# Early Cacao Use in the Upper Amazon of South America

Sonia Zarrillo, Nilesh Gaikwad, Claire Lanaud, Terry Powis, Christopher Viot, Isabelle Lesur, Olivier Fouet, Xavier Argout, Erwan Guichoux, Franck Salin, et al.

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Sonia Zarrillo, Nilesh Gaikwad, Claire Lanaud, Terry Powis, Christopher Viot, et al. Early Cacao Use in the Upper Amazon of South America. Annual Conference of the Society of Ethnobiology, May 2019, Vancouver, Canada. 1 p. [hal-05173851](https://hal.science/hal-05173851v1)

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https://hal.science/hal-05173851v1

Submitted on 21 Jul 2025

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Early Cacao Use in the Upper Amazon of South America

42nd Annual Conference of the Society of Ethnobiology, Session XX - Frontiers in Domestication Research. May 8-11, 2019, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Author(s):

Sonia Zarrillo ¹*, Nilesh Gaikwad², Claire Lanaud³, Terry Powis⁴, Christopher Viot³,
Isabelle Lesur⁵,⁶, Olivier Fouet³, Xavier Argout³, Erwan Guichoux⁵, Franck Salin⁵, Rey
Loor Solorzano⁷, Olivier Bouchez⁸, Hélène Vignes³, Patrick Severts⁹, Julio Hurtado¹⁰,
Alexandra Yepez¹⁰, Louis Grivetti¹¹, Michael Blake ¹² and Francisco Valdez¹³

¹Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA, CA, USA. ²Gaikwad Steroidomics Laboratory, Davis, CA, USA. ³CIRAD, UMR AGAP, INRA, Montpellier SupAgro, Montpellier, France. ⁴Department of Geography and Anthropology, Kennesaw State University, GA, USA. ⁵INRA-UMR BIOGECO, Cestas, France. ⁶HelixVenture, Mérignac, France. ⁷Instituto Nacional de Investigación Agropecuaria, Estación Experimental Tropical Pichilingue, Quevedo, Provincia de Los Ríos, Ecuador. ⁸INRA, GeT-PlaGe, Genotoul, Castanet-Tolosan, France. ⁹New South Associates Inc., Stone Mountain, GA, USA. ¹⁰Ministerio de Cultura y Patrimonio, Ecuador/IRD, Quito, Ecuador. ¹¹Department of Nutrition, University of California, Davis, CA, USA. ¹²Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. ¹³Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, UMR 208 PALOC, MNHN-IRD, Marseille, France. *e-mail: szarrillo@gmail.com.

**Abstract** - The archaeological site of Santa Ana-La Florida (SALF), located in the Ecuadorian upper Amazon, is in the region of *Theobroma* spp. greatest genetic diversity, thus making it ideal to investigate the origins of domestication of this enigmatic tree. We present research showing that the residents of SALF were involved in the domestication of cacao, traditionally thought to have been first domesticated in Mesoamerica and/or Central America. We used three independent lines of evidence—starch grains, theobromine residues and ancient DNA—dating from approximately 5,300 years ago, to establish the earliest evidence of *T. cacao* use in the Americas, the first unequivocal archaeological example of its pre-Columbian use in South America and reveal the upper Amazon region as the oldest centre of cacao domestication yet identified. We suggest that new paleoethnobotanical research will expand our knowledge of this process, including the timing, locations, and uses of cacao by Indigenous South Americans.

<https://ethnobiology.org/conference/sessions/42/xx-frontiers-domestication-research>