page_title: Olive oil
section_title: Trade and production
hierarchical_section_title: Olive oil / History / Trade and production
caption_attribution_description: The Manufacture of Oil, drawn and engraved by J. Amman in the Sixteenth Century.
context_page_description: Olive oil is a liquid fat obtained from olives, a traditional tree crop of the Mediterranean Basin, produced by pressing whole olives and extracting the oil. Olive oil is the most common vegetable oil. It is commonly used in cooking, for frying foods or as a salad dressing. It is also used in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and soaps, and as a fuel for traditional oil lamps, and has additional uses in some religions. There is limited evidence of its possible health benefits. The olive is one of three core food plants in Mediterranean cuisine; the other two are wheat and grapes. Olive trees have been grown around the Mediterranean since the 8th millennium BC.
  The top five producers of olive oil by volume are Spain, Morocco, Turkey, Greece, and Italy. However, per capita national consumption is highest in Greece, followed by Spain and Italy.
  The composition of olive oil varies with the cultivar, altitude, time of harvest and extraction process. It consists mainly of oleic acid, with smaller amounts of other fatty acids including linoleic acid and palmitic acid.
context_section_description: Archaeological evidence shows that by 6000 BC olives were being turned into olive oil. and 4500 BC at a now-submerged prehistoric settlement south of Haifa. 
  Olive trees and oil production in the Eastern Mediterranean can be traced to archives of the ancient city-state Ebla (2600–2240 BC), which were located on the outskirts of the Syrian city Aleppo. Here some dozen documents dated 2400 BC describe lands of the king and the queen. These belonged to a library of clay tablets perfectly preserved by having been baked in the fire that destroyed the palace. A later source is the frequent mentions of oil in the Tanakh.
  Dynastic Egyptians before 2000 BC imported olive oil from Crete, Syria and Canaan and oil was an important item of commerce and wealth. Remains of olive oil have been found in jugs over 4,000 years old in a tomb on the island of Naxos in the Aegean Sea. Sinuhe, the Egyptian exile who lived in northern Canaan about 1960 BC, wrote of abundant olive trees. The Minoans used olive oil in religious ceremonies. The oil became a principal product of the Minoan civilization, where it is thought to have represented wealth. 
  Olive oil was also a major export of Mycenaean Greece (c. 1450–1150 BC). Scholars believe the oil was made by a process where olives were placed in woven mats and squeezed. The oil collected in vats. This process was known from the Bronze Age and has been used by the Egyptians and continued to be used through the Hellenistic period. 
  The importance of olive oil as a commercial commodity increased after the Roman conquest of Egypt, Greece and Asia Minor led to more trade along the Mediterranean. Olive trees were planted throughout the entire Mediterranean basin during evolution of the Roman Republic and Empire. According to the historian Pliny the Elder, Italy had "excellent olive oil at reasonable prices" by the 1st century AD—"the best in the Mediterranean". As olive production expanded in the 5th century AD the Romans began to employ more sophisticated production techniques like the olive press and trapetum (pictured left). Many ancient presses still exist in the Eastern Mediterranean region, and some dating to the Roman period are still in use today. Productivity was greatly improved by Joseph Graham's  development of the hydraulic pressing system developed in 1795.
caption: The Manufacture of Oil, 16th century engraving by Jost Amman
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