One of the great mysteries of human history is why that is.
The historical record of coffee begins in the 15th century. It's been claimed that it was cultivated much earlier in Yemen or Ethiopia, but both of those places were literate at the claimed times (6th and 9th centuries respectively), and there's no evidence at all that this is true. Once it showed up, it spread quite rapidly, for all the obvious reasons.
It's a berry, the fruit is edible, and the bean is large, potentially nutritious if you don't know what it is, and obviously, neither of these things is poisonous. It beggars belief that, at the very least, local pastoralists didn't know about it, and presumably make some use of it, but as a crop, it's very recent.
Romans imported so much silk from China that they passed laws against buying it, more than once, because of the amount of silver which was leaving the empire. They had spices from as far as Indonesia. But no coffee, and no tea.
The historical record of coffee begins in the 15th century. It's been claimed that it was cultivated much earlier in Yemen or Ethiopia, but both of those places were literate at the claimed times (6th and 9th centuries respectively), and there's no evidence at all that this is true. Once it showed up, it spread quite rapidly, for all the obvious reasons.
It's a berry, the fruit is edible, and the bean is large, potentially nutritious if you don't know what it is, and obviously, neither of these things is poisonous. It beggars belief that, at the very least, local pastoralists didn't know about it, and presumably make some use of it, but as a crop, it's very recent.
Romans imported so much silk from China that they passed laws against buying it, more than once, because of the amount of silver which was leaving the empire. They had spices from as far as Indonesia. But no coffee, and no tea.
Just one of those things.