top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 224 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Isn't that like 4,000 years before the first records of coffee being prepared as a drink?

Edit: upon a little research, the tablet in the image is a version of the Instructions of Shuruppak. The oldest known copies we have, of which the depicted tablet is one, do indeed date back to around 2,600 BCE. However, the text is supposed to be the words of an ancient king given as advice to his son much earlier. In fact, the first part of the text is, "In those days, in those far remote days, in those nights, in those faraway nights, in those years, in those far remote years, at that time the wise one who knew how to speak in elaborate words lived in the Land." The speaker is said to be the son of king Ubara-Tutu, who is mentioned on the Sumerian king list as having reigned for over 18,000 years prior to the great flood of Sumerian myth. We can't really put any actual dates on that and have no archaeological evidence for basically anything relevant, but some archaeologists date it around some known localised flooding around 400 years earlier than the writing of this tablet

Anyway there's nothing in there about coffee or even about the habits of The Youth These Days, but it does contain such pearls of ancient wisdom as "you make bad decisions when you are drunk" and "hurting yourself with an axe is bad actually". There is a missing chunk that mentions beer and the god Ninkasi, herself associated with brewing and beer, so it's possible that there was something about the flavouring of beer in that bit, but the trasnslation I'm looking at makes no mention of it

https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section5/tr561.htm

Edit again: also the original poster was joking

  • source
  • hideshow 8 child comments
  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    Thanks, I also couldn't really believe this was real. A quick google search tells me

    Ethiopia is widely considered to be the epicentre of where coffee came from. If you've ever googled “coffee history”, you will have come across the famous story of how coffee was discovered in Ethiopia by Kaldi, an Ethiopian goat herder, around 800 AD.

  • source
  • parent
  • load more comments (2 replies)
    [–] 43 points 1 year ago* (5 children)

    I want this to be true, but it is just a but it is so on the nose. Any sauce for this one?

    (I tried searching but only found walls of reposted shitty copper reviews)

  • source
  • hideshow 9 child comments
  • [–] 40 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    The tablet matches the image on the Wikipedia page for the Instructions of Shuruppak

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 32 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I know this is a joke, but you really haven't had bad coffee until you've had percolated coffee. We live in enlightened times.

  • source
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    For people saying "it's fine", they are probably not talking about the same thing

    I assume you mean this monstrosity:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_percolator

    Which is indeed a crime against humanity. My parents used one and kept me from realizing that coffee is delicious until I was 18 years old or so.

    The other people probably mean this simple yet effective device:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moka_pot

    Especially the comment about 60 million Italians.

    The moka pot is great and I use it to make my own latte every day.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • load more comments (2 replies)
  • [–] 31 points 1 year ago

    Okay, Sumer.

  • source
  • [–] 21 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    TIL there were hipster baristas in ancient Sumeria

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    The world has basically been in decline since before life began. Or at least that's how some people perceive it.

  • source
  • hideshow 8 child comments
  • load more comments (2 replies)
    [–] 15 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Winding the clock forward, our coffee must be even weaker, weaker beyond words. Can you imagine how amazing coffee must have been in his youth?

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    The coffee in his day would wake up before you, make itself, and then wake you up by pouring itself down your throat.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    And his grandfather's coffee was so strong and pure that just the smell of it had the same effect as drinking his grandson's (which would get brought up every single time coffee was mentioned).

    And I don't mean the smell of it being brewed or roasted, but just the smell of the raw beans. Roasting and brewing came from someone chasing the old bean high from their youth.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    Same as it ever was

  • source
  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    His lawn, get off it.

  • source
  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    I thought coffee was only discovered much later in present day Ethiopia. Are you sure he wasn't talking about beer or wine?

  • source
  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (1 child)
  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    If god intended my coffee to be mixed with any of that gunk, it woulda been grown on the coffee tree that way.........

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • load more comments (2 replies)
    [–] 9 points 1 year ago (1 child)
  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    So the people who drink their coffee black have always been the minority? 🤔

  • source
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    Kids start drinking watered down fru-fru coffee, right after the last early dynastic king falls and Sumer is taken over by Lagash?

    Sounds to me like watered down coffee is a pretty reliable indicator for the collapse of the current state.

  • source
  • [+] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 7 months ago)
    [removed by mod]
  • source
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I'm an American in 2025, I'm just glad I can still kind of afford the very cheapest coffee I can find. Not gonna complain too much about the taste as long as I get my sweet coffee buzz in the morning.

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    This must just be a "chunk" of the "script" how do scholars glean that much context out of those crude symbols?

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [+] 3 points 1 year ago
    [removed by mod]
  • source
  • load more comments
    view more: next ›