Coffee was discovered, by legend, when a goatherd saw his goats dancing

According to the most beloved origin story, the world’s caffeine habit began with a herd of overexcited goats.

The legend names an Ethiopian goatherd called Kaldi, who, around 850 CE, noticed that his goats grew so frisky after nibbling the bright red berries of a certain bush that they wouldn’t settle down at night. Curious, Kaldi tried the cherries himself, felt his own gloom lift, and carried them to a nearby monastery. A monk there brewed the berries into a drink and discovered it kept him awake through long hours of prayer.

It’s a charming tale — and almost certainly a later embellishment. There’s no contemporary evidence Kaldi ever existed, and the story isn’t written down until the 1600s, centuries after the fact.

The myth dresses up a real truth: coffee’s stimulant power was first prized by people who needed to stay awake to worship.

The first credible evidence of coffee as a brewed drink comes from 15th-century Yemen, where Sufi monasteries used it to stay alert during nighttime devotions. From the Yemeni port of Mocha, coffee and the knowledge of how to brew it spread across the Arabian Peninsula, where public coffee houses — sometimes called “schools of the wise” — became buzzing hubs of conversation, business, and news.

Ethiopia, where the wild plant still grows, sits just across the narrow Red Sea from Arabia, so the goatherd legend at least points in the right geographic direction. The dancing goats are folklore; the all-night prayers are history.