The True History of Chocolate by Sophie and Michael D. Coe pages 35-67

Many people believed that chocolate was first discovered in Germany but in reality chocolate was first discovered by the Olmec. They were the first one that appreciated chocolate; they began cultivating cacao around 1500 BC. Although some people could not read some of the Olmec writings they assumed by the little writing that they could read that the secrets or the recipe to make chocolate was hidden in the symbols. The only ingredient they knew that chocolate had was cacao. During 1400 BC - 400 BC, the first civilization of the Americas, the Olmec of Mexico used cacao for chocolate drinks. It was highly regarded, a drink for the elite only. The word cacao, originally pronounced kakawa was reconstructed by linguists as a vocabulary item in proto Mixe-Zoquean family of languages, by about 1000 BC, at the very height of Olmec civilization. Before the ancestors of the classic Maya entered the Peten lower lands of northern Guatemala, cacao was only known as an exotic import. If they used it, they must have another name for it because cacao didn’t receive the word “cacao” until 400 BC and AD 100. to the Mixe-Zoquean speakers cacao meant domesticated Theobroma cacao. They donated the word and also they donated the substance as well.
"A work of great poetic beauty, it opens majestically with the creation of the cosmos and ends with the conquest and the oposition of Spanish rule" (Coe 41)
The writing of the Izapans were considered to be a beauty for the classic Maya. The Quiche Maya took this quote from the book of Counsel to show the transcription from a now-lost hieroglyphic original.