Uncorking the Past Page 28
The later adoption of the teapot probably signals a shift to making a frothed beverage from the bitter, more chocolate-flavored beans. This change is consistent with the expanding use of the seeds of other plants—including sapote, ceiba, and palm—which were ground and roasted for nutritional, culinary, and medicinal uses.
Figure 21. Vessels for serving and consuming the elite cacao beverages of the Americas. (a, above) High-necked jar in the shape of a cacao pod, corresponding to a type produced and probably used for serving an alcoholic beverage made from cacao pulp between 1400 and 1100 B.C. at Puerto Escondido, Honduras. Chemical analyses by the author’s laboratory and colleagues support this conclusion, which would make these vessels among the earliest known evidence for an alcoholic beverage from cacao. Drawing by Yolanda Tovar, courtesy of John S. Henderson and Yolanda Tovar; Collection of the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia, Museo de San Pedro Sula, Honduras. (b, right) “Teapot” from an unidentified site in northern Honduras, corresponding to a type produced between 900 and 200 B.C. at Puerto Escondido. Photograph courtesy John S. Henderson, Cornell University; Collection of the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia, Museo de San Pedro Sula, Honduras.
A MIXED CACAO BEVERAGE
By the time the frothed beverage took hold in later Mesoamerican societies, hieroglyphic writings had begun to refer to a host of additives to the cacao beverage made from beans. A monumental Mayan lintel stone, spanning a doorway at Piedras Negras in the jungle of northwestern Guatemala, has an inscription that reads “chili cacao.” At nearby Río Azul, a stupendous screw-on stirrup-lidded jar (see plate 8) was found in a fifth-century A.D. tomb, where a ruler had been laid out on a ceiba and cotton mattress and surrounded in Midas-like fashion by a drinking set of tripod cylindrical vessels (see chapter 5). The surface of the unusual container was stuccoed and painted with six large hieroglyphs, which read, “A drinking vessel for witik cacao, for kox cacao.” The italicized terms are yet to be translated, but they may refer to other ingredients in the cacao beverage. Chemical analysis by Jeff Hurst has confirmed that the jar held cacao. Another reference on a polychrome vase mentions k’ab kakawa, literally “honey-cacao,” a delicious-sounding drink.
An opulent tradition of mixing chocolate with other flavorings is revealed in the Spanish accounts of the Aztecs. In Fray Bernardino de Sahagún’s anthropologically astute General History of the Things of New Spain, we read that the ruler was served chocolate in the privacy of his home: “Green cacao-pods, honeyed chocolate, flowered chocolate, flavored with green vanilla, bright red chocolate, huitztecolli-flower chocolate, flower-colored chocolate, black chocolate, white chocolate” (Coe and Coe 1996: 89–90). Huitztecolli is the ear-shaped flower of Cymbopetalum penduliflorum, a plant in the custard-apple family, whose peppery, resinous flavor was highly valued; it had to be imported from the lowland tropics. The chronicles also mention the “black flower,” our vanilla plant (Vanilla planifolia), an orchid fertilized only by the stingless American bee (Melipona spp.) to yield aromatic black seed pods. Other flowers and spices include the “string flower,” a member of the Piper genus and similarly peppery; magnolia flowers; the “popcorn flower,” with a rose scent; ceiba seeds; sapote seeds, with a bitter almond flavor; chilis of all kinds; allspice (Pimenta officianalis), which contributes pumpkin accents; and achiote or annatto (Bixa orellana), which colors the beverage an intense red. Because cane and beet sugars had not yet been introduced into the Americas, honey from the native bee was used to offset the bitterness of the chocolate and other additives. The Spanish, who attempted to stamp out most native customs, were intrigued enough by the beverage to carry a version of it back to the Old World. Today, the traditional beverage is perpetuated among a small population of the Lacandón Maya in eastern Chiapas, who still consider the chocolate foam the “most desirable” part of the drink. Similar ingredients are combined to create an array of chocolate drinks elsewhere in Mexico and Guatemala.
Many of these additives, which we specifically targeted in our chemical tests, were missing from the earliest vessels at Puerto Escondido. This result implies that a different beverage was consumed at Puerto Escondido, apparently an unadulterated alcoholic beverage made only from the sweet cacao pulp. This tradition was probably never totally lost, as some Mayan painted jars refer to “tree-fresh” cacao, and a passage in Sahagún’s account describes the effect of the king’s “green cacao”: “[It] makes one drunk, takes effect on one, makes one dizzy, confuses one, makes one sick, deranges one. When an ordinary amount is drunk, it gladdens one, refreshes one, consoles one, invigorates one. Thus it is said: ‘I take cacao. I wet my lips. I refresh myself’ ” (Henderson and Joyce 2006: 144). Can there be any doubt that Sahagún is describing an alcoholic beverage?
