Coffee must have been the secret weapon of Greek, Slav, and Albanian mercenary units, the stratioti, that fought together throughout Europe in the 15th to 18th centuries. The stratioti must have ...

with the most popular legend tracing the history of coffee back to a story about a goat herder, Kaldi. This story suggests coffee was first found in the ancient forests on the Ethiopian plateau.

Kaldi is said to have lived in Abyssinia ... pretty much every aspect of coffee's history before arriving in the Middle East ...