Olive fruits excite the minds for more than one millennium, and regarding love or not love for olives, humanity has long been divided into two camps. But it must be admitted - regardless of the attitude to olives, olive oil is practically in every kitchen, which means that they are invisibly present in your life in any case.
The cultivation of the olive can be safely recorded in one of the first achievements of human civilization: according to archaeological data, they first began to grow olive trees on Crete in the third millennium BC. For a long time, the olive was grown in Crete and in Syria independently of each other. Then the Phoenician mariners spread it around the Mediterranean coast.

The average life span of an olive is 500 years, and some trees reach the age of 1500 years. It is believed that the trees on the Olive (Olive) Mount in Jerusalem are over 2000 years old.

The only difference between green and black olives is the degree of their maturity: ripe olives are black. Over 90% of the world olive harvest is used to make butter, and almost 98% of the land set aside for olive cultivation is in the Mediterranean region. In total, there are about 500 million olive trees in Europe. By the way, olive oil is the only oil that can be eaten without additional processing.

Freshly picked olives are not good for food - they are too bitter for that. To make them edible, olives should be treated with lye and / or preserved in brine or sea salt.

As the proverb widely known in narrow circles says, if you fell in love with olives, it means that you have become an adult.