Chocolate industry in the Philippines name given by Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus in 1753 is "Theobroma cacao", is one of the 22 "Theobroma" species. "Theobroma" means “food for the Gods", from the Greek words "theo" (god) and "broma" (food). This species is utilized as raw materials for pharmaceutical products and cosmetics, however, cacao is primarily used for the production of chocolate and cocoa by processing the beans. In the Filipino language, chocolate is translated as "tsokolate", which is also a hot chocolate drink made from "tablea". "Tablea" are cacao tablets made from roasted and ground cacao nibs molded into rounds or tablets traditionally used in
Theobroma cacao of Veracruz, Mexico dates cacao's preparation by pre-Olmec peoples as early as 1750 BC. On the Pacific coast of Chiapas, Mexico, a Mokaya archaeological site provides evidence of cacao beverages dating even earlier, to 1900 BC. The initial domestication was probably related to the making of a fermented, thus alcoholic beverage. In 2018, researchers who analysed the genome of cultivated cacao trees concluded that the domesticated cacao trees all originated from a single domestication event that occurred about 3,600 years ago somewhere in Central America. Several mixtures of cacao are described in ancient texts, for ceremonial or medicinal, as well