The olive tree is one of humanity's oldest cultivated plants. Wild olive trees grew early on in the eastern Mediterranean. Many thousands of years ago, people in the Levant and in Anatolia began to grow them deliberately.
With traders and seafarers the olive tree spread across the whole Mediterranean. Olive oil was food, lamp oil and body care all in one and was traded in amphorae. To this day the tree shapes cuisine and landscape around the Mediterranean.
