Olive oil is a vegetable oil obtained by pressing whole olives (the fruit of Olea europaea, a traditional tree crop of the Mediterranean Basin) and extracting the oil. It is commonly used in cooking for frying foods, as a condiment, or as a salad dressing. It can also be found in some cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, soaps, and fuels for traditional oil lamps. It also has additional uses in some religions. The olive is one of three core food plants in Mediterranean cuisine, with wheat and grapes. Olive trees have been cultivated around the Mediterranean since the 8th millennium BC. In 2022, Spain was the world's largest producer, manufacturing 24% of the world's total. Other large producers were Italy, Greece, and Turkey, collectively accounting for 59% of the global market. The composition of olive oil varies with the cultivar, altitude, time of harvest, and extraction process. It consists mainly of oleic acid (up to 83%), with smaller amounts of other fatty acids including linoleic acid (up to 21%) and palmitic acid (up to 20%). Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) is required to have no more than 0.8% free acidity, and is considered to have favorable flavor characteristics.
History Olive oil has long been a common ingredient in Mediterranean cuisine, including ancient Greek and Roman cuisine. Wild olives, which originated in Asia Minor, were collected by Neolithic people as early as the 8th millennium BC. Besides food, olive oil has been used for religious rituals, medicines, as a fuel in oil lamps, soap-making, and skincare application. The Spartans and other Greeks used oil to rub themselves while exercising in the gymnasia. From its beginnings early in the 7th century BC, the cosmetic use of olive oil quickly spread to all of the Hellenic city-states, together with athletes training in the nude, and lasted close to a thousand years despite its great expense. Olive oil was also popular as a form of birth control; Aristotle in his History of Animals recommends applying a mixture of olive oil combined with either oil of cedar, ointment of lead, or ointment of frankincense to the cervix to prevent pregnancy.
Early cultivation
The exact date and location of olive tree domestication are unclear. The modern olive tree may have originated in ancient Persia and Mesopotamia and spread to the Levant and later to North Africa, though some scholars argue for an Egyptian origin. The oldest traces of olive oil in Italy date back to the 3rd millennium BC. The olive tree reached Greece, Carthage and Libya sometime in the 28th century BC, having been spread westward by the Phoenicians. Until around 1500 BC, eastern coastal areas of the Mediterranean were most heavily cultivated. Evidence also suggests that olives were being grown in Crete as long ago as 2500 BC. The earliest surviving olive oil amphorae date to 3500 BC (Early Minoan times), though the production of olive oil is assumed to have started before 4000 BC. Olive trees were certainly cultivated by the Late Minoan period (1500 BC) in Crete, and perhaps as early as the Early Minoan. The cultivation of olive trees in Crete became particularly intense in the post-palatial period and played an important role in the island's economy, as it did across the Mediterranean. Later, as Greek colonies were established in other parts of the Mediterranean, olive farming was introduced to places like Spain and continued to spread throughout the Roman Empire. Olive trees were introduced to the Americas in the 16th century, when cultivation began in areas with a climate similar to the Mediterranean, such as Chile, Argentina, and California. Recent genetic studies suggest that species used by modern cultivars descend from multiple wild populations, but detailed history of domestication is unknown.
Trade and production
Archaeological evidence in Galilee shows that by 6000 BC olives were being turned into olive oil and in 4500 BC at a now-submerged prehistoric settlement south of Haifa. Olive trees and oil production in the Eastern Mediterranean can be traced to archives of the ancient city-state Ebla (2600–2240 BC), which were located on the outskirts of Aleppo. Here, some dozen documents dated 2400 BC describe the lands of the king and the queen. These belonged to a library of clay tablets perfectly preserved by having been baked in the fire that destroyed the palace. A later source is the frequent mentions of oil in the Tanakh. Dynastic Egyptians before 2000 BC imported olive oil from Crete, Syria, and Canaan, and oil was an important item of commerce and wealth. Remains of olive oil have been found in jugs over 4,000 years old in a tomb on the island of Naxos in the Aegean Sea. Sinuhe, the Egyptian exile who lived in northern Canaan c.1960 BC, wrote of abundant olive trees. The Minoans used olive oil in religious ceremonies. The oil became a principal product of the Minoan civilization, where it is thought to have represented wealth. Olive oil was also a major export of Mycenaean Greece (c. 1450–1150 BC). Scholars believe the oil was made by a process where olives were placed in woven mats and squeezed. The oil was collected in vats. This process was known from the Bronze Age, was used by the Egyptians, and continued to be used through the Hellenistic period. In the Iron Age, settlements in and around the Judaean Lowlands, including Ekron, Timnah, and Gezer, emerged as key hubs for olive oil production and commerce. Evidence from the Samaria Ostraca, discovered in the capital of the Kingdom of Israel, includes a reference to "washed oil," a term believed to refer to virgin olive oil.
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