Olives Crete

The impact of the olive tree in Greece
The impact of the olive tree in Greece

HISTORY
Nothing is more characteristic of Crete than the millions of olive trees that grow in valleys and mountainous areas. The Olive Tree, "the tree that feeds the children" according to Sophocles, is the protagonist of the Greek nature and history as olive oil is the protagonist of the Greek diet. Olive treecultivation and olive oil production has been with humankind since time immemorial, according to evidence that provide the artifacts and archaeological remains of the most ancient civilizations. The olive has been an integral part of life in the eastern Mediterranean from the first stirrings of civilization. There are stone mortars and presses used for olive oil extraction that date back to 5000 BC (History of olive oil in Israel ). Archaeological findings from the Minoan Palaces in Crete are fine examples of olive oil’s role in the Cretan or Minoan civilization, which reached its zenith between 2000 and 1450 BC.
Archaeological finds proving that the Minoans used olive oil in their daily lives are found everywhere in Crete. One particularly impressive discovery is the untouched olives withthe flesh preserved, found at the bottom of a cup sunk in a water cistern at the Minoan Palace of Kato Zakros. The Minoans used olive oil in their diet, as a cleanser instead of soap, as the base for scents and ointments, as a medicine, in tanning, for lighting and to protect delicate surfaces.
Ancient stone olive presses have been found in Crete. The one in Vathypetro, Archanes is believed to bethe oldest in Europe. Olive oil was stored in large pit hoi like those found in the West Magazines of the Minoan Palace of Knossos, with a total estimated capacity of 250,000 kilos.
Traditional scholarship puts the origin of olive trees in ancient Iran and Turkestan. However, other scholars argue that the modern olive tree must have originated in multiple locations, since it seems to haveappeared simultaneously in southern Anatolia (now Turkey), Palestine (now Jordan and Israel), and the Levant (now Syria and Lebanon) — countries that, as the ox cart went, were so far from each other in antiquity.
The indigenous olive tree (wild olive tree) first appeared in the eastern Mediterranean but it was in Greece that it was first cultivated. Since then, the presence of the olive tree in theGreek region has been uninterrupted and closely connected with the traditions and the culture of the Greek people.
An undoubted native of Syria and the maritime parts of Asia Minor, its abundance in Greece and the islands of the Archipelago, and the frequent allusions to it by the earliest poets, seem to indicate that the olive tree was there also indigenous; but in localities remote from theLevant it may have escaped from cultivation, reverting more or less to its primitive type. It shows a marked preference for calcareous soils and a partiality for the sea breeze, flourishing with especial luxuriance on the limestone slopes and crags that often form the shores of the Greek peninsula and adjacent islands.
Olive tree culture has been closely connected to the rise and fall of Mediterraneanempires and other advanced civilizations throughout the ages. Because olive trees offered wealth and future food supplies to established civilizations, the agricultural nations became stable societies, resulting from a secure expectation from past experience of an uninterrupted food and olive oil supply. This factor was a necessary requirement for population growth and increase. Dependable fruitproduction and olive oil production means that olive trees must exist in a stable society and a peaceful environment. That stability must extend for many years, since most ancient seedling olive trees required eight or more years before ever producing the first crop of fruit.
Productive orchards of olive trees meant that a foundation of the great empires of Greece and Rome had arisen and...