A Chocolate Lover's timeline

600 - Using Your Bean

Fourteen centuries before Godiva introduced luxury chocolates to the American market, the cocoa bean is considered the ultimate status symbol in the Mayan and Aztec cultures. They use the beans as currency and those wealthy enough to have an excess of beans use them to make a chocolate drink that gives them "wisdom and power."

1502 - Money Grows On Trees

Columbus is the first European to discover cocoa beans and chocolate. But it is the Conquistadors that realize the value of "money that grows on trees." Hernando de Oviedo y Valdez writes home to tell of how he was able to purchase a slave for 100 cocoa beans. Later Hernando Cortez builds a cocoa plantation for the express purpose of growing money in the name of Spain.