CACAO: A DRINK ONLY FOR THE ELITE
The Aztecs had a mixed view of fermented beverages. On the one hand, they allowed the elderly to drink four cups a day of octli (pulque), a beverage with 4 to 5 percent alcohol made by collecting and fermenting the sugar-rich sap of the agave, or century plant. At grand feasts they encouraged public drunkenness, even among children. The king frequently indulged as well. Bernal Díaz del Castillo personally observed “50 great jars of prepared good cacao with its foam” being served by women attendants to Motcuhzoma Xocoyotzin (“Montezuma”) throughout an epic banquet of three hundred courses.
Such extravagances, however, flew in the face of the Aztecs’ need to maintain military discipline and public order. They strictly regulated who could drink what and when, as they viewed themselves as rulers of an empire and guarantors of the cosmic order in the epoch of the Fifth Sun (albeit from humble origins). Drunkenness was punishable by death, and Aztec literature warns of the evils of drink as severely as do the puritanical tracts that led to prohibition in the United States. The Zhou Dynasty’s negative reaction to the excesses and self-destructiveness of the Shang monarchs is an apt parallel from ancient China (see chapter 2).
Like the Muslim invaders from Saudi Arabia into the Middle East, Aztec tradition recalled a glorious past of relative deprivation and struggle in the deserts of northwestern Mexico before they conquered the central part of the country in the fourteenth century. According to their foundation legend, they established their capital at Tenochtitlán, a group of islands in the middle of the Lake of the Moon, which then filled the Valley of Mexico, when they saw an eagle with a snake in its beak perched on a prickly-pear cactus (Opuntia spp.). This myth alluded to the primary drink of the Aztecs in their homeland, which was made from the fruits of the prickly pear and the giant saguaro and pitahaya cacti, as well as from the pulp of mesquite pods and the flower stalks of agave and yucca. By baking these plants in pits or boiling down their juice, the extract could be preserved as a high-sugar concentrate until it was needed.
Because these beverages quickly turned into vinegar in the hot climate, the native peoples had to drink them fast. They had developed a reputation for being “drunkards in the highest degree” by the time the Spanish arrived. The women stoked the flames of this addiction by preparing a wine every third day, when, one observer noted, “the men drink so much that they lose their senses.” One observer of the Guasave Indians wrote: “They are much given to wine, for they have many fruits of which it is made. During the three months when they are in season drunkenness is almost continuous, and dancing so frequent and long continued that it seems that those who engage in it must have superhuman forces” (Bruman 2000: 10).
Northwestern Mexico was also the epicenter of a hallucinogenic cult in which peyote (Lophophora williamsii) was consumed by decocting the exposed part of the cactus, the so-called mescal button, as a tea. The active alkaloid in peyote is mescaline, derived from phenylethylamine, one of the compounds also found in cacao. It is not known when the peoples of this region began exploiting peyote. Quite possibly they discovered the mind-altering properties of various plants in the Paleoindian or Archaic period, when they first began chewing, pounding, pressing and cooking up whatev
er they found in the desert. Peyote might also have been dispensed in an alcoholic beverage to intensify its effects: the Spanish chroniclers noted this use of corn chicha and pulque.
Whatever the origins of peyote, the Aztecs left it behind when they migrated and replaced it with substitutes available in central Mexico, including members of the mushroom genus Psilocybe. The principal active alkaloids of these fungi are psilocybine and psilocine, which are indoxyl derivatives related to serotonin (see chapter 9). The Aztecs referred to the mushrooms as teonanacatl (“flesh of the gods”). Sahagún says that they were eaten with honey before dawn and washed down with a cacao beverage, and they induced hallucinations, dancing, singing, and weeping.
