Olive oil and olive domestication
Aceite de oliva (prensado y domesticación del olivo)
- Date
- c. 4500 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Kfar Samir, Carmel coast (submerged site), Israel
- Credited to
- Chalcolithic communities of the Levant
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Stone basins and thousands of crushed olive stones in submerged pressing installations, the oldest known olive oil production. The first vegetable oil produced at scale, for food, light and cosmetics.
Ein Zippori (Galilee) suggests oil consumption as early as c. 5800 BCE; the genetic domestication of the olive is placed in the northern Levant.
What it led to
- Lighting with oil lamps and body ointments
- Commercial Mediterranean tree-crop farming and its export economy in amphorae
- The Mediterranean landscape of olive groves and terraces