Historical Curiosities
Following some historical curiosities about Olive Oil
OLIVE AND OIL SYMBOLS OF HISTORY AND CIVILIZATION
The cultivation of the olive tree is a characteristic of the Mediterranean countries and is linked to the history, traditions and way of life typical of rural Mediterranean populations. Contrary to the other cultivations of the ancient Phoenician, Greek and Roman civilizations, spread over the centuries in all continents, the olive tree remains a typical Mediterranean culture, with 98% of the world olive production of the countries facing this sea, and can represent a symbol of our history and civilization, as well as a symbol of peace.
These “noble” characteristics of the olive tree have earned it a particular treatment over the centuriest , almost of favor, both for the fundamental importance that olive oil had in the diet of our ancestors, and for the irreplaceable function that this culture plays in our day in defense of the natural environment and especially of the typically Mediterranean one, arid and beaten by the winds. At the hydrogeological defense the olive tree adds a characteristic landscape function preserved over the centuries.
ORIGIN
Although the olive tree is a plant of Mediterranean countries, its origin is probably more eastward, between Pamir and Turkestan. In the Mediterranean regions, however, it found the set of conditions that are pedological and the soil that would have made of it the culture for excellence from 5000 years to today.
It was probably the Fenid who brought this plant for the first time to Italy, in the air then colonized by the Greek, the Magna Grecia. It was, therefore, the classic world before the Christian one, to give the olive tree and the oil that central place in agriculture, in food and in religious ritual that it has then preserved throughout the Mediterranean world. : protected culture in Athens as in Rome, dressing and basic food, ointment and cosmetic.
Symbols of honour and victory, they marked a clear distinction with people who used the butter, therefore considered barbarians, to the point that Plutarch, to give the idea of his conquests, said of Caesar that “he had procured so much territory to the Roman power to be able to get 3 million liters of oil from them”! It was the Romans who proposed the first oil duties according to the type of olives from which it was obtained, and as Catone explains to us in his work on agricultural cultivation, they perfected the technique of processing olives to obtain oil using a particular type of mill (trapetum) and trying to exclude the kernels from the squeezing.
MEANINGS ATTRIBUTED TO OLIVE TREE AND OIL
There are many meanings attributed to the olive tree and to the oil: for the Greek the goddess of wisdom, Athena, had made a gift to men, the olive branch was a sign of victory and the oil was a cosmetic for the athletes, the Romans crowned with olive bunches the good citizens, the spouses, the dead to the burial, believing they were all winners in the struggles for human life. A symbol of wisdom and eternity that Christ, “I come to you from the Lord” symbol of spiritual kingship, would have synthesized and together overcome. Today, olive growing has taken on a very wide geographical spread, reaching Australia, South Africa, India, Japan, Russia, Argentina and the United States; but the Mediterranean countries remain quantitatively and qualitatively the largest producers of olive oil.
