Coffee

[mishery]

WI some goatherder in Ethiopia notices his goats getting frisky after eating the red berries of local bush around 500 BC and not around 800 AD? Within a few hundred years it is being drunk all over the mediterranean basin and in Persia and India.

Axum as wealthy world power?

A richer more developed S. Arabia?

As demand increases, cultivation spreads further south in Africa, increased economic and social development in E. Africa?

Greater trade between Classical world and India leading to greater cultural exchange?

 

[Max Sinister]

AFAIR the story went about that way:
Goatherder goes to the local Coptic Christian monastery (maybe they even own his goats... dunno) and shows them some twigs of the coffee bush, with some beans still on it. The abbot can't tell what it is too, but he thinks that maybe some demon is involved, so he throws them into the fire. Then he smells the roasted coffe beans and thinks "hmm, maybe it's not such bad stuff as I thought". He tries to eat the roasted beans, but they are too hard. So he crunches them, puts some hot water on them, drinks that stuff - and suddenly feels the effect. So the monks started to drink coffe, so they could spend more time debating in the evenings - without coffee, they'd be too tired. That helped...

Christianity didn't start before 0/1 AD, quite logical, and spread to Ethiopia some centuries later, don't know when exactly.

I also read that there's an Arab legend which says that Mohammed suffered from a disease, but was cured with coffee...

 

[DominusNovus]

So we just have the Ethiopians figure it out around the 300s. Even better, having just converted, they might see their commercial success as a sign of God's favor.