It is known that the Maya invented the cultivation and use of cacao to make their chocolate-flavored drink of the gods. What is not known is how the ritual and use of chocolate made its way a few thousand miles northward. The ceramics are similar in design and decorations.
There are some interesting but unexplicable discoveries lately, specifically the finding of ceramic drinking vessels within the ruins of Chaco Canyon National Monument, located slightly off-center in the middle of New Mexico. Chaco has always been fascinating, and Pueblo Bonito in particular. Why the astronomical alignments and the 40 feet wide highways to nowhere, when these people had no wheeled vehicles. The same can be said of the Maya highway projects, deep within the Guatemalan and Yucatan jungles..The Maya likewise built wide highways and had no wheeled conveyances. Why? How did the cacao beans get from Central America to New Mexico, much less the concept and the recipe?
Copper bells, feathers and other trade goods from the Mexican empires to the south left their presence known at Chaco Canyon, but cacao and the preparation of the drink, as well as the similarity of the drinking vessels leaves wider questions: did the Maya travel that far or were the trading systems that sophisticated?
Patricia Crown, as quoted by Science Daily, "has long been fascinated by ceramic cylinders excavated at Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon excavated in the Hyde Exploring Expedition from 1896-1899 and the National Geographic Society Expedition from 1920 to 1927. Only about 200 of the cylinders exist and most were found in a single room at the site. The cylinders are now housed at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. and at the American Museum of Natural History.
Archaeologists generally agree the vessels were used for some ritual, but there has been great disagreement about the specific use of the vessels. Crown was thinking about how the Maya drank chocolate from ceramic cylinders, and wondered whether the cylinders found at Chaco might have been used in the same way. It was clear that the Maya used the cylinders for chocolate. Experts could read the glyphs on the vessels that made it clear they were chocolate containers."
Whatever the connection, it’s one of histories unanswered questions and yes, they did find traces of chocolate in the New Mexican ceramics. Maybe 2012 will shed further light.
Source: Examiner