As such, cacao bean production was carefully controlled by the Maya leaders of northern Yucatan, with cacao trees only grown in sacred groves. But no modern researcher has ever been able to pinpoint ...

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a nearly 3,000-year-old Mayan complex in Guatemala, revealing sanctuaries, ...

A team has identified nine sinkholes in the Yucatan peninsula that contain evidence of both cacao trees and ancient ceremonial rituals. For as much as modern society worships chocolate, cacao ...

Archaeologists have long known the Maya viewed cacao—the plant that chocolate comes from—as a gift from the gods and cultivated cacao trees in sacred groves, according to Archaeology.

Centuries earlier, had Maya priests waited in this very ... along with half-gourd cups of a sacred fermented drink, balché, made from tree bark, and gourds filled with holy water taken from ...

Leaves from this tree were used to wrap bodies for Maya ceremonies, and the bark was used to make baskets and twine and treat snake bites. The plant Oxandra lanceolatal or lancewood was also ...

Cacao — which chocolate is made from — was sacred to the ancient Maya, consumed in rituals and used as a currency. The cacao tree (Theobroma cacao) itself was linked to Hun Hunahpu ...

In Concepción Chiquirichapa, a town of roughly 18,000 people, mostly of indigenous Maya Mam origin, the mountain is considered sacred ... planting new trees, cleaning trails and taking care ...

It seems that all sinkholes were not created equally in the Maya culture. Some were considered sacred, believed to be a passage to the underworld, and others were accessed for freshwater and ...

“I was privileged to be allowed to photograph the healings, to listen to their stories and dreams, and to enter the forest with them to photograph Maya ceremonies performed at sacred sites ...