FWP: [pouring his third cup of the morning] Thank You, God for coffee, the chemical without which modern life would be impossible….You know, that’s one of the great mysteries of human history.
CSO: Hm? What do you mean?FWP: Well, the coffee plant is native to South America, right?
CSO: Yeah…FWP: And Europeans didn’t have it until they came to the New World, right?
CSO: Yeah…FWP: So how did we go from the caves to the Industrial Revolution without coffee?
CSO: Oh, the Euros had other things to chew on.FWP: Chew on?
CSO: [shrugs] Coca leaves, maybe?FWP: Nope, those are South American too.
CSO: Oh.FWP: So the mystery persists!
CSO: Wait, didn’t Viking explorers come to the West before Columbus?FWP: Yeah, eleventh and twelfth century…why?
CSO: Some of them might have brought coffee back to Europe!FWP: I suppose it’s possible.
CSO: So without South America, we might still be living in caves!
FWP: [sips] Hm.
Yes, that conversation actually took place a few minutes ago. What do you discuss with your spouse at 4:30 AM?
UPDATE: Two persons — longtime reader Fred and our own beloved Linda Fox — have informed me that coffee is not native to South America, but was brought there from Africa!
Sheesh! Once again, Kin Hubbard’s aphorism has been demonstrated to be correct:
It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.
Well, anyway.
2 comments
Before coffee there was tea. In its treated form, a potent stimulant.
But, in fact, although coffee is grown in South America, coffee – as Europeans know it – comes from Africa. Arab traders discovered it, and the use spread to the Crusaders. Which pre-dated the Age of Discovery by quite a lot.
For that matter, the Romans may have had access to coffee through their African possessions.
Anywhere there are mountains or highlands, you can grow coffee trees. A favorite trick of invading armies was to uproot and destroy the coffee trees. It takes YEARS to establish them.
> FWP: So how did we go from the caves to the Industrial Revolution without coffee?
Note that >99% of everything we consider “progress” came about after the New World was rediscovered.