A thousand-year-old chocolate feast, hiding in Georgia clay

Pottery shards dug up in the 1950s from Georgia's Etowah mounds sat in museum drawers for decades — until archaeologists found cacao DNA inside them, the earliest chocolate traces east of the Mississippi. Around the 11th century, the mound builders were likely sharing a ritual chocolate drink, with cacao carried over vast distances from tropical Mesoamerica. With permission from the Muscogee people, for whom Etowah is sacred, the researchers showed the ancient Southeast was "an international world, where people were very connected," said archaeologist Adam King.