Ancient DNA reveals cacao was consumed in present-day Georgia 1,000 years ago

Filed by Elara Myst

One of the world's favorite sweet treats, chocolate, may have been enjoyed in eastern North America much earlier than previously thought, about 1,000 years ago. New research published in the journal PLOS One suggests that people in the Mississippian city of Etowah were consuming cacao, the plant used to make chocolate, in the 11th and 12th centuries.It was already known that cacao was being used in Central and South America thousands of years before European colonization. Scientists had al