The Hebrew Bible makes frequent mention of the use of olive oil, especially for ritual purposes, and in multiple places extols the Land of Israel for its oil-producing olive trees. But a recent discovery suggests that people living in the Promised Land were eating the olives too, for much longer than previously assumed. The Times of Israel reports:
Israeli archaeologists have found evidence of the earliest-known production of olives for consumption rather than for oil, which dates back 6,600 years.
Thousands of olive pits were found off the southern coast of Haifa, embedded in stone and clay Neolithic structures in an area that is now submerged, but is believed to have been part of the northern coast in the past. The pits were dated to around 4,600 BCE, some 4,000 years earlier than the previous earliest known use of olives for food.
“When we found the pits we could immediately see they were different than the ones used to produce oil,” said Tel Aviv University archaeologist Dafna Langot. “In the waste from the production of olive oil the pits are mostly crushed, while here the pits were mostly whole.” The researchers also did not find other telltale signs of oil production such as the remains of olive skins.
Read more on Times of Israel: https://www.timesofisrael.com/evidence-of-olive-consumption-6600-years-ago-found-off-coast-of-haifa/