Tea at Trianon: The Truly Ancient Origins Of Olive Oil

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, May 7, 2023

The Truly Ancient Origins Of Olive Oil

From Daily Meal:

Ubiquitously available all across Europe, the Maghreb, and the Middle East, olive oil is an essential component of cuisines originating from around the Mediterranean Sea, from Spain to Palestine. It's so widely enjoyed that over 3 million tons of olive oil are produced every year, with most being produced by countries like Greece, Morocco, Italy, and Turkey — although Spain is by far the world's largest olive oil producer. As with many of the most widely eaten food ingredients, the reason why olive oil is consumed so widely and in such large amounts is that humans have been using it for an exceptionally long time.

The history of olives and their oil is long and storied. Thousands of years ago, in the classical world, growing olives and pressing them for oil was a booming industry. The oil was traded extensively between city-states and nations, and spread by cultures like the Greeks and the Phoenicians. After the Roman Empire arose, they cultivated olives in places like Libya and Syria. But olive oil was already old long before the Greeks and Romans appeared.
Where exactly olives trees first evolved and grew is lost to time. The trees are old enough that their leaves have been discovered in fossils dating back to the Pliocene period, over 2.6 million years ago. In other words, olive trees are older than humanity; the earliest humans appeared "only" around 2 million years ago. Some believe that olives originally came from Anatolia, the peninsula now home to modern Turkey, and the westernmost tip of Asia. Even today, Turkey is home to dense forests where wild olive trees still grow. However, this is little more than an educated guess. Other possibilities for the origin of olives include places in Africa like Egypt, the Atlas Mountains, and Ethiopia. (Read more.)