Cacao Bean Counterfeiters in Mesoamerica
Raw Cacao Beans
Cacao beans were used as currency in the time of the Maya. At the Guatemalan site of Balbera, 74 km southwest of Guatemala City, archaeologists discovered a cache of what appeared to be petrified cacao beans in an urn. A lab expert in Guatemala identified them as the criollo variety of cacao.
When the beans were later sent to the United States, a paleo-ethnobotanist found they were not real cacao beans at all, but were copies made out of local clay! All the details of the seeds were crafted into the beans, which exist in natural examples of the sets of T. cacao, var. criollo. (Coe, A True History of Chocolate, p. 51)
Spanish chroniclers provide convincing evidence that that Mesoamericans of past centuries were expert counterfeiters of these beans. So I guess this is just another example of counterfeiters having been with us throughout human history, in societies all over the world.
Madame Monet
Tags: counterfeit, counterfeiters, history of counterfeiting
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August 25, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Not about counterfeiting money but another kind of cheating: the empty mummies found in Egypt. There are many in museums all over. The morticians charged good money and handed over to the family a pillar of bandages wrapped around nothing. X-rays now show there is nothing underneath. The crooks must have just dumped the actual cadaver, the loved one.
August 26, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Iw, 100 swallows. Reminds me of the morticians who “cremated” loved ones, presented them with ashes… and later the bodies are found all over and in the guy’s pond. Remember that story??
These counterfeiters had to be GOOD to have a lab expert even know the species of plant LOL! Too bad they didn’t go be artists or something.
August 26, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Counterfeit cacao bean currency? This is funny!