According to legend, coffee was discovered not by humans but by goats. An Ethiopian goatherd sometime in the ninth century saw his flock eating berries from a strange tree. He noticed that the berries kept the goats awake at night, full of energy. When he complained to a group of monks, they realized that if they brewed the fruit’s seeds into a hot drink, they too could stay awake to pray.

Humans had long used plants to their advantage. Rice cultivation came 3,000 years before Jesus, and corn not long after. It’s no wonder that coffee spread quickly, first through Egypt and then Yemen. More than 800 years after its apocryphal discovery, the beverage made its way to India, and eventually