLOS One, reveals that the magic beans had by some means reached Etowah by across the eleventh century.

As we speak, sitting simply northwest of Atlanta, Etowah hosts six earthen monuments created by Native People in the course of the pre-Columbian Mississippian interval. The tallest of them as soon as rose about 64 toes excessive, King says, and was constructed with crimson clay between 1000 and 1550 C.E. Pyramid-like mounds have been additionally sculpted by the individuals of Cahokia in southern Illinois, who created the well-known, 100-foot-tall Monks Mound.

King says that at Etowah, the constructing of those constructions was probably extremely ritualized—the mounds themselves might have symbolized our planet. “They’re really re-enacting the creation of the Earth,” he says. By constructing or including to the construction, the Mississippians have been symbolically inserting themselves throughout the cosmos.

It wasn’t all heavy lifting, although. The Mississippians probably celebrated the completion of a mound with a big feast. Within the Nineteen Fifties, archaeologists discovered the stays of such a feast marking one of many earliest phases of mound constructing at Etowah, someday between 1050 and 1150 C.E. The remnants, which included animal bones and pottery fragments, have been found in a borrow pit—a gap generated by the mining of crimson clay for the mounds. After the Mississippians mined clay from these pits, they stuffed them again up with different filth and trash—on this case, the stays of the feast. The archaeologists washed the items of pottery, referred to as sherds, and saved them for many years. However fortunately, the artifacts retained some traces of what the vessels as soon as contained.

A few decade in the past, King and his colleague Terry Powis, an archaeologist who’d been learning cacao use in Mesoamerica, wished to see if these sherds held the stays of chocolate. They obtained permission from the Muscogee individuals, who maintain Etowah sacred, to research residue from the bits of pottery. Their research recognized 4 natural compounds present in cacao, together with caffeine, which was current in all 31 sherds they examined.

However cacao isn’t the one plant native to the Americas that carries caffeine. A number of American holly species additionally include the stimulant, together with the yerba mate consumed in South America. In what’s now the U.S. Southeast, Indigenous individuals drank tea created from the native yaupon holly. Based mostly on their residue evaluation, the staff couldn’t inform if the caffeine got here from cacao or yaupon holly. They concluded that it was probably the latter as a result of its prevalence within the area, although they didn’t have arduous proof.

Extra lately, King and Powis teamed up with French researchers to do genetic evaluation on the artifacts in hopes of fixing the open query. Of their new research, they reported traces of cacao DNA in two of the pot sherds.

The staff ensured that the cacao DNA wasn’t only a case of contamination—of, maybe, archaeologists dealing with the traditional pottery after consuming a Snickers bar. The cacao’s DNA high quality had deteriorated in a manner in step with leaving your snack round for a millennium, suggesting it didn’t have a present-day supply.

“They take a whole lot of care to speak about why they don’t assume it’s fashionable contamination, which you need to fear about with DNA,” says archaeologist Barbara Mills, a professor emerita on the College of Arizona who was not concerned in King’s research. “I believed they did a extremely nice job.”

Maybe probably the most stunning factor, nonetheless, was how far Etowah is from the closest space the place cacao was cultivated: The timber thrive in tropical, lowland areas reminiscent of southern Mexico.

It’s unclear how the cacao got here to Etowah. A dealer or traveler may have introduced it there immediately, King says, or it may have been traded from individual to individual till it arrived.

Perhaps it made a pit cease on the best way: A couple of years in the past, researchers discovered cacao residue in ceramic vessels in Pueblo Bonito, a Chaco Canyon website in New Mexico. The Ancestral Puebloan society there used these vessels across the similar time that individuals of the Mississippian tradition used the ceramic pots with cacao residue in Etowah. Comply with-up evaluation revealed extra potential traces of cacao in different components of the U.S. Southwest.

It’s attainable that the cacao beans used to make the chocolate drink consumed in Etowah got here through commerce from the Chaco Canyon. “There are continental scale commerce networks,” says Mills, who has studied ceramics in Chaco Canyon.

It’s additionally attainable that the cacao was traded alongside the Gulf Coast, King says, or it could have come through the Caribbean and up via Florida. It’s tough to say as a result of not a lot proof of Mesoamerican affect, apart from the cultivation of maize, might be present in Etowah.

A ready chocolate drink would probably not have lasted all the best way from Mesoamerica to the U.S. Southeast. Cacao beans, then again, have a protracted shelf life, says Anabel Ford, an archaeologist on the College of California, Santa Barbara, who has studied the Maya for many years however was not concerned with King’s work. “Cacao is dried and, if secure, can endure for a very long time,” she says.

Consequently, whoever introduced the cacao most likely additionally got here with a recipe for chocolate. Within the Maya world, chocolate was usually consumed ritually, and Mills says that the Chaco Canyon vessels with cacao residue additionally counsel ritual use. Nonetheless, the diploma to which the Maya rituals have been transmitted to Etowah isn’t clear. The vessels wherein cacao was discovered at Etowah are completely different from Maya or Ancestral Puebloan vessels, so it’s tough to say how they have been used apart from within the context of a feast. The Etowah vessels are distinctive, created by stamping prints onto the pots utilizing particular paddles. “These are a few of the most intriguing designs that individuals have made within the Mississippi space,” Mills says.

For King, this discovery reveals how properly the Americas have been linked a millennium in the past. It additionally opens an outdated argument. Archaeologists used to consider that the design of the large, flattened mounds of the Mississippian tradition was borrowed from Mesoamerican pyramids. That concept step by step fell out of favor with archaeologists as a result of a scarcity of additional proof of connection between these two cultural areas. Plus, the speculation had an inherent suggestion that Mississippian individuals couldn’t have discovered how one can construct a mound by themselves.

However this discovery of cacao opens the chance that a minimum of some extent of connection occurred between Georgia and Central America 1,000 years in the past. Kinship networks and commerce relationships “have been a lot broader and way more linked than we predict they have been,” King says. “That is actually an Americas story.”