Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage
~ Kakuzo Okakura, Book of Tea
Things have come full circle. Green tea, which is consumed by billions the world over as an enjoyable beverage, is once again its attaining its rightful status as a powerful medicine in the eyes of both the public and health practitioners, alike.
We can imagine that long before the advent of civilization, with all its familiar trappings of pyrotechnology and pottery, tea leaves (which are quite bitter) would not have been nibbled on for recreation. Likely they would have been used only occasionally in small amounts, for the purposes of harnessing their intensely concentrated medicinal properties. Only later, as Okakura ruminated, would tea be consumed regularly and ostensibly for pleasure, in the form of a drinkable infusion.
