The olive tree is among the oldest known cultivated trees in the world. A native to Asia Minor, it spread from Iran, Syria and Palestine to the rest of the Mediterranean 5,000 years ago. Pollen analysis indicates that olive trees have been present in Greece since Neolithic times.

Greeks were the first to cultivate the olive tree around 3500 BC on the island of Crete. By 2000BC cultivation in Crete was on a large scale with exports to mainland Greece, Northern Africa and Asia Minor.

Between the 7th and 3rd centuries BC ancient philosophers, physicians and historians undertook the botanical classification of the olive and wrote its history while Aristotle elevated its cultivation to a science. Ancient Greeks protected olive trees by legislation. In the 6th century BC Solon the Great, Athenian legislator drafted the first law for the protection of the olive tree in which he prohibited the cutting down of more than two trees a year in each olive grove.



For the ancient Greeks, the olive tree was a symbol of peace, wisdom and triumph. Olympic athletes in Greece were massaged with olive oil and believed that three gifts of the gods would flow from it - wisdom, power and strength. When the first Olympic Games took place in Olympia in 776 BC an olive wreath was used to crown the Olympic champions. Indicative of the significance of the olive tree to the Athenians is that coins portrayed the goddess Athena with an olive wreath on her helmet and an amphorae with olive oil.