Chocolate began as beer-like brew 3,100 years ago?

The chocolate enjoyed around the world today had its origins at least 3,100 years ago in Central America not as the sweet treat people now crave but as a celebratory beer-like beverage and status symbol, scientists said on Monday.

Researchers identified residue of a chemical compound that comes exclusively from the cacao plant -- the source of chocolate -- in pottery vessels dating from about 1100 BC in Puerto Escondido, Honduras.

This pushed back by at least 500 years the earliest documented use of cacao, an important luxury commodity in Mesoamerica before European invaders arrived and now the basis of the modern chocolate industry.

Cacao (pronounced cah-COW) seeds were used to make ceremonial beverages consumed by elites of the Aztecs and other civilizations, while also being used as a form of currency.

The Spanish conquistadors who shattered the Aztec empire in the 16th century were smitten with a chocolate beverage made from cacao seeds served in the palace of the emperor. However, this was not the form in which cacao had its beginnings.

"The earliest cacao beverages consumed at Puerto Escondido were likely produced by fermenting the sweet pulp surrounding the seeds," the scientists wrote in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

One of the researchers, anthropologist John Henderson of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, said cacao beverages were being concocted far earlier than previously believed -- and it was a beer-like drink that started the chocolate craze.

 

In land of the Monkey God, a primate menaces

First it was the death of Delhi's deputy mayor, who fell after a fight with monkeys on the balcony of his home last month. Then, 25 residents were bitten, scratched and mauled by a lone monkey which went on the rampage in the capital last weekend.
The monkey reportedly tried to snatch several infants before being beaten back by residents armed with sticks and metal bars.

"Primal Invasion" read the headline in the Hindustan Times.

Authorities are struggling to contain primates that are stubbornly resisting efforts to portray New Delhi as a modern, clean and globalize capital.
The city of 14 million people is growing quickly and experts say monkeys are increasingly being forced out of forests to lead urban lives, putting them on a collision course with humans.  It is a pattern seen across India as the economy booms. Elephants, leopards and tigers are also coming face to face with man as cities sprawl into their former habitats.


Monkeys are a regular sight in New Delhi. They can be seen in groups climbing outside government ministries. Troupes lounge on pavements, oblivious to the chaotic traffic around them. But culling monkeys has never been an option as many Hindus worship the monkey god Hanuman, seen as a symbol of strength, perseverance and devotion. And when Delhi tried to shift them out of the city, neighboring states complained.  

 

Faced with what many saw as a monkey plague on homes, offices and ministries, this year city authorities started to capture and send them to a sanctuary on Delhi's outskirts.
Delhi government officials say they have caught and relocated around 1,900 monkeys. While there is no census of monkey numbers, officials say thousands still live on the city's streets.  

But a spate of high-profile monkey attacks has made headlines and increased public pressure for the government to act quicker.

"The latest attack was unprecedented," said J.K. Dadoo, environment and forest secretary in the Delhi government. "Monkeys normally operate in groups."
Experts say there is a growing pattern of lone attacks that may highlight the random way authorities are trying to reduce the monkey population in the city.
"Incidents of lone monkey attacks were almost unknown until recently," said Sonya Ghose, founder of Citizens for the Welfare and Protection of Animals and a member of an enforcement panel overseeing the monkey relocation campaign.
"I fear that monkeys are being trapped in a haphazard manner. Monkey catchers are breaking up troupes of monkey families, leaving some monkeys alone without their families."



"Then they have nothing to lose and turn aggressive."

 

Spain's king tells Venezuela's Chavez to "shut up"

Spain's King Juan Carlos told Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Saturday to "shut up" during closing speeches by leaders from the Latin world that brought the Ibero-American summit to an acrimonious end. "Why don't you shut up?" the king shouted at Chavez, pointing a finger at the president when he tried to interrupt a speech by Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. Zapatero was in the middle of a speech at the summit of mostly leftist leaders from Latin America, Portugal, Spain and Andorra, and was criticizing Chavez for calling former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar a fascist. Chavez, a leading leftist foe of Washington, also attacked Spanish businessman Gerardo Diaz Ferran earlier in the week after he questioned the safety of foreign investments in Venezuela. "I want to express to you President Hugo Chavez that in a forum where there are democratic governments ... one of the essential principles is respect," Zapatero told the leaders gathered in the Chilean capital, Santiago. "You can disagree radically, without being disrespectful," Zapatero, a socialist, said sternly, drawing applause from some of the other heads of state.

