When most of us hear the word chocolate. the verb that comes to mind is probably ”eat”|, not “drink”, and the most proper adjective would seem to be “sweet”. But for about 90 percent of chocolate's long history, it was strictly a beverage(饮料), and sugar didn't have anything to do with it.

　　The Origin of Chocolate

　　Many modern historians have estimated that chocolate has been around for about 2,000 years, but recent research suggests that in may be even older.

　　In the book The True HISTOUY OF Chocolate, authors Sophie and Michael Coe prove that the earliest linguistic(语言学的) evidence of chocolate consumption dates back three or even four thousand years.

　　Valuable and Fashionable Chocolate Beverage

　　It's hard to discover exactly when chocolate was born, but it's clear that in was cherished from the start. For several centuries in pre-modern Latin America, cacao beans were considered valuable enough to use as currency. 100 beans could purchase a good turkey hen, according to a 16th-century Aztec document.

　　Sweetened chocolate didn't appear until Europeans discovered the Americas and sampled(品尝) the native cuisine . Chocolate didn't suit the foreigners' taste at first—one described it in his writings as “a bitter drink for pigs” —but once mixed with honey or cane sugar, it quickly became popular throughout Spain. By the 17th century, chocolate was a fashionable drink throughout Europe, believed to have nutritious, medicinal functions. But it remained largely a privilege of the rich until the invention of the steam engine made mass production possible in the late 1700s.

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