The Black Gold Expedition: A Cup of Coffee Moved the History of Human Civilization

On the Ethiopian plateau in the 6th century AD, a shepherd named Kadi was in a state of utter distress. After his flock of sheep ate a kind of bright red berry, they were so excited that they couldn't sleep all night. This mysterious fruit was brought back to the tribe, roasted over fire and boiled in water, turning into a cup of bitter black liquid. No one could have imagined that this accidental discovery would spread like wildfire, reshaping the course of human civilization.

Chapter One: The "Devil's Drink" of the Arabian Peninsula

In the port of Mocha, Yemen in the 15th century, the sea breeze carried the smoky aroma of coffee beans. Arab merchants call coffee "qahwa" (meaning exciting), but it is denounced by Islamic conservatives as "the invention of the devil" because of its nerve-stimulating property. A game of undercurrent and undercurrent thus began - Sufis sipped coffee to refresh themselves during late-night worship services, and merchants set up copper kettles in hidden corners of the market. It was not until the Ottoman Empire's cavalry swept across the Arabian Peninsula that coffee finally emerged from the shadow of taboo.
On the streets of Damascus, the world's first cafe, "Kanes", was quietly born. Under the stone arch, people leaned against the woolen blankets and talked about poetry and constellations over the black water in the copper cups. The breakthrough in coffee bean roasting techniques enables this liquid to cross mountains and seas without spoiling. When the Venetian merchant ships carried the first batch of coffee beans to the Mediterranean Sea, an Italian monk wrote in his diary: "What they sold was the awakening agent of the East, and even more so, the gunpowder of thought."

Chapter Two: The Revolutionary Spark in European Cafes

In 1652, St Michael's Lane, London. In a "Cafe of Angels" run by a Greek, Newton stirred the calculus formula with a coffee spoon, and Descartes outlined the coordinate system on the rim of the cup. In the Cafe Provence in Paris, Voltaire drank 40 cups of coffee every day, and the sharp criticism of "The Honest Man" burst out from the tip of his pen. In Vienna, coffee beans abandoned by the Turkish army, mixed with milk and honey, were transformed into cappuccinos to soothe post-war traumas.
These places with antler chandeliers and velvet tablecloths were actually the secret command posts of the Enlightenment. The insurance policy of Lloyd's Cafe in London gave birth to the modern financial system, and the conspiracy of Green Dragon Cafe in Boston gave rise to the "tea Party Incident". When the French Revolution stormed the Bastille, the flags of the insurgents seemed to be filled with the burnt aroma of coffee - according to statistics, there were already more than 600 cafes in Paris in 1789.

Chapter Three: The Blood and Fire of the Black Gold Trade

In the Caribbean Sea in the 18th century, the warship of French officer Deckley carried a coffee sapling across the Atlantic Ocean. This young seedling that crossed the border illegally grew wildly on Martinick Island. A hundred years later, its descendants have spread all over Latin America. In the Parana Valley of Brazil, millions of slaves turned to withered bones in coffee plantations. Their blood and tears nurtured the myth of sudden wealth of the "Coffee Republic" in the 19th century.
In the New York Mercantile Exchange, every fluctuation of coffee futures contracts affects the nerves of the world: The frost in Brazil in 1884 triggered the global financial crisis, and in 1942, the United States dyed cola green due to coffee shortages to save caffeine. During World War II, the instant coffee powder carried by the US military was not only a military supply but also a spiritual totem of the capitalist camp - when Soviet astronaut Gagarin entered space, coffee sugar cubes were quietly stuffed in his supply bag.

Chapter Four: Reconstruction of Civilization in the Third Wave

In 1971, at Pike Place Market in Seattle, three veteran roasters founded Starbucks with a second-hand roaster. When the Green mermaid logo sweeps the world, in the Caffa Forest of Ethiopia, coffee farmers are processing the Geisha variety using the sun-drying method passed down for thousands of years. Coffee artisans on the streets of Tokyo can control the hand-brewed water flow with an accuracy of 0.1℃, while programmers in Silicon Valley subscribe to the "blockchain coffee traceability service" during code intervals.
Today, on the coffee landscape, the ancient techniques of the Mocha Port in Yemen coexist with AI roasting algorithms, while the fair trade coffee of the Rwandan women's cooperative and the suspended coffee capsules from the space station complement each other. As climate change threatens the coffee belt, scientists are seeking the disease-resistant code from the genes of wild coffee in Ethiopia, while young people in New York cafes are debating whether every cup of latte can use a renewable coaster.

Epilsion: The stars and the sea in the cup

From Kady's earthenware pot to the Coffee Machine in the SpaceX capsule, this black fruit has always been a mirror image of human desires. It was once burned as a religious taboo, turned into a curse for colonial trade, and also gave birth to the most brilliant sparks of thought. When we type on the keyboard in a cafe, do we hear the cracking sound of the fingertips of Brazilian harvesters? When you take a sip of the floral fragrance of Yega coffee, have you ever thought of the wild coffee tree still swaying in the wind on the East African plateau, waiting to embark on the next millennium of civilization's adventure?