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History Thousands of years of history The history of the olive is ancient, its origins lost in time immemorial. It is a history entwined with that of humanity itself. It was the dawn of civilisation, 4000 years before Christ, when the olive tree, originating in Armenia, arrived in Palestine; in the Egypt of the Pharaohs it grew everywhere, as it did in Crete. Thanks to the Phoenicians, who were the great traders in olive oil in ancient times, the precious liquid arrived in Greece where it attained its maximum splendour. Not only the basis of cooking, it was also used for sacred initiation rites, as a fuel for lamps, and as an unguent to massage the skin before the athlete entered the wrestling ground. The fortunes of olive oil also continued in the Roman period. Conquered peoples had to pay tribute in oil to Rome, which organised the southern regions into oil-producing provinces. The collapse of the Empire however marked the end of the cultivation of olives. The ancient tree only survived around monasteries and in fortified fiefdoms which sprang up particularly in Tuscany. The Italy of the mediaeval Communes needed oil once again. In the 12th century olive groves began to spread again, and Tuscany became an important centre for growing the trees. It issued severe laws governing the cultivation of the olive and trade in olive oil. Venice and Genoa began to trade ever greater quantities of oil arriving from all countries in the Mediterranean basin. Towards the beginning of the 14th century, Puglia became one enormous olive grove, and olives were planted in various other regions of Italy. The wars of the 15th century marked a crisis in production, but this crisis was only temporary, and olive oil soon returned, to assume its position as the most highly prized product on the lavishly spread tables of the Renaissance. After a lull around the seventeenth century due to the heavy taxes imposed on olive oil production during the Spanish domination, production picked up again in the 18th century following the development of a free market and tax exemption on olive groves. In the 19th century, the olive groves spread still further afield, thanks to money bonuses guaranteed by the Papal State. For many centuries, the production of olives and of olive oil remained a family affair. The situation changed at the beginning of the 20th century. The development of industrial refinement of vegetable oil meant that overall production and world-wide exports of oil increased substantially. At the end of the 1970s, nutritional research carried out by some American scientists began to lead people to appreciate the advantages of a Mediterranean Diet also in countries which traditionally used other oils or cooking fats. This enormous increase in consumption has over recent years stimulated the cultivation of olive trees also in countries in which the growing of olives was hitherto unknown. It is estimated that more than 800 million cultivated olive trees exist in the world today and, even if almost 700 million of these are in the Mediterranean basiin, there are olives growing in South America, Australasia and China.
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