Discovery and spread of use in
Palestine, |alt=An old photo of a dozen old and middle-aged men sitting on the ground around a mat. A man in front sits next to a mortar and holds a bat, ready for grinding. A man opposite to him holds a long spoon. According to Chinese legend, the
Chinese emperor Shennong, reputed to have reigned in about 3000 BCE, inadvertently discovered tea when he noted that when certain leaves fell into boiling water, a fragrant and restorative drink resulted. Shennong is also mentioned in Lu Yu's
Cha Jing, a famous early work on the subject of tea. The earliest credible evidence of either coffee drinking or knowledge of the coffee plant appears in the middle of the fifteenth century, in the
Sufi monasteries of the
Yemen in southern Arabia. From
Mokha, coffee spread to
Egypt and North Africa, and by the 16th century, it had reached the rest of the Middle East,
Persia and
Turkey. From the Middle East, coffee drinking spread to Italy, then to the rest of Europe, and coffee plants were transported by the Dutch to the
East Indies and to the Americas.
Kola nut use appears to have ancient origins. It is chewed in many
West African cultures, in both private and social settings, to restore vitality and ease hunger pangs. The earliest evidence of
cocoa bean use comes from residue found in an
ancient Mayan pot dated to 600 BCE. Also,
chocolate was consumed in a bitter and spicy drink called
xocolatl, often seasoned with
vanilla,
chile pepper, and
achiote.
Xocolatl was believed to fight fatigue, a belief probably attributable to the theobromine and caffeine content. Chocolate was an important luxury good throughout
pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, and cocoa beans were often used as currency.
Xocolatl was introduced to
Europe by the
Spaniards, and became a popular beverage by 1700. The Spaniards also introduced the
cacao tree into the
West Indies and the
Philippines. The leaves and stems of the yaupon holly (
Ilex vomitoria) were used by
Native Americans to brew a
tea called
asi or the "
black drink". Archaeologists have found evidence of this use far into antiquity, possibly dating to
Late Archaic times. In 1821, caffeine was isolated both by the French chemist
Pierre Jean Robiquet and by another pair of French chemists,
Pierre-Joseph Pelletier and
Joseph Bienaimé Caventou, according to Swedish chemist
Jöns Jacob Berzelius in his yearly journal. Furthermore, Berzelius stated that the French chemists had made their discoveries independently of any knowledge of Runge's or each other's work. However, Berzelius later acknowledged Runge's priority in the extraction of caffeine, stating: "However, at this point, it should not remain unmentioned that Runge (in his
Phytochemical Discoveries, 1820, pages 146–147) specified the same method and described caffeine under the name
Caffeebase a year earlier than Robiquet, to whom the discovery of this substance is usually attributed, having made the first oral announcement about it at a meeting of the Pharmacy Society in Paris." Pelletier's article on caffeine was the first to use the term in print (in the French form from the French word for coffee: ''''). It corroborates Berzelius's account: Robiquet was one of the first to isolate and describe the properties of pure caffeine, whereas Pelletier was the first to perform an
elemental analysis. In 1827, M. Oudry isolated "théine" from tea, but in 1838 it was proved by
Mulder and by Carl Jobst that theine was actually the same as caffeine. In 1895, German chemist
Hermann Emil Fischer (1852–1919) first synthesized caffeine from its chemical components (i.e. a "
total synthesis"), and two years later, he also derived the structural formula of the compound. This was part of the work for which Fischer was awarded the
Nobel Prize in 1902.
Historic regulations Because it was recognized that coffee contained some compound that acted as a stimulant, first coffee and later also caffeine has sometimes been subject to regulation. For example, in the 16th century
Islamists in
Mecca and in the
Ottoman Empire made coffee illegal for some classes.
Charles II of England tried to ban it in 1676,
Frederick II of Prussia banned it in 1777, and coffee was banned in
Sweden at various times between 1756 and 1823. In 1911, caffeine became the focus of one of the earliest documented health scares, when the US government seized 40 barrels and 20 kegs of
Coca-Cola syrup in
Chattanooga, Tennessee, alleging the caffeine in its drink was "injurious to health". Although the
Supreme Court later ruled in favor of Coca-Cola in
United States v. Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola, two bills were introduced to the
US House of Representatives in 1912 to amend the
Pure Food and Drug Act, adding caffeine to the list of "habit-forming" and "deleterious" substances, which must be listed on a product's label. ==Society and culture==