This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Long before cacao became the chocolate of global commerce, it was one of the most valued substances in Mesoamerican civilization, and it was valued for reasons well documented in the archaeological and documentary record. Classic Maya iconography and hieroglyphic texts, from roughly 250 CE onward, show cacao prepared as a frothed drink used in elite feasting, in ritual offerings, and in scenes associating it with gods and the underworld; vessels for drinking it have been recovered from royal and noble burials, evidence of the substance's high status. Among the Aztec, Spanish chroniclers at the time of contact in the sixteenth century recorded cacao beans functioning as currency in marketplace trade, as a tribute good demanded from conquered provinces, and as a ceremonial drink, sometimes flavoured with chili, vanilla or achiote, reserved largely for nobility, warriors and priests rather than ordinary consumption.
What these sources establish is real ceremonial, economic and medicinal significance across both civilizations, sustained over many centuries and documented from multiple independent kinds of evidence, archaeological, iconographic and colonial-era written accounts. What they do not establish is a single, fixed ceremonial form; ritual use of cacao varied across regions, periods and social contexts within Mesoamerica itself, and the historical record does not describe one canonical ceremony that a modern practice could claim as its direct ancestor.