Word: mesoamerica
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PROFESSOR (lecturing to class): “As you can see, one of the most sacred locations in Mesoamerica was the mountains...
Rosenblum’s sweet saga begins in Mesoamerica, the birthplace of chocolate. Archaeologists say that the Mesoamerican Olmec people drank chocolate several millennia ago. And when Hernan Cortes and other conquistadors arrived in Mesoamerica, they were fascinated by chocolate. But most Europeans took some time to fall in love with chocolate—it wasn’t until the 1580s that they started processing and eating it in large quantities...
...this modern preparation and consumption of chocolate that truly interests Rosenblum. From contact-period Mesoamerica, he jumps to present-day France, where chocolate makers like Patrick Roger and Jacques Genin compete to prepare chocolate that is artistic as well as delicious. Rosenblum also introduces the jargon of chocolate—for instance, a palet d’or is a standard square of chocolate, a couverture is its covering, and the word couverture also applies more generally to all fine chocolate...
...Chocolate” has any flaw, it is that the information is too scattered. From Mesoamerica, Rosenblum jumps to France and then back to Mexico and then to France again. Though some chapters focus primarily on growers, information about cacao cultivation is also woven into other sections of the book. Sometimes it is difficult to keep track of Rosenblum’s journey...
...northern end by the Pyramid of the Moon and flanked by the even larger Pyramid of the Sun and other ceremonial buildings, was the core of a much larger metropolis. Indeed, at 8 sq. mi. and with an estimated population of 150,000, Teotihuacan was the largest city in Mesoamerica in its heyday (about A.D. 500) and one of the six largest in the world--larger even than Rome. Its political power reached all the way to Mayan city-states hundreds of miles away, with outposts as far away as Guatemala...