The oldest traces of olive trees are supposed to be 40.000 years old, but you do not know where the tree stems – but the eastern Mediterranean is a good guess. Historical Plantations The earliest evidence for cultivation, about 8-000 before year 0, comes from Egypt. In Egypt, one already knew 4.000 F. Year 0 that it was Osiris’s wife Isis who taught the Egyptians cultivating the tree. In a papyrus from 1100 century F. In 0, Ramses III announces the god Ra that from the olive trees grown around Heliopolis “the purest oil can be extracted to keep the lights in your sanctuary burning”. The tree was then spread by Phoenicians and Greeks west-and northwards around the Mediterranean cultivated for the fruit, not for oil extraction. In the 2000 century F. Year 0 It was cultivated on a large scale in Crete and on mainland Greece. The fruit was during classical Greek time Athens ‘ most important export. The tree was then not yet in Italy, Spain, Portugal or France but was taken at about this time to the present Provence of Phoenicians. The rapid expansion of the Roman Empire also followed the olive tree. The olive tree was consecrated to many Greek gods, e.g. Apollon and Heracles. Only the cleanest virgins were allowed to pick the fruits. The cultivated and wild olives symbolised together the marriage between Hera and Zeus. Wreaths of the cultivated olive were worn at the feasts of Hera, while the wild belonged to her husband Zeus and adorned his statues. Olive groves were spared at war. When war was settled and the envoys of the defeated were found themselves, they came with an olive branch in their hand, symbolizing not so much for peace as for the other’s victory. Olive leaves was the symbol of the goddess of war and also the statues of the victory goddess Nike adorned with Olivkransar.
The winner of the Olympic Games in Olympia was adorned at the urging of the Oracle of Delphi, with a olive wreath – kotinos, cut off from a sacred wild olive tree by a boy with a golden knife. From home, the victor sacrificed his wreath in the Temple of God, but instead received life-long privileges – money, free entrance to the theatre and free meals, all at the expense of the city. The winner’s main smodes with the olive oil and he also won the Panathenska amphorae with the inscription: TÔN ATHÊNÊTHEN ATHLÔN – One of the prizes from Athens – and they were filled with oil!!! According to Greek mythology, the olive tree was created in a dispute between Athena and Poseidon. The question concerned who would rule over Attica and a competition was organized to determine it. Poseidon created a source that turned out to be saline. Athena got an olive tree to pop out of the Acropolis cliff. Thus the matter was decided according to the judge Zeus and Athena had to give his name and patronage to the city.
Long before there were temples on the Acropolis there would have been a holy olive groves. Later there was a single olive tree that was said to be the tree of Athena and prevailed over the well and woe of the people. This, like the source of the saltwater of Poseidon, should have remained within the walls of the city when Perserkungen Xerxes took Athens around 400 before the age of 0. Everything was burned down, but it was said that the day after, an arms long shot emerged from the stem of the olive tree. This olive tree’s ability to beat the shot in moisture, even after it has been sawn to planks or carved, tells Theophrastus (300 century F. 0) about as a well-known and troublesome phenomenon; He gives the example of a oar that it suddenly knocked out the leaves. Around 600 BC, Greeks from Phocaea built a new city Massalia = Marseille in the current south of France. Thus, the cultivation of olive trees and vines in these regions also began
In ancient times it was seen as a war crime to chop down the olive groves of besieged peoples; So not today.
And the one who chopped down a tree could, according to Lisia, be condemned to death. Aristotle (300 BC) tells us that women used olive oil mixed with cedar oil and blysalva as a means of pregnancy. This use of olive oil is found in other cultures – the oil itself is thick enough to inhibit sperm motility. The method was relaunched in England in the 1930 century, but without lead. The oil was also used in childbirth problems and in massage for pregnanta stomachs to reduce the risk of stretch marks.
