Coffee beans have bean eaten raw for centuries in Ethiopia and Yemen. An excavation in the Ethiopian highlands where coffee grows wild indicates human gathers have been eating coffee berries over a hundred thousand years. The fleshy pulp around the coffee bean in Ethiopian coffee has high sugar content. Being sweet, being nutritious with the seeds, nuts, grapes and berries all being generally eaten by humans for over a million years sort of supports this theory.
Ugandans were noticed chewing dried coffee beans when the first explorers from Europe were searching for the origin of the Nile River. Green coffee beans were ground up and mixed with fat, then made into small balls, which were eaten by travelers on long journeys. Some say this is the first trail mix.
Stories in the Southern Arabian Peninsula known as Yemen where Europeans first found the coffee plant cultivated support the coffee bean being traded in early 800 BC. Facts support trade between Yemen and Ethiopia during this time. Knowing the coffee berries reacted when ingested by themselves, it would be logical that those early traders would attempt to trade this item. Additionally, evidence does not support the coffee plant would grow wild in Yemen but was cultivated instead. Although, it is possible that a lost larger size bird could have carried the coffee berries that far, it is not likely.
No specific historic event is involved in coffee arriving in Southern Arabia but Ethiopia did invaded Southern Arabia in 525 AD. Many speculate that coffee could have been introduced to Arabia at this time. Some historians say coffee was introduced into Arabia by slave traders who raided Africa as early as 1000 BC.
The two things that support the theory that coffee spread very early in civilized trade are coffee's affect on people and many old Arabian stories.
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