It was the money that grew on trees.

Said to be a gift from the gods, cacao for the ancient Maya was considered sacred, used not only as currency, but in special ceremonies and religious rituals. It’s the progenitor plant of chocolate, and notions of luxury are embedded in its lore.

The prevailing belief: Cacao was more available to, even controlled by, the society’s very upper echelons, royalty. Past efforts to identify cacao in ceramics focused on highly decorative vessels associated with elite ceremonial contexts — think ornate drinking vases — leading to assumptions about how cacao was distributed and who could access it.

What about the farmers who grew cacao and the communities of people who lived amongst these orchards? What of the general populace? 

A new study by UC Santa Barbara researchers Anabel Ford and Mattanjah de Vries asks these questions — and answers them — by examining cacao residues from ancient ceramics. Their results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, demonstrate that cacao was, in fact, accessible to the general populace and was used in celebrations at all levels of society.