When the Aztecs conquered Soconusco, one of the prime cacao-producing areas, they were introduced to yet another plant from which to make a beverage. They soon made special cacao beverages the sole prerogative of the elite, just as the ancient Maya had. The only people permitted to drink them were the king, his entourage, highly placed soldiers, and a merchant class, the pochteca, who were charged with transporting the cacao and other luxury goods (jaguar skins, amber, and the sublimely beautiful feathers of the quetzal bird) from the Pacific lowlands through enemy territory to Tenochtitlán. Except for the king, who could drink his fill, the cacao drinks were reserved for the end of a meal or feast, when they were enjoyed with a tobacco pipe, animated discussion, and entertainment, in keeping with the customs of male societies around the world. Sahagún tells us that in the competitive world of the pochteca, the custom was to grasp a gourd containing the drink in one’s right hand, while the left hand held the stick for frothing the beverage and a holder for laying down the gourd between quaffs.
Perhaps because the cacao tree was so alien to the Aztecs, they gave it and its beverages an extraordinary place in their culture. For instance, cacao beans were the currency by which all goods and services were valued. Montezuma had a veritable Fort Knox of cacao in his storerooms at Tenochtitlán, which, according to one Spanish chronicler, held nearly a billion beans.
Aztec mythology divided the universe into the four cardinal directions, supported by “world trees.” Their unique folding-screen bark codices represented the trees as radiating out, like a mandala, from the sun god, Huitzilopochtli. The cacao tree grew in the south, appropriately enough as cacao came from that direction, and was associated with the ancestors and the color of blood. The cacao pod itself, which is shaped like a human heart, reinforced this symbolism. When a slave or prisoner was sacrificed at the Great Temple to Huitzilopochtli in Tenochtitlán, the priests tore out the still-beating heart of the victim and held it high toward the sun. The severed heads of the sacrifices were displayed on racks. In one annual ceremony to Quetzalcoatl (the Feathered Serpent), a perfect specimen of humanity was identified with and regaled in the dress and jewels of the god and expected to do a celebratory dance before his demise. If he faltered, he was given a gourd of chocolate, mixed with caked blood from the obsidian knives of earlier sacrifices. This drink was said to provide the courage and joy needed to complete the dance and keep the universe from imploding.
Hundreds of years earlier, the Maya were similarly obsessed with cacao’s place in the universe. In the images that adorn their beautiful polychrome cylindrical drinking vessels, the head of the Maize God, who was slain by lords of the underworld, is often depicted hanging amid the pods of cacao trees. According to the Popol Vuh (Book of Counsel) of the Quiché Maya of Guatemala, which was partly transcribed by the Spanish from lost hieroglyphic originals dating back millennia, the Maize God was resuscitated when his head was displayed to the daughter of a Mayan ruler. She gave birth to the Hero Twins, Hunahpú and Xbalanqué, who brought the Maize God back to life and were established forever in glory as the sun and moon. Later in the epic, humans were created from maize, sweet fruits, and cacao.
Like the Aztecs, the Maya equated cacao with blood, and in the illustrations on some chocolate vases, gods puncture their necks and spray blood onto cacao pods. In another scene, a blowgunner, who probably represents one of the Hero Twins, hunts a quetzal. As in later Aztec tombs, effigy jars in Maya burials are adorned with cacao pods. Even the later pochteca merchants find their match in the Mayan Merchant God, Ek Chuah or God L, who is shown on chocolate vessels approaching a cacao tree surmounted by a quetzal, with another quetzal perched on his backpack. Repeatedly, Mesoamerican societies reveal the intimate connection between maize and cacao, blood and fertility, fantastic birds, dreams and hallucinations, music, and dance.
THEOBROMA FOR THE MASSES
Our discovery of the earliest cacao beverage naturally made me start to think about how such a beverage might have tasted and whether we could re-create it. I again enlisted the help of the adventuresome Sam Calagione and his fellow brewer, Bryan Selders, at Dogfish Head Brewery.
We debated how best to carry off this new venture into the wilds of ancient America. If the first cacao beverages were made from the pulp of the tree’s fruit, should we try to import pods from Central America, preferably Honduras, the source of the pottery we had analyzed? Unfortunately, because the fruit is so perishable, this was impossible, barring our traveling there and doing our experiment on site. We had another idea: why not make an alcoholic beverage based on corn and honey, well-known ingredients in the later Mayan and Aztec drinks, and then go a step further and include some additives based on the accounts of the Spanish chroniclers? Although we couldn’t get the cacao fruit, we tracked down a purveyor of dark chocolate (Askinosie Chocolate in Missouri) that could provide us with cacao nibs and powder from the premier area of Aztec chocolate production, Soconusco. Its bitterness would be offset by the honey and corn. The herb achiote would provide a special touch of intense red, recalling the Aztecs’ preoccupation with human sacrifice. Finally, some chills would add zest to the concoction, but rather than fiery-hot habañero, we settled on the milder ancho. We might also have tossed in peppery “ear flower” or a hallucinogenic mushroom if they had been available. The fermentation was carried out with a German ale yeast, which is not obtrusive and brings out the flavors of the other ingredients.
