Next time you drop an olive into your martini or toss a handful across a pizza, take a moment to look at this humble little fruit: it was the olive that help kick-start civilisation.
In his 1972 book The Emergence of Civilisation, Colin Renfrew argued that olive cultivation played an important role in this development. Now, new research by Evi Margaritis and Mim Bower at the British School at Athens and the McDonald Institute, University of Cambridge, suggest the proof was grown on Crete. Data from archaeological research combined with new archaeobotanical information demonstrate that olive oil was a product of considerable importance in Prehistoric Crete.
A versatile plant, the olive tree was used for food, fuel, lighting, ritual use, pampering, and trade. It is among the earliest fruit trees domesticated in the Old World: at Teleilat Ghassul, north of the Dead Sea in modern Jordan, olive stones have been found with dates, cereals, and pulses, dating to the 4th millennium BC. As this region is too dry for olives to grow naturally, those found here were likely the products of cultivation, possibly grown under irrigation. If so, it raises the question: were olive trees being domesticated and cultivated elsewhere, too?
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