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Old 11-27-2006, 09:15 AM   #6
Larry_OHF
Ironworks Moderator
 

Join Date: March 1, 2001
Location: Midlands, South Carolina
Age: 48
Posts: 14,759
Quote:
Originally posted by Sir Goulum:
"The word "chocolate" comes from the Nahuatl words Xocol meaning "bitter" and Atl meaning "water" "

From Wiki's chocolate article. Take it for what you will (if you trust wiki or not. [img]tongue.gif[/img] )
That is what the Spaniards did to the word. They took Xocal from Mayan and Atl (nahuatl) from Aztec. They did that because the Mayans are the ones that taught the conquistadores about the drink at first, but they called it cacao. The Spaniards of course refused to call a brown drink anything that had the word "caca" in it, so they changed it to what they wanted.


The original mayan word for the stuff is cacao, and they got that from the ancient Olmecans, who called it Kákawa.

My references for this comes mostly from "The True History of Chocolate", by Sophie and Michael Coe, as well as several websites that specialize in Chocolate or are peer-reviewed online journals from the university's library. In total, I have used 17 sources of references for my bibiography to be included in my presentation and 6-page paper assignment, which is my final exam grade.
We got to pick our own historical topic of the ancient americas and I saw no reason not to enjoy what I was writing about.
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