THE TREE AND THE OLIVE

It was born thousand years ago, the tree with the most particularly characteristicsof the Mediterranean region and of very ancient origin. It grew somewhere near to Asia, where it was extremely abundant. It have spread from Syria to Greece "via Anatolia" and after to all Mediterranean Basin. Its cultivation developed considerably and spreading from the Island of Crete towards Egypt, between the 7th and 3rd century B.C. where ancient philosophers, physicians and historians undertook its botanical classifications and referred to the curative properties of olive oil, and its history, while Aristotle who lived in Athens elevated olive cultivation to a science.Ancient Greeks consider Pallas Athena, the Goddess of peace and wisdom, born miraculously from the forehead of her father, Zeus after he swallowed the pregnant Metis, to be the fountainhead of the olive tree. Cecrops founded a small colony in Attica in the 17th century B.C., which attracted the inhabitants of the area who had been nomads until then.Athena and Poseidon disputed the honor of giving the town its name, and so the assembly of gods agreed to grant that honor to whichever of the two contestants provided the most useful invention.
Poseidon brought a magnificent horse, "beautiful, swift capable of pulling heavy chariots and winning in combat". Athena made sprout an olive oil tree "capable of giving a flame for lighting up the night; of soothing wounds; of being a precious food, both rich in flavor and a source of energy". The people considered the olive tree to be of greater use to man, thus granting Athena sovereigntyover the region and over the city which bears her name.The olive tree that sprouted in the Acropolis was surrounded to its defense. When enemies approached, all the citizens gathered inside the walls, closeUntil then only virgins and chaste men, were entrusted with tending olive groves. to the olive tree, until the danger had passed.
Some 700 years B.C. Thales ofMiletus predicted that oil production was going to be extraordinary, thanks to certain observations that he made from the stars. He leased the region's mills and though his monopoly earned a fabulous profit.
He was one of the first people to trade in oil.