Ecuador May Be Origin of Cacao Trees

choi

Adam H Graham, Snack in Chocolate's Birthplace; Milky? Dark? Floral and complex?  Ecuador has your bar--plus ocelot kittens. Wall Street Journal, Sept 14, 2013.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 57714080545376.html

Note:
(a) "WHILE THE EGYPTIANS were building pyramids, the Druids were hauling blocks to Stonehenge and the Chinese were mapping out their wall, Ecuadoreans were making drinks. But what they were imbibing may well have had a bigger impact on the world than those other ancient wonders combined."
(i) druid (n; often capitalized): "a member of a group of priests in an ancient British religion"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/druid
(ii) druid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druid
("during the Iron Age [in Europe: 1200 BC-400 AD] and possibly earlier that consisted of both men and women; Very little is known about the ancient druids. They left no written accounts of themselves and the only evidence is a few descriptions left by Greek, Roman)
(iii) Stonehenge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge
(Archaeologists believe it was built anywhere from 3000 BC to 2000 BC; section 1 Etymology)

(b) “Chocolate was once thought to have originated with Mesoamerican Mayans around 1,900 BC. But in 2011, archaeologists discovered evidence that it may have come from Ecuador. They found traces of theobromine—a compound found in cacao beans, the raw material for chocolate—on 5,300-year-old pots in a southern province of the country. Around the same time, an heirloom variety of cacao, called Nacional, was found growing wild about 300 miles south, in northern Peru. The beans, prized for their pure flavor, dominated Ecuador's chocolate market before disease struck in 1916, eliminating 95% of the species.”
(i) “But in 2011, archaeologists discovered evidence that it may have come from Ecuador. They found traces of theobromine—a compound found in cacao beans, the raw material for chocolate—on 5,300-year-old pots in a southern province of the country.”
(A) Yesterday I was writing this posting but was stopped in my track. I could not find the --in the entire Web, as well as PubMed (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, a website of indexing biological papers run by US government). I did find a latest paper:

Loor Solorzano RG et al, Insight into the Wild Origin, Migration and Domestication History of the Fine Flavour Nacional Theobroma cacao L. Variety from Ecuador. PLoS ONE, (2012) 7: e48438.
http://www.plosone.org/article/i ... ournal.pone.0048438

which, in the third paragraph from the bottom of the text, stated without providing a citation, "Recently, a ceremonial formative site was discovered on the eastern slopes of the Andes in the southern part of Ecuadorian Amazonia, and dating back to the 3rd millennium BC."

I emailed the corresponding author/ senior author Claire Lanaud, who overnight supplied the requested citations:

* Valdez F et al, Découverte d'un site cérémoniel formatif sur le versant oriental des Andes. Comptes Rendus de l'Academie des Sciences de l'Institut de France (2005), Palevol 4: 369-374.
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/238382165_Dcouverte_d'un_site_crmoniel_formatif_sur_le_versant_oriental_des_Andes
(English abstract)
* Valdez F (2008) Inter-Zonal Relationships in Ecuador (Chapter 43). In Handbook of South American Archaeology. Silverman H and Isbell W (eds), Chicago: Kluwer Academic Publishers, Pp. 865-887.

So the “2001” part of the WSJ article is wrong.
(B)
* Theobroma cacao
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobroma_cacao
(Its seeds are used to make cocoa powder and chocolate; “Each seed contains a significant amount of fat (40–50%) as cocoa butter. [Its] most noted active constituent is theobromine, a compound similar to caffeine;” section 2 Taxonomy and nomenclature)
* cacao (n; Spanish, from Nahuatl cacahuatl; First Known Use 1555)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cacao

Note its pronunciation: Spanish pronunciation would be ka-KA-o, but is Anglicized in English-speaking world.

(ii) For nacional, see next posting.

choi

In reverse chronological order. Later report first, that is.

(1) Florence Fabricant, Rare Cacao Beans Discovered in Peru. New York Times, Jan 12, 2011.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/dining/12chocolate.html
(pure Nacional)

Quote:

“Some Nacional still grows in Ecuador, though most is not pure. At least one chocolate company, Kallari, says it uses it in blends.

“White beans [from Nacional variety of Cacao], which Dr [Lyndel] Meinhardt[, a scientist with Agricultural Research Service of the US Department of Agriculture,] said have fewer bitter anthocyanins, produce a more mellow-tasting, less acidic chocolate.

“A cacao pod is filled with sweet, whitish, viscous pulp embedded with seeds. Inside these seeds are the beans.

Note:
(a) Peru
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peru
(It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil)
(b) “When roasted the [white] beans turn brown and they are unrelated to ‘white chocolate.’”

white chocolate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_chocolate
(is not a true chocolate as it does not contain cocoa solids)

is mainly cocoa butter.
(c) “Cacao is thought to have originated in the rain forests at the source of the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers and then gradually dispersed northward.”

Wiki has a page for Orinoco without correlation with Amazon (River). So it is better to view the map 1 (showing Orinoco River to the north of Amazon River) in
Amazon River
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_River
(d) “The beans are made into what they call Fortunato No 4, a 68-percent bittersweet couverture, a high-cocoa butter chocolate that’s easy to use.”
(i) Spanish-English dictionary:
* nacional (adj): “national, domestic”
* “Fortunato” is made up. The Spanish adjective for English “fortunate” is “afortunado” (or afortunada when used with a singular, feminine noun).
(ii) couverture (n): “chocolate that contains at least 32 percent cocoa butter”
WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/couverture


(2) The above report mentioned Kallari brand of chocolate.

Jill Santopietro, When Chocolate Is a Way of Life. New York Times, Nov 5, 2008.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/dining/05choc.html

Quote:

“The girls stop to suck the sticky white pulp that envelops the cacao beans in the pods. It tastes like Sour Patch candies. For Quichua people [Indians] like the Dahuas, cacao has always been a treat — the pulp a tart candy and the purple bean, when ground to a paste and mixed with hot water and a little sugar, a rustic hot chocolate.

“Now Kallari bars (pronounced kai-YAH-ri [which is Spanish pronunciation for Kallari in LATIN AMERICA, while in Spain the “ll” is pronounced like “lli” in “billiards”]) — named for the cooperative they formed — are being sold throughout the United States. People in the chocolate industry said they knew of no other cacao farmers who were making and marketing their own chocolate.

“The cooperative uses an unusual blend of cacaos that grow on the Quichua land — fruity Cacao Amazónico, nutty Criollo, Forastero Amazónico, Tipo Trinitario and, most important, a rare variety that flourishes around their homes, Cacao Nacional.

“Kallari, which in Quichua means both ‘to begin’ and ‘the early times.’ * * * the cooperative now includes about 850 families.

Years before Indians made the quantum leap to make and market their brand of chocolate, “they decided to sell their cacao directly to big league chocolate makers. They e-mailed makers in North America, attracting the interest of Robert Steinberg, a founder of Scharffen Berger chocolate in Berkeley, Calif. But Dr Steinberg said that before he could use the beans they needed to be properly fermented, a process that brings out fruit and floral flavors and reduces astringency. * * * Before [that], the Quichua had only fermented their beans inadvertently, when they piled them up before drying.

“Chocolate making has always been less common in cacao producing countries than it has been in Europe, where the technology to create chocolate bars was developed and where such a luxury could be more easily afforded.

Note:
(a) Kallari
http://www.kallari.com/

, which identifies itself as the Only Natie American Chocolate."
(b) Products. Sour Patch (whose slogan is “Sour then Sweet”), undated.
http://www.sourpatch.com/products.html