The Tree That Outlived Empires: The Story of the Olive

This week I’ve gone too deep down the AI and tech hole, so I wanted to ground myself back out with a wholesome and nature based article. Last night I made a delicious flounder dish with red onions, olives, and tomatoes baked into it. My husband picked around the olives. Oddly enough, olives seem to be disliked by a ton of people around the world, even though I’m super in love with them. Today, I thought I’d look into olives in general and write a little love letter to the four year old olive tree I have in my basement (it’s too cold outside for it now).

Before wine, before bread, and even before borders, there was the olive.
A tree so old it has watched civilizations rise and crumble, its roots threading through the bones of forgotten empires. You can taste history in its plump fruit, sharp, saline, and alive, as if time itself had been cured in brine. Too poetic? Okay, well did you remember I said I loved olives?

Olives were never humble, they’re survivors, soldiers, witnesses, and warriors who might’ve embedded all those soldiers with a bit of their ferocity. And their oil, that liquid gold that is often sold in stores as a fake shimmer of what they were meant to be, once fueled the lamps of Athens, anointed the kings of Israel, and softened the bread of Rome.

This is not just a story of food, it’s the story of what endures when everything around it falls, even if you’re just like my husband and pick around them in your food.

Roots Older Than Language

The first olives were not cultivated, they were found.
Ancient humans gathered them from wild groves on the hills of Crete and the coasts of the Levant nearly 6,000 years ago. Eventually, someone, a nameless farmer perhaps with time and patience, learned to tame their bitterness with salt and water. That act alone changed the course of civilization. Dramatic of me? Eh, maybe, but also, it really might’ve.

Olives became currency, tribute, offerings to gods, you name it, olives were a big part of it.
Egyptian tombs show amphorae of oil beside the dead, to light their way through eternity. In Greece, athletes rubbed their bodies in oil before competing; it glistened on marble statues and soaked into temple floors. And when the Romans came, they carried olive cuttings everywhere they conquered, across North Africa, Spain, Gaul, turning the Mediterranean into a single shimmering empire of trees.

Today, their descendants still stand there, knotted and silver-leaved, their trunks twisted more than the wrinkled hands of the old ladies who come in to brunch on Sundays at work.

The Oil That Lit the Ancient World

Before electricity, oil was the light everyone relied on.
Every flame that danced across parchment or stone in the ancient world burned all thanks to the olive. Its oil lit temples, palaces, and the humble homes of the peasants (my people), it was medicine, food, moisturizer, sacrament, anything that stood still long enough was impacted by it in some way.

The Greeks believed Athena herself gifted the first olive tree to humanity, as a peace offering to rival Poseidon’s tempest.
Rome believed in commerce and they taxed oil, stored it in great jars, and built trade routes around its flow. Entire economies were built on that tiny little green thing my husband refuses to eat, and in many ways, still are.

Even today, olive oil is among the most counterfeited products on Earth (what did I say earlier?) its price and purity stamped on the side of bottles at the grocery store.

The Tree That Refuses to Die

Olives are not immortal, they simply refuse to believe in the story of death.
Cut them down, and they will return from the stump. Burn them, and they’ll sprout from ash. Leave them outside in the winter in Philadelphia in your garage by accident with no water for 4 entire months, and they somehow still sprout again in the spring (don’t recommend trying it yourself, it was stressful times). They are the phoenixes of botany, same as figs. Figs: The Ancient, Delicious, Slightly Weird “Fruit”

Some trees, like the Olive of Vouves in Crete, have been alive for more than 2,000 years.
When the Persians burned Athens, the sacred olive tree on the Acropolis was destroyed. By morning, a new shoot had already appeared. To the Greeks, this was divine. To botanists, it’s just what olives do, regenerate through underground suckers that wait for disaster like coiled springs of green.

Every olive grove is a slow-motion rebellion against decay and has a resilience I personally aim for myself.

How to Grow an Olive Tree at Home

I might be the wrong person to talk about this, because I absolutely was guilty of the whole leaving my olive tree out in the cold and without water for four months, but it lived, so maybe I am.

Anyway, you don’t need a Mediterranean hillside to grow an olive tree, just a whole lot of patience and light.
Lots and lots of light.

