Scientists discovered residues of cocoa in ceramic pots dating to 600 BC. pushing back the earliest chemical evidence of chocolate use by about 1,000 years.

[More:]

The Mayans were well-known chocoholics and the latest discovery of their enthusiasm for liquid chocolate comes from jugs belonging to a collection of well-preserved spouted ceramic vessels found at the Maya archaeological site at Colha, in northern Belize, in Central America.
For the full BBC article, based on research originally published in The Journal Nature.