The olive (olea Europea) originates in the Middle East. The culture stretched first in Egypt and later in the territories of the Magna Grecia. It was brought from the first the first Phoenicians and Greek sailors; but the Arabs and the Romans spread the growing along the fertile valleys of the 2 continents and today it covers a territory of about 9 million acres of land. The olive is the symbol of the Mediterranean basin, in fact in its "route" of diffusion one can feel the constant closeness of the coast, along the two coasts of Europe and Africa.

In Apulia, through centuries of diffusion the olive has found the ideal conditions of life. The biological needs of survival of the olive tree pose exact geographic boundaries to its diffusion: northerly, it stretches on the shores of the Como lake: southerly, it grows to the edges of the Libyc desert in northern Africa: actually the olive tree occupies a band of earth 10° of latitude wide and extends itself from the Iranian tableland to the Canaries.

The Olive in History

It was known that the growing of the maritime traffic along the coasts of southern Italy by Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans was crucial for the development of the olive culture in the Apulian region: a tree rich of temperance and resistance that adapts itself to poor and superficial soils. The crushing of the olives to obtain the oil was known long before the birth of Christ; proofs of primitive millstones are to be found in the Crete museums, in Haifa, in Israel, and in Egypt.

Many are the representations plastic and pictorial that pose the olives as protagonists, used as medication, food, cosmetics, energy and light producer. In the national museum of Taranto, three ancient amphoras and sarcophagus that belonged to an athlete, awarded with ornate bases containing olive oil, for its participation of the Panatanee. In 600 B.C. a law was promulgated that forbid the destruction of the olive tree.

Such a law in our country (dates 40 years) forbid cutting of trees to make fire with. With the settling of the roman empire the olive oil became also of strategic importance in the field of commerce and exchange activities among different people; also the study of good growing were intensified. The ports of Brundisium, Gallipoli, Otranto, and Taranto became leading areas for ships carriers of enormous quantities of oils.