Aztecs and Maya used cacao beans as currency – True

Art suggests that cacao beans were a valued currency

Money in Mesoamerica has a long history and many forms; cacao, a tree seed, was one kind of currency. Abundant archaeological evidence of cacao money …

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 was introduced to Mesoamerica, where cacao drinks gained significance as an elite beverage among cultures including the Maya and the Aztecs. Cacao was considered a gift from the gods and was used as currency, medicine, and in ceremonies.

The Florentine Codex includes this description of a bad cacao seller as a trickster who: ‘counterfeits cacao... by making the fresh cacao beans whitish... stirs them into the ashes... with amaranth seed dough, wax, avocado pits [stones] he counterfeits cacao.... Indeed he casts, he throws in with them wild cacao beans to deceive the people.’ (Quoted in ‘Daily Life of the Aztecs’ by David Carrasco, p.

First, it demonstrates that currency is fundamentally based on trust and consensus. The Aztecs and Mayans accepted cacao beans as money not because they were forced to, but because they collectively agreed that these beans held value.

Although cacao seeds held cultural, nutritional, and economic benefits for the Maya and Aztec peoples, perishability presented a problem for using the seeds as a currency over the long term.

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.

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....