The History of Coffee
The history of coffee is very long and complex, and spans perhaps over 1000 years; therefore the
precise details of its first discovery and use are probably lost to time. Tradition
has it that an Ethiopian goat herder named Kaldi noticed his goats act amazingly
lively after eating cherries from a tree in the forest, so Kaldi tried some
of the cherries himself and the secret was out.
It is believed that the first cultivation of coffee began in Yemen possibly as far
back as 1000 years ago. The 17th century European botanist Linnaeus
assigned the coffee tree the botanical name Coffee arabica after its discovery
in Yemen. This species was the only known species of coffee for several centuries. The
Yemen
port
of
Mocha
was one of the busiest ports at that time and it is believed that coffee spread
from here to other parts of the Arabian Peninsula by pilgrims on their way to
Mecca
. Early known use of the coffee drink spanned the region from Egypt to Turkey. The
Arabs had a strict policy not to allow any fertile beans to leave Yemen but in 1616
Dutch traders managed to smuggle viable seeds back to Holland where it was first
grown in greenhouses.
Soon the Dutch were cultivating coffee in
India
and on the
island
of
Java
in what is now
Indonesia
. They became the first importers of coffee to Europe and soon coffee spread
throughout
Europe
. Coffee was taken to the new world by the French starting the first coffee
plantation on the island of Martinique and within 20 years 18 million trees were
in production. Over the years these plants would seed the spread of coffee
through out Central and South America.
Eventually coffee was brought to East Africa to the countries of Kenya and Tanzania
via the new world and Java. Coffee had come full circle and the coffee cultivated
today in East Africa had most likely traveled around the world only to end up perhaps
only a few hundred miles from it origin in Ethiopia.
Today over 80 countries around the world cultivate coffee. It has become such
an important part of the economic structure of some countries that 80 percent of
their exports are either coffee or coffee related. The world wide production
of coffee in 2009 was 130 million bags or 17.2 billion pounds. Coffee is the
second largest traded commodity on the world market today second in value only to
oil. It is estimated that every day approximately 2 billion people start their
day with some type of
brewed coffee.
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