Apparently, the phrase “one person’s trash is another person’s treasure” applies even in the context of geology. When the ten-kilometer across dinosaur-killing asteroid struck, it carved out a crater roughly 150 kilometers across, and that crater’s rim runs through what is the modern-day Yucatan peninsula. Scattered outside this ring is a series of sinkholes – cenotes – that are archeologically a gift that keeps on giving. These caverns in the desert collected water and were used throughout history for everything from burial sites to living sites, and it turns out that they were even used for growing the cacao plant that is the great giver of chocolate.

The Mayans used cacao beans as currency, and historic records talk about sacred groves where the plants were raised; you don’t want your currency to grow just anywhere after all. The location of these groves had been a huge mystery.

In general, the drier climate of the Yucatan is inhospitable to the cool, humidity-loving shade tree that is cacao. In what I consider an amazing leap of creativity, researchers were inspired to check out the sinkholes as possible growing sites, and they found evidence of the ancient groves.

In a new paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science Reports, researchers led by Richard Terry identify nine sinkholes that have the biomarkers – including caffeine – for cacao, along with archaeological evidence, and in one case, a remnant grove of trees.

So, basically, because of an asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, a series of sinkholes formed in the Yucatan that allowed the Maya to hide their currency-producing plants underground, fund a massive highway system, and become a super cool culture in Earth’s history.

More Information

BYU press release

“Soil biomarkers of cacao tree cultivation in the sacred cacao groves of the northern Maya lowlands,” Richard E. Terry et al., 2022 January 6, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports