SC - Saunders powder

[CorwynWdwd@aol.com]

>At 5:32 PM -0600 1/25/98, Decker, Terry D. wrote:
>>If coffee was not in use and under cultivation before it became popular,
>>where did the coffee beans come from to meet the demand?  If coffee was
>>under cultivation, what was the market for coffee before it became
>>popular?  They are questions worth answering, but the answers may be
>>beyond my limited skills.
>
>1. Coffee could have been imported from Abyssinia, where it had been grown
>for a long tmie.

My understanding is that Abyssinian coffee was originally harvested from
the wild plant.  Apocryphally, it was discovered wild either about 750
or 850 CE.  Do you have any dates for original cultivation?

>2. Starting a new crop doesn't take centuries. Maise shows up in a Chinese
>herbal in the mid-sixteenth century, for instance. Once you know how to
>grow it--and presumably that could be learned from the Abyssinians--a few
>decades are enough to get you to big crops via the magic of geometric
>growth.
>
>David/Cariadoc
>http://www.best.com/~ddfr/

Did the Abyssinians have the cultivation techniques to learn, and, if
so, when?

Abyssinia was settled by immigrants from southern Arabia about 1st
Century CE, who created a kingdom with its capital in Aksum or Axum.
They became Coptic Christians during the 4th Century.  The Kingdom of
Aksum lived from trade up and down the Red Sea which they lost when
Islam took control of the Arabian Peninsula.  The Kingdom of Aksum
disappears in the 8th Century, leaving Abyssinia under Islamic control
until the 15th Century when the Copts sieze the country from the Moslem
majority.

If the people of Aksum cultivated coffee, there should be some reference
to it prior to 900 CE.  There is not (to my knowledge).  This leads me
to believe that the cultivation techniques were developed by the Yemeni,
who were conquered by Aksum about 525 and had strong ties to Abyssinia.
I am also of the opinion that cultivation was not attempted until the
medicinal and luxury trades started straining the wild harvest and the
merchants of Mocha wanted to keep their profits flowing.  You don't get
geometric growth until you can use or sell what you produce.

Now to put a hole in my bubble.  There was some minor archeological
evidence that coffee had been cultivated in Yemen in 2nd Century BC.
I've never seen or heard anything further on this subject.  If true, and
if it was not lost as crocus cultivation was in Western Europe, then my
hypothesis would be severely flawed.

Bear


>
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