Did the Aztecs and Maya use cacao beans as currency?

Goods like tobacco and maize grain ... Anthropology. Baron believes the fact that Maya kings collected cacao and woven cloth as tax shows that both had become a currency at this point....

In particular, the Izalcos polity located in what is today western El Salvador is an important late prehispanic to colonial case study because it relied upon cacao money to an unusual degree and had extraordinary levels of cacao production. Archaeological evidence of Izalcos region settlement patterns, built environment, and material culture patterning indicate the political and economic consequences of cacao money for configuring authority, state finance, agricultural production, and commercial systems.

This facsimile from the Codex Mendoza (c. 1541) shows tribute that the Aztecs extracted twice a year from the cacao-growing region of Soconusco in southern Mexico. Next to the jaguar skins are two loads of cacao beans, which were used as currency as ...

Soon after domestication, the tree ... the Maya and the Aztecs. Cacao was considered a gift from the gods and was used as currency, medicine, and in ceremonies. A variety of cacao-based drinks existed, including an alcoholic beverage made by fermenting the pulp around the seeds, however, it is unclear when a drink that can strictly be defined as chocolate first originated. Early evidence of chocolate ...

The cacao seed was highly valued by the Maya and Aztec peoples for both practical and cultural reasons, eventually becoming a currency.

Cocoa beans may well have been still in use as a form of currency long after the conquest. Professor Manuel Aguilar-Moreno (also on our Panel of Experts) reports that ‘There is an image of Christ in the cathedral of Mexico City known popularly as the Christ of Cacao; people brought offerings of cacao beans, which can still be seen at the feet of the image.’ (Handbook to Life in the Aztec World’, p.

Columbus’s son Ferdinand recorded ... the gift of Quetzalcoatl, the god of wisdom, and the seeds once had so much value that the Aztecs also used them as a form of currency....

Had it not been for anthropologists who unearthed evidence, we might not have known. Murals, ceramic paintings and carvings from the 8th century depict cacao beans being used as a form of currency.

The ancient Mayans used cacao beans—the principal ingredient in chocolate—as a currency, according to a study published in the journal Economic Anthropology.