BOTANICAL NAME
Olea europaea
DISTRIBUTION
All countries bounding the Mediterranean; also cultivated in other warm temperate or subtropical regions.
OLDEST KNOWN LIVING SPECIMEN
Possibly the Ano Vouves tree, which may be 4,000 years old (on the Greek island of Crete) or the Cormac’s Tree on Sardinia, estimated to be between 2,000 and 5,000 years old.
MYTHICAL ASSOCIATIONS
Sacred to the early peoples of the Near East and to the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. Believed by the Greeks to be a gift from the goddess Athena, and by the Romans to be linked with the goddess Minerva.
CONSERVATION STATUS
Not classified on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
An ancient olive grove in the White Mountains region of Crete.
Of the world’s most venerable and ancient trees, perhaps none is more closely associated with the history of humankind and the development of Western civilization than the olive. Sacred to the Greeks, Romans and Egyptians, and revered by the early Semitic peoples of the Bible lands, the olive tree – the source of food and valuable oil – has, for thousands of years, been central to the religion, cultural life, economy and cuisine of millions of people in the Mediterranean region. Its extraordinary ability to renew itself from destruction or decay by producing new shoots and roots greatly influenced people in ancient times to regard it as sacred, and to celebrate its significance in myth and legend.
To the Ancient Greeks, the olive was a gift from Athena, the goddess of wisdom and the daughter of Zeus, who struck the rock of the Acropolis with her spear and created the first olive tree. In so doing she won the gods’ favour, and hence took control of the city of Athens (which was named in her honour) away from the powerful god Poseidon. Every year, the festival of Athena was celebrated as a public holiday, during which olive branches were carried to the Acropolis. At the Olympic Games, the Ancient Greek athletic festival held at Olympia, vases filled with sacred olive oil were given as prizes, while the victors wore olive wreaths.
To the Romans, the olive was sacred to Minerva, the goddess of health and wisdom, and it was she who taught the art of olive cultivation. In Egyptian mythology it was Isis, wife of Osiris, who held the secrets of the cultivation and use of olives. In Islam, the olive became the Tree of Blessing, giving to the world the light of Allah.
According to Greek mythology, the first olive tree arose when Athena struck the rock of the Acropolis with her spear.
Although its botanical name (Olea europaea) suggests a European origin, six subspecies of olive, all genetically different, are spread over a wide area: from Madeira and the Canary Islands in the East, across the Mediterranean Basin, and from eastern and southern Africa, across Arabia to southern China. Fossilized leaves dating back to 37,000 BC have been found on the Aegean island of Santorini, and olive stones that are 20,000 years old have been discovered in Israel.
The harvesting of olives has been a way of life for people in Mediterranean countries for thousands of years.
It is thought that the olive may have been domesticated in the eastern Mediterranean or the Nile Delta, but its immediate ancestry is uncertain. It seems likely, however, that careful tending and experimentation by generations of prehistoric people – who discovered that olive shoots could be grafted and replanted – refined and encouraged the tree’s productivity. With careful pruning and the right environment (hot summers, but winters cold enough to set the fruit), the olive tree could be nurtured to yield superior fruit.
In ancient times, the religious and ceremonial uses of olive oil were highly significant. In the scriptures and in classical writings, olive oil is referred to as an emblem of goodness and purity, and it may have been this oil that formed the base for the ‘ointment of spikenard’ used to anoint Jesus’ feet before the Last Supper. In Biblical times, olive oil was also regarded as an emblem of sovereignty, and it played an important role in coronation ceremonies. When Saul, the first king of Israel, was crowned, olive oil was rubbed into his forehead. Olive oil was further used in the preparation of sacrificial offerings, in funeral rites, perfumes and cosmetics, and as an aid to healing. In Psalm 128, olive trees are a symbol of prosperity and plenty, and of divine blessing: ‘Happy are those who obey the Lord, … your sons will be like olive trees around your table.’
According to experts on the plants used at that time, the general references to ‘gardens’ in the Bible are often references to olive orchards or groves. The wealthier the owner of such an orchard, the more likely he would be to grow other fruit trees there (such as figs, almonds and pistachios), but the tree that no one could do without was the olive. The major attraction of such gardens was – and still is – the provision of shade from the intense heat of the sun, a place to retire to during the day and, at the appropriate time of year, the supply of olives for food and oil.
Olive trees growing on ancient terraces in the Bcharré Valley, Lebanon.
The most famous garden of this kind is described in the New Testament – the Garden of Gethsemane. This was an orchard situated at the foot of the Mount of Olives, where oil presses where located. Before his betrayal and crucifixion, Jesus went to the Garden of Gethsemane with his disciples to pray: ‘Jesus left the city and went, as he usually did, to the Mount of Olives’ (Luke 22:39). It was there that he was seized and subsequently nailed to the Cross, said to have been made in part from olive wood. Although little remains of the original Garden of Gethsemane today, some of the ancient olive trees growing there are said to have been planted at the time of Christ, making them about 2,000 years old.
