The Goats Who Danced And Taught Us To Drink Coffee
Now, we’re again going to tell you an origin story before revealing that it’s not actually true.
This one goes back to ninth-century Ethiopia. No one yet drank coffee, but the coffee plant did exist, growing wildly and bearing berries. Goats fed on these bushes, and unlike any humans who sampled the berries, the goats also chewed and swallowed the seeds, the parts that we today call “coffee beans.”
A goatherder named Kaldi observed his flock dancing and hopping after one of these meals. Kaldi tried following their example and experienced his first hit of caffeine. He brought the discovery down to the village … where the local monks quickly condemned him for spreading what was clearly the devil’s work. They seized the coffee stuff he carried and ordered it all burned.
When the flames flicked those beans, the smoke smelled amazing, far better than the bitter seeds had tasted. So the monks changed their mind, and they now gathered some of the burned stuff and trapped it in water to preserve the smell. This worked better than they could have predicted, and the resulting mixture formed a delicious drink.
At some point while reading that, you might have realized that this doesn’t sound like a credible account of something that really happened. Maybe it was the point when, before even starting the story, we said “it’s not actually true.” The truth is, Kaldi and His Goats is just a legend, and we don’t know exactly when or how humans started making coffee.