According to Chinese legend: the Chinese emperor Shennong, thought to have reigned around 3000 BC, noticed some nearby leaves had inadvertently fallen into his boiling water. Drawn in by the fragrant smell, he did not toss out the water. The result was a soothing, stimulating, tasty, refreshing beverage: Tea.
At an unknown time, in Ethiopia: legend has it that a goat herder named Kaldi first discovered the energizing properties of Coffee after noticing his goats became hyperactive from eating berries growing on a nearby tree. The abbot at a nearby Sufi monastery caught wind, and was so impressed by this discovery that he shared it with the other monks, who began cultivating the plant as a way to stay alert through the long hours of evening prayer. A few years later, Coffee spread beyond Ethiopia and slowly grew in popularity as more people began to enjoy this energizing drink.
While the accuracy of these foundational myths is undoubtedly subject to question – they remain among our oldest, most enduring accounts of the discovery and use of caffeine.
However, the earliest written evidence of caffeine use and coffee drinking and knowledge of the coffee plant appears in the mid-fifteenth century, in the records of those Sufi monasteries of Yemen in southern Arabia. From there, Coffee spread to Egypt and North Africa, and by the 16th century, it was common throughout the Middle East – which possessed an ideal climate for cultivating the plant. While Arabians enjoyed Coffee in the home, they consumed it far more frequently in their many public coffee houses — called qahveh khaneh — which proliferated across the region. The popularity of these first coffee houses was unprecedented in human history, and Arabians frequented them for all kinds of social, intellectual, and other activities.
Here, patrons didn’t just drink Coffee and engage in conversation. They listened to music, watched performers, played chess kept current on the news, and most importantly: theorized the elementary mathematics of algebra – all in a state of heightened focus and stimulation. Coffee houses quickly became critical centers for exchanging information and were often referred to as “Schools of the Wise.”
Meanwhile, in the latter half of the 16th century, tea began to make its way over from China to Europe via Portuguese traders living in the East who spoke of strange, leafy invigorating beverages. However, it was the Dutch, with their massive shipping capabilities, who commandeered Portuguese trade routes to bring tea to mainland Europe. There, it exploded in popularity – especially in the British Isles, who traded most frequently with the Dutch and admired their fashionable new beverage.
Around this same time, coffee drinking spread from the Middle East to the lower half of Europe: Italy, the Swiss Alps, and Vienna. Thousands of pilgrims spoke of the “wine of Araby.” Again, the Dutch masters of trade stepped in to supply Southern Europe with their Coffee, just as they had supplied Northern Europe with their tea.
It was here, in this confluence of beverages, that caffeine culture began to take recognizable shape. With contrivances like the Viennese coffee house: a cosmopolitan institution of a special kind. A democratic club, open to all, for the cheap price of a cup. The European analog of the Arabic qahveh khaneh, where patrons enjoyed Coffee, tea, pastries, newspapers, music, writing – the gamut of human intellectual activity and gastronomy – in fashionable digs with marble tabletops, No 14. Thonet chairs, and ornately historical interior designs. This cafe setting became the default format across all of Europe (a design upon which little improvement was possible, as many modern cafes still have Viennese trappings and traditions!)
In any case, the Eastern “Schools of the Wise” became Western “Penny Universities,” which quickly spread to every corner of Europe, and subsequently, the New World of America.
In those heady mid-1600s, the British began shipping Coffee and tea to a new colony called New Amsterdam, which was soon afterward renamed “New York City.” And while cafe establishments proliferated there, tea continued to be the preferred beverage served in New World coffee houses. That is, until 1773… Many of us remember what comes next. Colonists revolted against the heavy taxes imposed by King George III on their favorite beverage. The Boston Tea Party – a symbolic mass destruction of imported, taxed tea – would forever cement the American preference for Coffee.
But really – that’s just where the story begins. Humanity was, at the same time, discovering new sources of energy. New ways of thinking. New mathematics, new sciences, new inventions. Looking down the barrel of not just the American revolution, but the industrial revolution. And it’s hardly a coincidence that these stimulating substances began to spread at the same rate as factories.
Next time, we’ll explore how these rudimentary caffeine cultures came together to form the behemoth we know it as today. How caffeination, and the dependence we developed, slowly crept across the world – becoming our default state of existence – and the potential implications of a sleep-deprived, always-on humanity.
