Where does the word coffee come from? what was the early role of coffee?

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Why are humans obsessed with coffee?

On a leisurely afternoon, find a quiet cafe, order a cup of coffee, chat with three or five friends, or quietly read or work alone-this has become a typical urban life scene. Moreover, it often contains cultural imagination such as quiet years, fresh literature and so on. How did this cultural imagination come about? What are the differences in cultural imaginations about coffee in different parts of different countries?

Our tea culture has a long history, but coffee now accounts for a large proportion of drinks. In city centers, cafes outnumber teahouses, which seem to be an insulator from history, alienating young modern life. And on supermarket shelves, canned instant coffee is also more convenient to carry, can be pulled open anytime, anywhere, eliminate fatigue. (Of course, the specific effects of coffee vary from person to person. Some people have adverse reactions to caffeine and experience abdominal pain after drinking coffee; others are more sleepy after drinking coffee.) Nestle, Starbucks, Benazon, Kirin... the variety of brands means that this exotic drink has become part of people's daily lives.

But just as China missed out on two industrial revolutions, it missed out on the golden age of the coffee revolution from a coffee standpoint. Faced with coffee on the table, it is probably hard to think of the impact of this drink on history, including religious conflicts, European wars, democratic politics in Turkey, and the rise of European philosophy and artistic thought...

American coffee explorer Stuart Lee Allen tried different coffees in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America and wrote the stories behind them. How did coffee spread? How did the names mocha and cappuccino come to be? Why was coffee banned? How do coffee shops promote democracy? What exactly does the common "American coffee" mean? These small problems inadvertently affect the development of human civilization and political history.

Coffee's Early Role: Mystery Revelator

There is no clear explanation of where the word coffee originated, and we don't even know how humans first used it. Coffee researchers can only confirm that the earliest coffee beans came from Ethiopia in Africa and acted as stimulants among the local Oromo people. The early inhabitants did not brew coffee as modern people did, but ate the fruits and leaves of coffee directly, crushing and kneading coffee nuts into balls to increase the fighting spirit of warriors.

Hundreds of years later, this barbaric usage was beautifully reproduced in the United States, where during the war the U.S. military developed military coffee bars: "The American Civil War proved that coffee could improve soldiers 'physical fitness, but what interested the Pentagon more was that caffeine could change people's minds…Originally developed as a concentrated cake extract, the U.S. Congress immediately authorized the military to use it in 1862." Coffee, however, was a late arrival in the United States, where its popularity reflected both the country's wild pragmatism and stimulant complex and the patriotism of the American independence era. Before coming to America, coffee played a very different role elsewhere-at least not as a substitute for stimulants.

Mocha coffee derives its name from the Yemeni place name "Mocha Port." Legend has it that 1200 years ago, an Islamic hermit named Shadili brewed the world's first cup of coffee here. Ethiopians used to chew coffee beans and boil water with coffee leaves. The picture shows Mocha Port today.

Coffee came from Ethiopia, then into Turkey, popular in the Islamic world, and finally in modern Europe. As to when and how it reached Europe, the question remains to be settled. The historian Fernand Braudel writes in Material Civilization, Economy, and Capitalism from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries:

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"People used to say that coffee trees probably originated in Persia, but they probably originated in Ethiopia; in any case, coffee trees and coffee were not seen before 1450." By 1450, coffee was being drunk in Aden. Coffee reached Mecca in the late 15th century, but consumption was banned in Mecca in 1511 and again in 1524. Coffee appeared in Cairo in 1510, in Istanbul in 1555, and has been banned periodically since then, and then again."