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This was one of the first threads I ever lurked on....perhaps the very first. It was waaaaay back in the day when I had a different screenname even! Reading through and posting on Kuru's interesting thread on possible trade between Dwarves and Elves in the First Age reminded me of it.
I love coffee, and I love Tolkien-related conundrums so it seemed time to resurrect this thread and to pose the question anew to a fresh generation of Downers:
1) Did the hobbits really have coffee, as we understand it (as opposed to some other form of drink which the narrator has simply called "coffee"), and if so
2) Where the heck did they get it?
For me, it makes most sense that they would have traded with the Dwarves for it, and that the Dwarves obtained it in trade with Men from the south...but this is where it gets tricky: Gondor was not southerly enough to grow coffee, so either the men of Gondor were trading with the Southrons in some way, or the Dwarves were trading with the Southrons....
And while we're at it: what about tea and sugar? Also crops that only grow in the tropics, so where the heck did that come from?
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Scribbling scrabbling.
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