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CNN Live At Daybreak
A Lump of Chocolate That's One Sweet Artifact
Aired June 12, 2003 - 05:52 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Maybe you think the chocolate you have stashed in your refrigerator or cupboard is getting old. Well, it's downright fresh compared to what's on display at an exhibit opening Saturday in New York.
CNN's Jeanne Moos reports on a lump of chocolate that's one sweet artifact.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Move over M&Ms, Tootsie Roils roll over. An ancient relative is getting the royal treatment. At its age, it deserves it.
(on camera): This is the oldest piece of chocolate, 1,500 years old.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It doesn't look a day over 1,400.
MOOS (voice-over): Not since a moon rock arrived at the American Museum of Natural History has a nondescript lump gotten so much attention.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It looks like the oldest chocolate.
MOOS: Go ahead and snicker, but anthropologists don't.
CHARLES SPENCER, AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY: It's the oldest one known to science.
MOOS: True, there have been older microscopic traces of chocolate, but not a lump like this one, dating from the year 437.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it's the Rosetta stone of chocolate.
MOOS: It's the star of the Museum's new chocolate exhibit. Chocolate started as a spicy, bitter drink in Central America. Not till the Spanish took it back to Europe was it mixed with sugar and milk. This particular chocolate was discovered by Dr. Robert Sharer at the bottom of a vessel shaped like a deer in the tomb of a king in Honduras.
Grad student Cameron McNeill (ph) says they suspected it was chocolate, so...
CAMERON MCNEILL: We sent a sample to Hershey Laboratories.
MOOS: The lab confirmed it was, indeed, chocolate.
(on camera): Are you impressed with it?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm trying to be.
MOOS (voice-over): The rest of the exhibit features oddities such as a coffin from Ghana carved in the shape of the pod that produces chocolate. This is a chocoholic's paradise.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Chocolate actually causes an increasing level of serotonin in the brain, so it actually acts as a mini Prozac.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MOOS: In the Museum gift shop, you can even find chocolate bubble baths. The preparator who installed the oldest chocolate says it's not the strangest thing he's ever put on display. No, that honor goes to...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The giant sloth dung.
MOOS: Dung from an extinct animal donated by none other than Teddy Roosevelt. The dung and the chocolate do have one thing in common...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No one's going to be eating it.
MOOS (on camera): A Hershey's kiss?
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: Yes.
MOOS (voice-over): Don't let a curator catch you licking your fingers around this artifact.
Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COSTELLO: Oh, kind of sick, wasn't it?
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired June 12, 2003 - 05:52 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Maybe you think the chocolate you have stashed in your refrigerator or cupboard is getting old. Well, it's downright fresh compared to what's on display at an exhibit opening Saturday in New York.
CNN's Jeanne Moos reports on a lump of chocolate that's one sweet artifact.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Move over M&Ms, Tootsie Roils roll over. An ancient relative is getting the royal treatment. At its age, it deserves it.
(on camera): This is the oldest piece of chocolate, 1,500 years old.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It doesn't look a day over 1,400.
MOOS (voice-over): Not since a moon rock arrived at the American Museum of Natural History has a nondescript lump gotten so much attention.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It looks like the oldest chocolate.
MOOS: Go ahead and snicker, but anthropologists don't.
CHARLES SPENCER, AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY: It's the oldest one known to science.
MOOS: True, there have been older microscopic traces of chocolate, but not a lump like this one, dating from the year 437.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it's the Rosetta stone of chocolate.
MOOS: It's the star of the Museum's new chocolate exhibit. Chocolate started as a spicy, bitter drink in Central America. Not till the Spanish took it back to Europe was it mixed with sugar and milk. This particular chocolate was discovered by Dr. Robert Sharer at the bottom of a vessel shaped like a deer in the tomb of a king in Honduras.
Grad student Cameron McNeill (ph) says they suspected it was chocolate, so...
CAMERON MCNEILL: We sent a sample to Hershey Laboratories.
MOOS: The lab confirmed it was, indeed, chocolate.
(on camera): Are you impressed with it?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm trying to be.
MOOS (voice-over): The rest of the exhibit features oddities such as a coffin from Ghana carved in the shape of the pod that produces chocolate. This is a chocoholic's paradise.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Chocolate actually causes an increasing level of serotonin in the brain, so it actually acts as a mini Prozac.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MOOS: In the Museum gift shop, you can even find chocolate bubble baths. The preparator who installed the oldest chocolate says it's not the strangest thing he's ever put on display. No, that honor goes to...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The giant sloth dung.
MOOS: Dung from an extinct animal donated by none other than Teddy Roosevelt. The dung and the chocolate do have one thing in common...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No one's going to be eating it.
MOOS (on camera): A Hershey's kiss?
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: Yes.
MOOS (voice-over): Don't let a curator catch you licking your fingers around this artifact.
Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COSTELLO: Oh, kind of sick, wasn't it?
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