We went through several trial runs—closely watched over and filmed by California video companies—and then asked volunteers to taste the results at brewpubs in New York, Philadelphia, and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. After some more tweaking, we produced Theobroma, a truly innovative beverage that captures the spirit of the New World, at 9 percent alcohol. In tasting it, one first detects the distinct aroma of dark chocolate; then come the flavors of paprika from the ancho chili, smokiness and earthiness from the achiote, and the aromatic accents of the honey. My only complaint is that the beverage isn’t frothy enough to be inhaled, as a Mayan king might have done.
BURNING DOWN THE BREWERY
A remote stronghold in the Andes foothills, only about seventy-five kilometers from the Pacific Ocean in southern Peru, has shed new light on how early American peoples must have searched their environments for sugar-rich resources to make fermented beverages. Cerro Baúl, where the Wari state built a colonial outpost and palace-temple complex on a 2,590-meter summit around A.D. 600, has been dubbed the Masada of the Andes. Native Peruvians are said to have escaped to Cerro Baúl during the Incan conquest, and held out against their enemy, like the Jews in their mountain stronghold resisting the Romans, until their food and water ran out. The Wari survived, unlike the Jews, but around A.D. 1000 the site was abandoned. Whether they had become tired of lugging water up the steep slopes, dealing with the logistical problems of being six hundred kilometers away from their capital, or negotiating with the rival Tiwanaku state, which had insinuated itself into the border area, we do not know: the Wari simply picked up and left. Before leaving, however, they held a grand feast, lubricated by copious amounts of their state beverage, after which their drinking vessels were ceremonially broken and the whole complex put to the torch.
The Wari beverage was made from the fruit or drupes of Schinus molle, the Peruvian pe
pper tree, an ingredient in the Mesoamerican bone-breaker drink. The tree, which grows to fifteen meters in height, is widely dispersed in Peru, along the coast and up to an elevation of 3,600 meters. When its fruit ripens in the summer (January and February), the branches of the tree are bowed down by the weight of the berries. Early humans were probably first attracted to it by the intense red color of the fruit.
The Spanish chroniclers and modern informants describe how a wine was and still is made from the fruit. The berries were heated and soaked in water to release a sugary mash from the pulp, and especially from fleshy pockets on the seed. The mash has a distinct taste of fennel and pepper; the seeds and outer skin are bitter and resinous and need to be strained out. Fermentation proceeded in large, covered jars for several days, the yeast probably being resident on some of the broken berries. Garcilaso de la Vega reported that the beverage “is very good to drink, very tasty, and very healthful”; indeed, the name for the pepper tree in the Peruvian Quechua language translates as “tree of life.” In areas where there was already an appreciation of the value of mixing different ingredients in a fermented beverage, such as Mexico, the fruit of the pepper tree was soon being combined with cornstalk and cactus juices and maize malt.
Although the Spanish friars denigrated native beverages as the work of the devil, they were so enthusiastic about Schinus molle that they transplanted it throughout the Pacific rim. Their goal was to produce a competitor to black pepper (Piper nigrum), produced in the Dutch East Indies and highly prized, and to use the tree’s resinous oils for warding off insects, treating disease, producing gums and dyes, and yielding a decay-resistant lumber.
At Cerro Baúl, the Wari established the largest known production facility in the Americas for making a fermented beverage. The intended product was Schinus molle wine, not corn chicha or an elite chocolate beverage. In a trapezoid building, adjacent to the palace, a series of rooms were devoted to milling tubers and chili peppers, perhaps additives to the beverage; heating the mash in twelve large vats; and fermenting the beverage in gourd containers. Thousands of pepper-tree seeds and stems were found around the hearths for heating the vats, suggesting that the berries were cleaned and sieved from the mash here. Each vat had a capacity of 150 liters; altogether some 1,800 liters of the wine could be prepared at one time. Based on field experiments by David J. Goldstein and Robin Coleman, about four thousand berries, or the fruit from several trees, are needed for twenty liters of the wine, so more than a hundred trees would have had to be harvested for the final celebration. Special shawl pins (tupu), worn only by women, were found scattered through the facility, implying once again that the preparation of the beverage was a woman’s job.