Cacao as CurrencyImagine eating a coin, or snacking on some paper money. It would be hard for us to imagine eating our precious money, but, believe it or not, the Mesoamericans did. Cacao was used as the currency for the Mesoamericans for a long period of time. An Aztec manuscript was found listing price equivalents of cacao beans. It said one tomato was equally valued to one cacao bean, an avocado worth three beans, and a "good" turkey was worth 100 big or 120 small cacao beans. By using cacao beans, there was no problem with counterfeits. The only problem was if there was a cacao shortage, which might have been possible since cacao was used so much.