It was largely the production of its precious oil that made the olive a crop of such fundamental importance to the lives and economies of the peoples of the Mediterranean and the Near East. Olives became the currency of the Mediterranean and a cultural inspiration for the great empires of Assyria and Egypt, and those of the Greeks, the Persians and the Romans. Some of the most beautiful artefacts left behind by these peoples, including frescoes and mosaics, depict aspects of olive cultivation.
It has been suggested that olives still growing in the Garden of Gethsemane in Israel could date back to the time of Christ.
Archaeological evidence and scientific studies suggest that the Minoans were cultivating olive trees on the island of Crete 5,200 years ago. Olives were certainly of major importance to the Phoenicians, a Semitic people whose civilization on the coastal plain of Syria flourished after 1800 BC. Becoming outstanding navigators, they established trading posts all over the eastern Mediterranean and beyond, and are thought to have taken olive cultivation to Provence (then known as Massilia) in southern France in 600 BC, grafting cuttings taken from olives in Asia Minor onto wild trees there. Archaeological excavations have shown that large olive plantations were in use at Aix-en-Provence and at other locations in southern France at that time. The Phoenicians also planted huge olive groves in North Africa, while Moorish travellers from this region were subsequently to take many olive trees to Spain.
By 1500 BC the Egyptians, who also revered the olive, had taken the tree from Syria to Egypt to cultivate it themselves. So important were olives to the Egyptians that golden carvings of them were sealed into pyramids with some of the mummified pharaohs.
Wherever the Greeks went, they took the olive with them. They took olive trees to Sicily, for example, between the tenth and eighth centuries BC, and by the sixth century BC they had felled most of their own native forests in order to grow them, building an entire export industry based on olive oil. Using the wealth derived from wine and oil, the Greeks built the great Sicilian city of Syracuse and took olives to the Italian mainland.
By 600 BC, the olive had also become an important crop for the Romans – so much so that they had a separate stock market and merchant navy for olive oil. It is said that they became such experts on the different kinds of olives they grew that a popular amusement at banquets was the blindfolded identification of certain olives and their oil. The fruits themselves were used as snacks and appetizers (much as they are today), and in cooking. The Romans also planted large olive groves in North Africa and France. By the tenth century AD, such groves were to be found at the fringes of the entire Mediterranean, across southern Europe and in North Africa.
Morning sunshine filters through the branches of a young olive tree in Greece.
The whole Mediterranean, the sculpture, the palms, its gold beads, the bearded heroes, the wine, the ideas, the ships, the moonlight, the winged gorgons, the bronze men, the philosophers – all of it seems to rise in the sour, pungent taste of these black olives … A taste older than meat, older than wine. A taste as old as cold water.
LAWRENCE DURRELL (1912–90), PROSPERO’S CELL
The beauty of the olive tree has been extolled in works of art for thousands of years. Images of the trees or fruit have been depicted in Minoan frescoes, on Grecian pottery jars, Roman silver vases and in countless friezes and carvings of the ancient world.
Wild flowers bloom in January amidst an ancient olive grove on Crete.
With their lance-shaped, evergreen leaves – a deep grey-green above and silvery white on the underside – and gnarled grey trunks that develop in old age, olive trees form one of the most characteristic aspects of Mediterranean vegetation. Though they may reach about 15m (49ft) in height, olives are generally small trees, and in some areas (such as Provence, Greece and Cyprus) they are pollarded at 5–7m (16–23ft) to improve the crop and to make harvesting easier.
The olive matures very slowly and may need several decades to reach full maturity and productivity. Its crop is not said to diminish until an age of 150 years has been reached, but even long after this, it is still capable of bearing a good harvest. Pliny refers to an olive grove that was still producing fruit even though it was over 700 years old. In maturity, olive trees become grotesquely gnarled, in wonderful contrast to their light, silvery foliage. By about 200 years of age the olive appears truly ancient: its branches and trunk have become twisted and contorted, and shoots develop at its base, which will eventually grow up to form a new tree.
Some botanists believe that an individual olive trunk will not live for much longer than about 700 years, but the tree’s massive root ball will continue to throw out new shoots for centuries. New roots are also formed when the old roots die. This tendency, and the tree’s ability to produce new shoots, or suckers, which will become a new tree even after the trunk has died or been felled, have given rise to the reputation of the olive as an immortal tree. With a similar capacity for regeneration as the yew, small-leaved lime and sweet chestnut, it certainly shares the distinction of being among Europe’s oldest trees. Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79), the Roman naturalist and chronicler, recorded that the Athenians venerated one such tree, which they claimed was 1,600 years old. Even if it were true that the Roman emperor Titus Vespasian (AD 9–79) did – as was reported by contemporary scholars – cut down the olives growing in the Garden of Gethsemane in AD 70, it would appear that he did not actually kill them.
Ancient olives like these, in Cyprus, are a common sight in most Mediterranean countries.
