"Chocolate"

       It takes a Travel section of the Sunday newspaper to give you a flavor of where certain words come from.  Here is part of Jode Jaffe's journalism today from the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico where the word "chocolate" came from:


       The term "cacao" comes from the Olmecs who pre-dated the Maya....

       But it was the Maya who came up with chocolate--both the name and the drink.

       Combining the words chokoh, meaning hot and ha, meaning water, Maya chocolate was a drink that mixed ground-up cacao with chile, vanilla and other spices.

       To the Maya, cacao was crucial.  They thought it was a gift from the gods and drank it for religious ceremonies.  So cherished, the beans were their currency.  A rabbit cost 10 beans, a slave 100.

       It was xocolatl, the Aztec version of the Maya drink, that the Spanish first encountered -- and hated.  One of Hernan Cortes' conquistadors called it "a bitter drink for pigs."

       Nonetheless, Cortes brought the cacao mixture back to Spain.  That's when the magic happened.  They added cane sugar, which turned it from something for pigs to what Cortes called "a divine drink which builds up resistance and fights fatigue."

       It quickly became a favorite in the Spanish court, then swept through Europe and eventually the world.

       Once the secret of chocolate got out, other places started cultivating it.  Today more than 80% of cacao is grown in Africa and Indonesia.  Less than 2% is grown in Mexico.  But the vestiges of the cacao culture remain and there's an effort to make the Yucatan the center of the chocolate world again.

            L.A. Times