Choose the right variety, there are tons. I don’t even remember which mine is, but for containers, choose smaller cultivars like Arbequina or Koroneiki. They stay compact but still fruit beautifully indoors. Use a clay or terracotta pot with excellent drainage, olives hate wet feet just like grapevines. A sandy mix with perlite or coarse gravel mimics their native soil.

Sun, sun, and More Sun. Give them at least six hours of direct sunlight daily, a south-facing window or grow light will do. They’re really the lovers of sunshine in the plant world. Don’t overwater them and let the soil dry slightly between waterings. Olive trees prefer drought to excess; they thrive on neglect.

Each spring, trim crossing branches to open the canopy up more, olive trees love air flow.

If you live somewhere cold, keep them indoors when temperatures drop below 40°F. Oops.
They’ll grow slowly, dreamily, waiting for spring to come back. I have a little set up in my basement with growlights for them in the winter.

In time, they’ll reward you not just with fruit, but a small symbol of the ancient world living beside your kitchen window.

The Chemistry of Bitterness and Gold

Olives, in their raw form, are nearly inedible. Their bitterness comes from oleuropein, a compound that defends the fruit against pests, and ironically, helps defend us against disease.

When we cure olives, we wash away the bitterness but leave behind what makes them powerful: antioxidants, polyphenols, and good fats. These compounds reduce inflammation, improve heart health, and, as recent studies suggest, even help protect the brain from cognitive decline.

Then there’s the oil. Cold-pressed real extra virgin olive oil contains over 30 distinct phenolic compounds, each one a tiny molecular guardian. The greener and more peppery the taste, the richer the polyphenols. That little burn in your throat? That’s oleocanthal, an anti-inflammatory agent comparable to ibuprofen. Also, when you’re traveling and the food of a different country has you stopped up, nothing like a tablespoon of pure olive oil to wash everything right out of you. Highly recommend.

The Taste of Time

There’s no single way to cure an olive, the internet is full of different techniques and styles.

In Greece, they soak them in seawater. In Spain, they rest in lye and rinse in brine. In Italy, they’re dry-cured with salt and left to wrinkle into deep intensity. In California, farmers experiment with smoke, herbs, and wine vinegar.

You can’t speed up the process of curing the olives, can’t microwave it, can’t hurry it to sweetness. It must take its sweet little time and soak before fermenting to change.

When you taste a properly cured olive from a local olive tree, you taste geography, patience, and weather. Terroir isn’t just for grapes and wine. Each bite of an olive is a small act of appreciation of the craft, to the unseen hands that guided it from bitter to beautiful.

Olives and the Human Heart

My sisters and I used to pick the olives out of my mom’s salads and put them on our fingers before eating them all and leaving behind the lettuce. Literally nothing could be closer to my heart than those moments of laughter with my two sisters.

But there’s more than the emotional heart-filled aspect of it, the Mediterranean diet isn’t a trend, it’s anthropology.
Generations who lived simply on olives, fish, vegetables, and bread consistently outlived those who didn’t. Their arteries were cleaner, their minds sharper, and their moods lighter.

Modern science links this to the olive’s monounsaturated fats and phenolic compounds that reduce LDL cholesterol and oxidative stress. Nothing makes me happier than pouring golden oil over bread or drizzling it over freshly picked tomatoes (I grow my own in my hydroponic system).

The Symbolism of the Olive Branch

Every civilization that touched the olive gave it some kind of meaning, which I also think is super cool.
In ancient Greece, it was peace and wisdom. In Christianity, it became forgiveness when Noah’s dove returning with an olive branch after the flood. In Islam, it’s the “blessed tree” that lights the world.
In politics, it’s diplomacy, and in art, it’s endurance.

Across all of them, the message is sort of similar in that peace is not fragile, it’s cultivated. The olive tree thrives in poor soil and dry wind, that’s why it became a metaphor for survival.

We may not all grow olives, but we all carry their lesson: resilience grows its roots.

To plant an olive tree is to admit that you believe in the future.
It will not bear fruit for years, sometimes not even for decades. You might never ever taste what it gives, but someone someday will.

Somewhere in the Mediterranean, an old tree stands gnarled and hollow, still fruiting, its trunk literally split open by time.
We measure our lives in years, the olive measures in civilizations.

Even if you eat around them.