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  3. Four hundred years ago, Coffea arabica, a tropical plant bearing green leaves and bright-red berries, was virtually unknown outs

Four hundred years ago, Coffea arabica, a tropical plant bearing green leaves and bright-red berries, was virtually unknown outs

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问题     Four hundred years ago, Coffea arabica, a tropical plant bearing green leaves and bright-red berries, was virtually unknown outside of the Arab world and the corner of Ethiopia where it had been discovered in the ninth century—by a shepherd who, legend has it, noticed that his animals would get energetic and stay up all night after biting its berries. 【T1】In the years since people figured out that coffee could affect us in similar ways, the plant has done a great deal for our species, and our species in turn has done a great deal for the plant. We have given it more than 27 million acres of new habitat all around the world, assigned 25 million farming families to its care and feeding, and bid up its price until it became one of the most valuable globally traded crops. Not bad for a plant that is neither edible nor particularly beautiful or easy to grow.
    Coffee owes its global predominance to an unexpectedly evolutionary accident: 【T2】 The chemical compound that the plant makes to defend itself against insects happens to alter human consciousness in ways we find desirable, making us more energetic and industrious—and notably better workers. That chemical of course is caffeine, which is now the world’s most popular psychoactive drug, used daily by 80 percent of humanity. 【T3】 Along with the tea plant, which produces the same compound in its leaves, coffee has helped create exactly the kind of world that coffee needs to thrive: a world driven by consumer capitalism, ringed by global trade, and dominated by a species that can now barely get out of bed without its help.
    The effects of caffeine match the needs of capitalism in countless ways. Before the arrival of coffee and tea in the West in the 1600s, alcohol was the drug that dominated, and fogged, human minds. This might have been acceptable, even welcome, when work meant physical labor performed out of doors, but alcohol’s effects became a problem when work involved machines or numbers, while coffee not only was safer than beer and wine but turned out to improve performance and endurance.
    【T4】"This wakeful and civil drink" also freed us from the normal rhythms of our body, helping to stem the natural tides of exhaustion so that we might work longer and later hours; along with the advent of artificial light, caffeine encouraged capitalism’s conquest of night. 【T5】It’s probably no coincidence that the minute hand on clocks arrived at roughly the same historical moment as coffee and tea did, when work was moving indoors and being reorganized on the principle of the clock.
【T2】
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答案这种植物为了防御昆虫合成了一种化合物，这种化学物质恰巧以我们期望的方式改变人们的意识，让我们变得更加精力充沛且勤劳——而且很大程度上也让我们成为更好的工作者。
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