New Look 4AoS in 2008!

Welcome to new look 2008 blog! As well as new categories - Quote of the Week, Question of the Week, Book reviews - I'll be experimenting with adding video.

Another new feature is the Guest Spot, where contributors send in their own material.

Here's the first submission from NickB. If there is a response from anyone (apart from NickB himself) then we might let him back for further posts later in the year.   

                                             

An extra 500 years of chocolate

   

   

(Click on image)

A recent paper “Chemical and archaeological evidence for the earliest cacao beverages” in PNAS shows that Humans have been enjoying the yummy brown gold since before 1000 BC. That’s 500 years before the previously earliest known consumption of chocolate (”Cacao usage by the earliest Maya civilization”). So let’s hear it for whichever plucky Honduran first thought: “Funny looking beans, I wonder whether …”

It might be a concern that the authors report that “the 10 small, elegant serving vessels” from Puerto Escondido, “all of which yielded evidence of cacao use”. It would have been reassuring to have shown a negative control, some pottery that did not give a signal, just to rule out that the data were due to contamination by the grubby mitts of some poor chocoholic researcher – particularly since some of the team work at Hershey Foods Technical Centre!!

So, does this mean that they have found traces of chocolate that are over 3,000 years old? What are the chances of any chocolate lasting that long?

Comments

[Universal mist]

This explains a lot the nature of our modern behavior towards cholocolate!!

[UFO]

Speak for yourself, I never touch the thing!

[Mr. Green & Mr. Black]

Give that man a regular spot!

[Maya Gold]

Hear hear

[Iain]

Ok, Mr Green, Mr Black and Maya Gold (if those are your real names...) we'll take him on.

[air jordan]

I can imagine TONS of uses for this*_*