Origin:
Amazon or Orinoco basin of South America approximately 4,000 years ago.

1000 B.C. : The trees earliest known name, "kakawa," comes into use among the Olmec, the people of the Mexican Gulf Coast who built the first of the great Mesoamerican civilizations. It is likely that the Olmec are cultivating the tree.

Cacao tree detail from a ninth century Mayan mural at Cacaxtla, Mexico.

100 A.D. : The Maya of northern Guatemala adopt the word "cacao" from the Olmec.
The tree is presumably coming into cultivation among the Maya as well.

600 A.D. : Clay chocolate-drinking vessels begin to appear among the grave goods of the Maya nobility , strong evidence that chocolate consumption is an important status symbol.

The Cacao God of the Classic Maya, from a bowl engraving.

1000: The peoples of Central America used beans as a form of payment. In Mexican picture scripts, a basket with 8,000 beans represents the figure 8,000. Control of the main cocoa growing regions becomes a prime objective in the intermittent warfare that scars the next several centuries.

1200 - 1500: By subjugating the Chimimeken and the Mayas, the Aztecs strengthened their supremacy in Mexico . Records dating from this period include details of deliveries of cocoa that were imposed as tributes on conquered tribes. The Aztec empire annexes the richest cocoa region in Mesoamerica; modern Chiapas (Mexico, Guatemala).

1502:
First European contact with cocoa beans (fourth voyage of Christopher Columbus).

1528: Hernando Cortez returns to Spain with cocoa beans, impressed by the fact that the Aztecs used them as currency. Hernando seeded plantations on Trinidad , Haiti , and the West African island of Bioko to grow “money” to trade with Aztecs for gold. Spain then had a virtual monopoly of the cocoa market for almost a century.

1544: A delegation of Kekchi Maya from Guatemala visits the Spanish court of Prince Philip (later Philip II). Among the gifts are containers of the Mayan chocolate drink ; the first recorded appearance of cocoa in the Old World .

1560: The earliest known introduction of cacao into Asia: the tree is brought to the island of Sulawesi , in Indonesia , from Caracas , Venezuela .

Early 1700's: The industrial revolution mechanizes chocolate making and brings the price within the public's reach. Chocolate houses start to spring up in England to compete with coffeehouses. (Chocolate at this point was consumed as a liquid beverage, not as a confection.)

1765: Chocolate production begins in North America, with the establishment of a cocoa bean grinding mill in Massachusetts .The first chocolate factory was established in Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1778: The Dutch bring cacao from the Philippines to Jakarta , Sumatra, where they establish a propagation facility that soon leads to major production in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia and Malaysia ).

1828: Conrad Van Houten, a Dutch chemist, learns to press cocoa butter out of chocolate liquor. This allows the production of cocoa powder. Later he adds cocoa butter and sugar to chocolate liquor and “eating chocolate” was created.

1847: The English manufacturer J.S. Fry & Sons uses cocoa powder to create the first successful mass-produced chocolate bar.

1850 - 1860: The cocoa pod borer, a moth whose larvae infest the cacao fruit, emerges in the Indonesian archipelago. Established plantations are ruined, and production is driven ever further into previously undisturbed forest. The borer remains cacao' s most important insect pest.

1875: Daniel Peter and Henri Nestle combine chocolate and milk powder and create the first milk chocolate bar. It is an instant commercial succes.

1879: Rodolphe Lindt produces chocolate that melts on the tongue. He develops the “conching” process that gives chocolate a smoother texture. In the same year the first really successful introduction of cacao to the African mainland - Gold Coast (now Ghana ) - occurs.

1912: Jean Neuhaus invents a chocolate shell that could be filled with cream or nut pastes. The Belgium pralines are born. In Belgium , chocolate has been considered as a present from its earliest days - something to give or to receive. No wonder that praline, one of the most popular presents, is a Belgian invention.

2001: Chocolate Monggo starts to produce Belgian pralines and chocolate bars in Indonesia, the worlds third largest cocao producer.

Today: Chocolate is a multi-billion dollar industry and is one of the most popular confection products in the world.