Who gave us chocolate, a traditional treat on Valentine's Day?

They were the ancient Maya of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, who will be honored for this tasty contribution on Feb. 14 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

A free public lecture on the origins of chocolate, at 7 p.m. in UNC’s FedEx Global Education Center, will be followed by a reception. There, attendees can celebrate Valentine’s Day by sampling Zebra cake, chocolate crepes, Mexican fondue, Mayan chocolate cake, Mexican flan, Aztec chocolate, hot chocolate Mexican-style – with chiles and cinnamon – and more.

Dorie Reents-Budet, Ph.D., curator of the art of the ancient Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and at the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, will give the lecture, “Chocolatl-Kakaw: The New World Origins of Chocolate.” The talk will be this year’s Robert Howren Lecture in Mayan studies at UNC.

Each attendee will receive a small Valentine token: a booklet of recipes for some of the reception dishes from UNC’s Institute for the Study of the Americas, sponsor of the event.

“Chocolate was introduced to the world in the 16th century from Mexico,” said Sharon Mujica, the institute’s public service director. “There, it was a highly esteemed food, an offering to the gods and a medium of exchange, or money. The ancient chocolate foods were very different from the bar form we know today.”

Reents-Budet is art historian for the Maya Ceramics Project at the Smithsonian Institution, which combines nuclear chemical and art historical analyses to investigate ancient Maya pottery production, addressing questions of ancient social politics and artistic production. She also has participated in archaeological field projects in Belize, Mexico and Guatemala.

Her most recent publication is “The Social Context of Kakaw Drinking Among the Ancient Maya,” a chapter in “Chocolate in the Americas: a Cultural History of Cacao,” edited by C. McNeil (University Press of Florida, 2007).

Reents-Budet has participated in the UNC institute’s Yucatec Maya language and culture program. She has curated art exhibitions at Duke University, the Denver Art Museum, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the George R. Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art in Toronto and in Honduras.

The reception is co-sponsored by the center’s Global Cup Café with support from A Southern Season, Chocolaterie Stam, Daniel’s Restaurant & Catering, Foster’s Market, Harris Teeter, Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods.

Limited parking is available under or behind the center, which is located at McCauley and Pittsboro streets. Most campus parking is free after hours.

The late Bob Howren was a longtime linguistics professor at UNC. He learned to speak Yucatec Maya and traveled extensively into Yucatan with his wife, Phyllis, a UNC English professor who died early last year after a long fight against cancer. Both supported the institute’s Yucatec Maya program.