Let’s not get it twisted: guacamole has always been delicious. It’s also absurdly healthy relative to its pleasing taste, not to mention extraordinarily versatile. It satisfies as a dip, as millions of Super Bowl party revelers know all too well, but it also works as a side dish.
Or as a standalone treat. It’s damn near the perfect snack, in other words, although today’s recipes give it a bit more oomph than preferred by its inventors, the ancient Mexica, better known as the Aztecs . This (literally) sacred food has a long and complex history, and guacamole as we know it today used to be something quite different.
Yes, you heard that right. Guacamole is no Juanito-come-lately. It has been around for centuries, with subtle tweaks to its ingredient list over the years serving as a microcosm for the evolution of Mexican culture and cuisine.
For two million years during the Pleistocene epoch, avocado seeds were spread by poop from the now-extinct giant ground sloths of the Lestodon family, accounting for their dispersal in the Americas. Yes, this really happened. The first cultivators, however, were likely the Mokaya, a Mesoamerican precursor culture to the Olmec.
Thus, although avocados have been avidly consumed in Mexico for at least 10,000 years, they’ve only been domesticated for about 3,800. Prized by early Mesoamericans for the strength they gave and their powers as an aphrodisiac — the shape of the fruit led to its Nahuatl name, ahuacatl, synonymous with testic.