Temple built 4,000 years ago unearthed in Peru

4,000-year-old temple filled with murals has been unearthed on the northern coast of Peru, making it one of the oldest finds in the Americas, a leading archaeologist said on Saturday. The temple, inside a larger ruin, includes a staircase that leads up to an altar used for fire worship at a site scientists have called Ventarron, said Peruvian archaeologist Walter Alva, who led the dig. It sits in the Lambayeque valley, near the ancient Sipan complex that Alva unearthed in the 1980s. Ventarron was built long before Sipan, about 2,000 years before Christ, he said. "It's a temple that is about 4,000 years old," Alva, director of the Museum Tumbas Reales (Royal Tombs) of Sipan, told Reuters by telephone after announcing the results of carbon dating at a ceremony north of Lima sponsored by Peru's government. "What's surprising are the construction methods, the architectural design and most of all the existence of murals that could be the oldest in the Americas," he said. Lambayeque is 472 miles from Lima, Peru's capital. Discoveries at Sipan, an administrative and religious center of the Moche culture, have included a gold-filled tomb built 1,700 years ago for a pre-Incan king.

Prehistoric women had passion for fashion

If the figurines found in an ancient European settlement are any guide, women have been dressing to impress for at least 7,500 years. Recent excavations at the site -- part of the Vinca culture which was Europe's biggest prehistoric civilization -- point to a metropolis with a great degree of sophistication and a taste for art and fashion, archaeologists say. In the Neolithic settlement in a valley nestled between rivers, mountains and forests in what is now southern Serbia, men rushed around a smoking furnace melting metal for tools. An ox pulled a load of ore, passing by an art workshop and a group of young women in short skirts. "According to the figurines we found, young women were beautifully dressed, like today's girls in short tops and mini skirts, and wore bracelets around their arms," said archaeologist Julka Kuzmanovic-Cvetkovic. The unnamed tribe who lived between 5400 and 4700 BC in the 120-hectare site at what is now Plocnik knew about trade, handcrafts, art and metallurgy. Near the settlement, a thermal well might be evidence of Europe's oldest spa.

Cow plunges off cliff onto moving minivan

cow plunged from a 200-foot (61-metre) cliff onto the hood of a minivan on a highway in central Washington state, according to police. The car's occupants, Charles and Linda Everson, were not hurt in Sunday's accident, but the cow was euthanized at the scene. "If the cow had fallen a split second later, the animal would have landed right in their laps," said Jeff Middleton, criminal deputy of the Chelan County Sheriff's Department. Middleton estimated the animal weighed 600 lbs (272 kilograms), or the average size of a mature cow. It had been missing for two days and wandered 5 miles from home near the popular Lake Chelan tourist area.

What says Christmas like a serial killer?

A German advent calendar for children has become a hot seller since word got out it has a picture of a notorious serial killer on it. The cartoon calendar shows Fritz Haarmann, who murdered 24 young men and boys in the 1920s, lurking under a tree with a hatchet next to the door for December 1. Below him, Santa Claus hands out presents to children in a festive-looking Hanover. A local tourism office included the serial killer alongside 23 other celebrities in the northern city, including philosopher Gottfried Leibniz and hard rock band The Scorpions. Haarmann's depiction featured in last year's edition, but this year it is attracting wider attention because top-selling newspaper Bild questioned whether the use of the murderer in a children's calendar was in good taste. "People are queuing up to buy the calendar now," said a surprised Hans Nolte, director of the city's tourism board. Nolte said he expected the initial 20,000 copy run of the calendar to sell out soon as orders were pouring in from Berlin, Vienna and other parts of Austria. Proceeds from the sales are going towards a local charity for children with cancer. "It's part of our history," Nolte said. Nonetheless, the serial killer, who was beheaded in 1925, will not appear in next year's edition, Nolte said.