Just how long the olive can in fact live, and which tree is actually the oldest, is the subject of much debate. A number of trees are cited as being over 1,500 years old, including one on the island of Brioni in Croatia, calculated to be about 1,600 years old, an olive tree in Bar, Montenegro, which is claimed to be over 2,000 years old, and another in the Algarve of a similar age. On Crete there are many ancient olives and one of these, in the village of Ano Vouves, is claimed by some to be the oldest in the world. Tree-ring analysis has indicated that the tree is at least 2,000 years old, while studies carried out by the University of Crete have led to estimates of an age of some 4,000 years. On Sardinia, an olive known as the Cormac’s Tree is believed to be more than 3,000 years old. Other individual ancient specimens include those at Filitosa in Corsica (estimated to be 1,000 years old, and possibly as old as the megaliths that surround it) and at Roquebrune on the French Riviera (one is known as the ‘King of Kings’ and is reputed to be 2,000 years old). The truth is that the land around the Mediterranean is studded with ancient olives, some of which are likely to be over 2,000 years old, and since the majority haven’t been examined scientifically, establishing the most ancient individual amongst these is an almost impossible task.
The ancient olive at Ano Vouves in Crete is claimed by some to be the oldest in the world.
Needing very little water and able to survive on parched, dry soils, the tenacious olive can search out moisture at great depths, sending its roots down some 6m (20ft) in search of it. Olives are, however, very responsive to irrigation and fertilizer, and will produce a heavier and a more reliable crop if given this care. But to produce any useful quantity of fruit, the olive is dependent upon human hands in other ways, since the trees require grafting. Trees that grow up from seeds or suckers will produce only small, inferior fruit; they must be budded or grafted on to an established variety to do well. Cuttings are often grafted on to the stumps of old trees. Today, several hundred named varieties – or cultivars – exist, but of these, 139 varieties account for 85 per cent of the olives grown as a commercial crop.
Ancient olives, like these in Crete, continue to produce large crops of olives each year.
The murmur of an olive grove has something very intimate, immensely old. It is too beautiful for me to try to conceive of it or dare to paint it.
VINCENT VAN GOGH (1853–90)
In early summer, olive trees produce a multitude of small, white, perfumed flowers, which appear in groups under the preceding year’s leaves and are pollinated by wind. Strong winds, heavy rain and spring frosts, however, can kill the flowers, so the production of fruit is erratic: trees may produce a heavy crop one year and not even bloom the next. The familiar black or green olives that we buy are not produced by different trees: the olive’s fruits are green at first but become a satiny dark blue or purplish blue-black as they ripen, bursting with yellow oil. In this mature state they cling to the tree for several weeks before falling to the ground. Olive-growing is a special art – continued by countless generations of traditional small-scale farmers – requiring patience and skill, and a special empathy with the trees. As one French grower from Provence put it: ‘Olive trees respond to man, they interact … There is no more passionate tree anywhere, nothing that relates to man like an olive.’
An interesting belief arose, in parts of the Mediterranean, that the production of olive fruit was influenced by the moral standing of the picker. Thus, for a time in Ancient Greece only virgins and young men sworn to chastity were allowed to harvest the trees. Until recently, in some parts of Italy, a common tradition also held that the olive crop was sensitive to virtue. If tended by young, innocent children, the olive yield would be prolific; a farmer who was unfaithful to his wife could expect his misdemeanours to be reflected in a poor harvest!
Dappled light plays on the leaves of an olive tree in an ancient grove in Greece.
Olives have signified land, or rather rights to land, for thousands of years. Many peoples – such as the Palestinians – feel that their identity is intricately linked to their trees. But today in the Holy Land olive trees have become, sadly, objects of war rather than symbols of peace and trees are being destroyed, often as a first move, in battles over land.
Olive branches – symbols of peace
‘And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off …’ (Genesis 8:11). Ever since the return of the dove to Noah’s Ark with an olive leaf in her beak, the dove and the olive have been used in the Christian world as symbols of friendship and peace. In Graeco-Roman symbolism, olive branches also signified wellbeing and achievement. The Romans continued this tradition by presenting olive crowns to victorious soldiers on their return from battle.
In the Mediterranean region the ancient olive harvest takes place during the autumn and winter months, varying from region to region according to the climate and the requirements of the grower. As a general rule, harvesting by hand is still the most common method because it allows the best fruits to be selected for eating as ‘table olives’ without damaging the trees.
In other places, the olives are left to fall to the ground naturally; another method, often employed in Italy and Spain, is to use a long pole to beat the trees, or a kind of long-toothed comb may be stroked through the foliage to loosen the fruit. In biblical times, olives were also gathered by shaking or beating the trees, but a few fruit would always be left on them, it was said, for the poor, strangers, orphans and widows to gather.
It takes about 5kg (11lb) of olives to make 1 litre (1¾ pints) of oil, most of which comes from the outer flesh of the olive. In the eastern Mediterranean, the simplest and most ancient means of pressing olives dates back over 6,000 years. The olives are first crushed in a mortar and the resulting paste transferred to an earthenware jar. Hot water is then poured over the paste while it is kneaded by hand. As olive oil is lighter than water, the oil released from the fruits floats to the surface, allowing it to be skimmed off.
People who live among olive trees talk of the air being purer because of them. When Jeanne Calment of Arles in France was asked, on her 121st birthday (shortly before her death in August 1997), how she had survived to be the world’s oldest woman, she answered simply: ‘Olive oil!’
A harvester knocks olives from a tree onto nets spread beneath them.
