The Origins of Coffee Drinking

There are many rumours surrounding the origins of Coffee drinking. For a global commodity, second only to oil, that employs hundreds of millions of people across the globe, a suprising little is known for certain about it's history.

Coffee and Genesis

About 120,000 years ago modern man split off from the chimpanzee according to the genetic history of our species. Some people claim that caffeine could have played a part in this mutation. It took place in the highlands of Ethiopia where the coffee bean originates and grows wild.

About 500,000 years ago our brains sprouted cerrebelums and modern man, self conscious and aware, was born. It is thought that language was the driving factor and some claim that coffee was the catalyst. It all started in the only region on the planet where red coffee beans adorned an otherwise green and flowerless vegetation - the highlands of Ethiopia.

According to archaelogical records, Cultivation of plants began around 10,000 years ago, and the sweet tasting berry would have been a tempting plant to grow. Cultivation also began in Ethiopia where the coffee tree grows in abundance in the wild. Could it have gone ignored, or could humans have been drinking coffee since the dawn of time?

Biblical Coffee

The Ethiopian highlands are beautiful beyond comparison and a fitting location for the Garden of Eden. Could the coffee bean be our forbidden fruit? Some have claimed that the aromatic red bean is a much better candidate than the lowly apple. Coffee certainly seems a more fitting psychoactive substance. It certainly appears more like a fruit of a Tree of Knowledge, the red fruit that gave rise to self awareness. Could it be the Coffee bean?

The rediscovered old testament book of Enoch certainly describes the Tree of Knowledge and it certainly 'could' be the coffee tree. In the wild coffee plants are twenty feet high and a grown adult can climb to the top of one. Suprisingly this book was uncovered in Ethiopia.

In the old testaments coffee has been identified in the gifts Abigail gave to David. Coffee is the red pottage for which Esau gave away his birthright. Coffee is the parched grain that Boaz ordered to be given to Ruth. Yet none of this is for certain. Opinions on the biblical appearance of Coffee differ wildly.

Historical Coffee

Homer describes Helen taking 'Nepenthe' out of Egypt which has been identified by some as coffee. The magical black broth of the Spartans has also been identified as coffee. The Persian physician Rhazes talked of the miraculous properties of 'Bunchum'. You can be forgiven for wondering why until you learn that 'Bun' is the Arabian and Persian word for Coffee.

What we do know for certain is that on the 15th of June in the year 1511, the city of Mecca banned the drinking of coffee. In a proclamation by Kha'ir Bey, the Pasha (ruler) of the city all coffee drinking was outlawed during the Marmeduke rule. By the middle of the sixteenth century coffee had become a replacement for tea and the export and import of the coffee bean was already a global trade.

The Taste of the Ancients

The origins of drinking coffee are still shrouded in mystery, but the magical coffee bean originated in Ethiopia, where human beings first appeared, where cultivation began, where civilisation dawned. Exactly what part coffee played in the history of human kind we do not know.

That coffee has been with us since people first appeared is hard to doubt.

Try our Ethiopian Highland coffee and experience the taste of the ancients.