Anasazi Choco Canyon

Chemical residues found on pottery jar shards reveal that the practice of drinking chocolate had spread at least as far north as Chaco Canyon (map) in northern New Mexico by A.D. 1000 to 1125—400 years earlier than chocolate was thought to have reached what is now the United States.

The discovery suggests a vast trade network helped deliver chocolate from Central America, where the seeds of the cacao tree were first transformed into beverages some 3,000 years ago.

"That's a long way to go for something that you don't need for survival, [something] that's more of a delicacy," said Patricia Crown, an anthropologist at the University of New Mexico and co-author of the new study, which appears in tomorrow's issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.

Anyone writing alternate history along the lines of Doug's old Bronze Age New World TL really ought to take note. The trade was nontrivial: they also found parrots and metal bells previously. It's PDC too. ;)

(the title really is a pun, isn't it?)