Page:The Olive Its Culture in Theory and Practice.djvu/11



The history of the olive is obscure and controverted and is lost in the night of centuries. Its home seems to have been in Southern Central Asia, where it was first domesticated and improved by the Semitic races of that country. Monuments and history show that the wild olive existed on the Grecian coasts of Asia Minor, in the Islands and in Greece itself. Probably the Greeks received its culture from the Semitics. But when, who can tell? In Homer's time, the ninth century, B. C., frequent mention is made of the olive, but always as a foreign importation, which was used entirely for anointing the body and not for food or light. It seems as if in later parts of Homer we see indications of the beginning of its culture, probably on the Ionic coasts and islands, not on the main land. Samos means "planted with olives." As for Miletus and Chios we have evidence of olives from the time of Talete, 639 to 546 B. C.

The Egyptian bas reliefs show us how that people extracted oil from the olive before the invention of the stone for crushing the berries. These depict the pressing of sacks of olives to extract the oil and then washing with water till only the clean stones remain.

A certain Aristeo is said to have been the first to cultivate the tree in Sicily and to him is attributed the invention of the crushing stone.

Herodotus tells us that Athens was the seat of olive cultivation in Greece. At the beginning of the sixth century B. C., olive culture is mentioned in the laws of Solon. 2