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When we look the history we see the earliest traces of chocolate in Mayo Chinchipe culture 5300 years ago

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Chocolate played an important political, spiritual and economic role in ancient Mesoamerican civilizations, which ground roasted cacao beans into a paste that they mixed with water, vanilla, chili peppers and other spices to brew a frothy chocolate drink.

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Ancient Mesoamericans believed chocolate was an energy booster and aphrodisiac with mystical and medicinal qualities. The Mayans, who considered cacao a gift from the gods, used chocolate for sacred ceremonies and funeral offerings. Wealthy Mayans drank foaming chocolate drinks, while commoners consumed chocolate in a cold porridge-like dish.

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As people of the Aztec empire spread across Mesoamerica in the 1400s, they too began to prize cacao. Since they couldn’t grow it in the dry highlands of central Mexico, they traded with the Mayans for the beans, which they even used as currency. (In the 1500s, Aztecs could purchase a turkey hen or a hare for 100 beans.) By one account, the 16th-century Aztec ruler Moctezuma II drank 50 cups of chocolate a day out of a golden goblet

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Chocolate arrived in Europe during the 1500s, likely brought by both Spanish friars and conquistadors who had traveled to the Americas. Although the Spanish sweetened the bitter drink with cane sugar and cinnamon, one thing remained unchanged: Chocolate reigned as a delectable symbol of luxury, wealth and power—an expensive import sipped by royal lips, and affordable only to Spanish elites.

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In 1847, British chocolate company J.S. Fry & Sons created the first edible chocolate bar from cocoa butter, cocoa powder and sugar. Rival chocolatier Cadbury’s, credited with pioneering the Valentine’s Day chocolate box and chocolate Easter egg, followed suit soon after and in 1854 earned a royal warrant as purveyors of chocolate to Queen Victoria.

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Chocolate bars soared in popularity during the Roaring Twenties. By the end of the decade, more than 40,000 different candy bars were being made in the U.S., according to Susan Benjamin, candy historian and author of Sweet as Sin: The Unwrapped Story of How Candy Became America’s Favorite Pleasure. Father-and-son duo Frank C. Mars and Forrest Mars Sr. collaborated on the idea for the Milky Way bar, which hit the market in 1923 with the chocolate for its coating supplied by Hershey’s. The family-owned business would rival Hershey’s, and Forrest Mars Sr. later partnered with the son of a Hershey’s executive to begin production of M&M candies in 1941.

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From its roots more than 5,000 years ago, chocolate has become a big business. According to research by Statista, retail sales of chocolate worldwide in 2016 totaled nearly $100 billion, including almost $25 billion in the United States alone. While the cacao plant is native to the Americas, its cultivation has now shifted to Africa, which is now the source of more than two-thirds of worldwide cocoa production.