Patrick Edward McGovern ca. 7000-6600 B.C. It was a mixed fermented beverage of rice, honey, and grape and/or hawthorn ("Crataegus pinnatifida" and "C. cuneata") fruit. The laboratory and collaborators began studying some of the most ancient chocolate from ancient Mesoamerica (ca. 1400-1100 B.C.) in 2004 Jars from Puerto Escondido in Honduras were in the shape of the cacao ("Theobroma cacao") pod or fruit, as if to advertise the contents as being a chocolate beverage. The fruit's sweet pulp contains about 15% sugar, which naturally ferments to a 5 to 7% alcoholic beverage. This beverage might have led to the domestication of the tree.
Maria Cacao specific variant of this new element of the myth was reported in Cagayan de Oro in the aftermath of Typhoon Sendong (Tropical Storm Washi), when there were reported sightings of a boat with a woman at the helm traveling along the river and offering to pick up passengers. These rumors were accompanied by a warning not to accept invitations to board the boat, because the woman was supposedly Maria Cacao "collecting souls for the next world." In his regular newspaper column, anthropologist Michael Tan noted that this "soul harvester" function wasn't part of the prototypical myth, and associated the evolution