Cacao Fruit

by Heidi Fickinger

Title

Cacao Fruit

Artist

Heidi Fickinger

Medium

Photograph - Photographic Print

Description

For all you chocolate lovers out there! This is the fruit of the cacao tree (Theobroma cacao). Beans of this fruit are fermented and roasted are are ground up to make the chocolate loved all over the world.
The etymology of 'cocoa' is pretty interesting. A word that has morphed from one language to another, king of like the parlor game of whispering a story to a group of people and seeing how it has changed by the time the last person tells it. The word "cocoa" comes from the Spanish word cacao, which is derived from the Nahuatl word cacahuatl.[2][3] The Nahuatl word, in turn, ultimately derives from the reconstructed Proto Mije-Sokean word kakawa. The cacao tree is native to the Amazon Basin. It was domesticated by the Olmecs and Mocayas (Mexico and Central America). More than 4,000 years ago, it was consumed by pre-Columbian cultures along the Yucatán, including the Mayans, and as far back as Olmeca civilization in spiritual ceremonies. It also grows in the foothills of the Andes in the Amazon and Orinoco basins of South America, in Colombia and Venezuela. Wild cacao still grows there. Its range may have been larger in the past; evidence of its wild range may be obscured by cultivation of the tree in these areas since long before the Spanish arrived. There is evidence that it has been cultivated in Central and South American for more than 5000 years, so no one should be surprised how much they love chocolate!

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Uploaded

November 16th, 2018

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