**6. How did Ancient Mayans embed round jade inlays?**

In ancient times in the Mayan culture, cocoa was used only among the wealthy and even until recently, in certain countries, cocoa was used to exchange wealth. What is surprising about the skull is that jade was embedded as an inlay into each tooth (**Figure 11**), which required drilling the enamel surface of the tooth.

However, drilling the precise hole to embed the jade would have been difficult if not impossible. It seems that somehow after placing the jade into each tooth, they must have had the knowledge to fix the jade within the hole.

A simple experiment was conducted by us [26] to determine how ancient Mayan knew the unique role of cocoa 1100 years ago. We have experimented with the knowledge obtained in the past years with theobromine. One can see the study presented in the previous report [26]. Thus, the mystery of how ancient Mayan placed jade in the front teeth was solved. We know now that theobromine which was extracted from cocoa was used to fill the marginal space around the jade and initiate mineralization to fix the jade

*The Contrasting Effects between Caffeine and Theobromine on Crystallization… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101116*

#### **Figure 11.**

*Mayan skull was reported to be 1100 years old. Note that Jades were embedded.*

insert on the teeth. These results are strong evidence that ancient Mayans knew the role of theobromine in cocoa on the mineralization of hard tissue over 1100 years ago.

It is also interesting to note that the strong and unusually heavy-looking mandible of this skull supports the finding that theobromine also plays a role in the growth and development of bones [27]:
