The chocolate history started perhaps early as the Olmec era. They were one of the earliest Mesoamerican civilizations and lived in the tropical forrests on the Gulf of Mexico. No sugar was used with the cocoa beans. Several centuries after the demise of the Olmec, the Mayas made a bitter brew of cocoa beans. They called the tree "cacahuatl" and the drink "xocloatl" (xoco means bitter and atl means water). The drink was reserved for kings and nobelmen. After 900 AZ (when the Mayan empire fell) the Toltecx then Aztecs cultivated the cocoa bean.

1502 Christopher Columbus was introduced to cocoa beans in exchange for goods.

1519 Hernán Cortés introduced to cocoa and set up plantations around the Caribbean.

1580 1st chocolate processing plant in Spain.

early 17th century - Dutch transplanted trees to East Indian states of Java and Sumatra.

1522 Nuns of Oaxaca added sugar and sweet spices to cocoa drink.

1701 spanish were making chocolate bars with sugar, vanilla, cinnamon. Still only used as a beverage.

1828 C.J. van Houten of the Netherlands invented a process to separate cocoa butter from liquor and paved the way for chocolate as we know it today.

1831 the Englishmen John Cadbury developed a dozen cocoa drinks that became the foundation of his chocolate business.

1826 the confectioner Philippe Suchard established a chocolate factory, where two workers could produce 55 pounds of candy a day. The sacre product won him a gold medal at the World Exhibition in Paris 1855.

1874 Joseph Frey, an English chocolate-maker, combined additional cocoa butter with the chocolate liquor and sugar to improve the texture and quality of chocolate.

1863 Daniel Peter, who had learned from his neighbor Heinrich Nestlé how to dry milk, mixed the first "milk chocolate".

1903 Milton Snavely Hershey built up in Pennsylvania the world’s largest chocolate manufacturing plant.