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Humans invented caffeine drinks seven times
Where the drinks began
Tea started in China and East Asia. Coffee started in the Horn of Africa and Arabia. In Mesoamerica, cacao was originally prepared as a tea, though probably so wildly and intricately spiced that it would be hard to recognize as one. Coffee counts as a tea too, technically.
Kola nut began in West Africa and guarana in the Amazon basin. Yerba mate began on the southern coast of South America, and yaupon in southeastern North America, where it is the only native caffeinated drink.
The synthetic source
Today there is an eighth source. The caffeine in soda comes from a chemical plant, made from scratch and derived from petroleum. Caffeine left over from decaf coffee could be used, but it carries a lot of coffee flavor and costs more, so most beverages are caffeinated with caffeine made entirely by humans.
Chocolate's share
Chocolate fits in too. Its main stimulant is theobromine, but it always carries a little caffeine, and sometimes quite a bit.
How did coffee travel out of Arabia?
Coffee was drunk in Sufi monasteries in Yemen by the 15th century, where it helped worshippers stay awake for night prayers. The Yemeni port of Mocha shipped beans across the Red Sea to Cairo, Mecca, and Istanbul. Coffeehouses spread through the Ottoman Empire in the 1500s. Venetian merchants brought coffee to Europe in the early 1600s, and London had its first coffeehouse in 1652.
How was cacao first prepared as a drink?
Chemical analysis of pottery from Honduras, published in 2007 by John Henderson and colleagues, found cacao residue on vessels dated to roughly 1400 BCE. The residue pointed to a fermented drink made from the sweet pulp around the beans. Later Maya and Aztec drinks used ground roasted seeds mixed with water and flavorings such as chili, vanilla, and flowers. The liquid was poured from one vessel to another from a height to build a thick foam.
How is caffeine made in a chemical plant?
Industrial caffeine is built from smaller molecules rather than extracted from a plant. A route based on Wilhelm Traube's purine synthesis of 1900 constructs the two-ring caffeine skeleton from urea derivatives and other simple building blocks. Methyl groups are added in the final steps, turning a related xanthine molecule into caffeine. Synthetic and natural caffeine are the same molecule, and no laboratory test can tell them apart by structure.
Why is yaupon the only native North American caffeinated drink?
Yaupon holly, Ilex vomitoria, is the only plant native to North America known to contain caffeine. It grows along the southeastern coast from Virginia to Texas. Indigenous peoples of the region brewed it into a ceremonial drink often called the black drink, and traded the leaves far inland. Its scientific species name comes from the practice of drinking it in rituals that included vomiting, which early European observers recorded.