New Find: Chocolate So Currency in Ancient Mayan Civilization
Take a look at your refrigerator, if there are lots of chocolates you might be one of the rich people of ancient Mayan times. That's because a recent study revealed that chocolate is used as a currency by the ancient civilization. In those days, chocolate is usually exchanged for goods and services in the same way we use money today. According to a report in the journal Economic Anthropology, the Mayans never used real coins for their transactions. They use goods such as tobacco, corn, and clothing to "buy" other goods or services. One form of payment received at that time was chocolate. According to Joanne Baron, one of the study's researchers, even the lack of chocolate may have helped undermine the legendary dynasty's downfall.
amun, chocolate is not a snack but cocoa beans are used to make snacks and drinks. "(The Maya Period of Kasik, circa 250-900 BC) monetization of cocoa beans and textile weavings, which will eventually serve as a universal currency crossing ethnic and linguistic boundaries," Baron writes in his report quoted from Science Alert on Friday 29/06/2018). "At the time of the Spanish contact in 1519, these products were used to facilitate buying and selling in the market, to gamble, and as payments for tribute and labor," he continued
Previously, data showed on the arrival of Europeans, around the 16th century, cocoa beans have been used to pay the wages of the workers. From this, Baron is interested in investigating whether it has been done long before. The result, he found more depiction of chocolate in murals, paintings of ceramics, and engraving of the 8th century and earlier. This shows that cocoa beans shift from agriculture to currency. Baron finally found about 180 scenes dating from 691 BC about cocoa beans. The scenes show the cocoa beans offered as a tribute or a tax with wheat and clothing.
Barons also discovered that Maya leaders collected more cocoa beans than they could make into snacks and drinks. Furthermore they suppress its use as a way of paying or buying something in the market. "What is clear from this art repertoire is that cotton and chocolate are often used as payment for taxes," the Baron writes. "Furthermore, the collection of cocoa beans as a tribute, rather than specially prepared liquid chocolate, facilitates its use as a store of value for future transactions," he added. Together with the Aztecs, the Mayans are credited as the first to make chocolate from cocoa beans. In those days, chocolate was made as a frothy drink and then as a delicacy.