One of the most enduring tales of coffee's origin revolves around Kaldi, an Abyssinian goatherd, who discovered coffee berries in the forests of Ethiopia's south-western highlands. Whether it was him or his goats (the one that first tasted these fruits) we do not know; but legend has it that after experiencing the feel-good effect, Kaldi took a handful of these to a nearby monastery and gave the beans to the head monk.

Kaldi told him about their miraculous effect and, certain they must’ve been the devil’s work, the monk threw them into the fire (presumably to exorcise the beans) - thus becoming the first-ever coffee roaster. Paying close attention to the aroma and the sounds (he must have heard at least the first crack during roasting!), he then raked the beans out of the fire and proceeded to crush them, in hopes of extinguishing the embers.

By now the devil must have been exorcised, and the monk must have had a change of heart, because he took the beans and placed them in an ewer with water. The smell changed completely (a clear sign that angels approved of this) and, after tasting the black liquid, the monk was able to stay up the whole night praying; of course all the other monks soon followed his lead!

It is easy to find discrepancies and poke holes in this story, believed to have occurred ~1,200 years ago. Likely things happened much differently, but we do not have any proof (written or otherwise) about coffee “discovery”. A Yemeni tale recounts the story of a man called Omar who was banished with his followers to the wilderness and managed to survive on boiling and eating the fruit of an unknown plant. The residents of the nearest town, Mocha, were amazed by this miraculous survival and named the plant “Mocha”. There are some that find coffee references in the Bible (in the Old Testament, the parched corn that Abigail gave David and that Boaz gave Ruth is said to have been coffee). In Ancient Greece, the Spartans already drank massive amounts of the famous black broth to give them energy during the siege (it could have been coffee!). In the Odyssey, it’s mentioned that Helen of  Troy mixed nepenthes with wine to banish sadness and wrath from her heart (it was probably also coffee!).

Would our coffee world be very different today without Kaldi, Omar, or Helen? Probably not - we all love a good story, a hero to identify with, and I will always thank the goats for the wonderful experiences we enjoy today! However, human’s berry-picking behavior has been the very essence of transitioning from hunting to agriculture and impacted our civilization and survival way before “the written word”. It is very likely that populations in Ethiopia have been chewing raw coffee cherries for ages, and probably turning it into a drinkable potion at some point as well.

The crucial moment was in fact adopting the drink as a popular habit, and reaching demand to a point where plantations where required. This did not happen until later in Yemen, around ~1,500. As legends go, I would favor the one of the Moroccan Islamic scholar and Sufi, Sheik al-Shadhili. His story dates back to a manuscript published by Abd-al-Kâdir in 1587, and his legend says that sometime in the 12th or 13th century, he traveled near Ethiopia, where he noticed some “very energetic birds”. They had been eating - you guessed it - coffee berries. Replace the birds with the nomadic Oroma and Galla tribes of East Africa, and you actually have the most credible story of how coffee was “discovered”, exported to Yemen, and ultimately transformed the modern world.