Brandishing long sticks, three men knock olives from a tree and a fourth collects them in a basket in this scene on a sixth-century B.C. Greek black-figure amphora. In ancient times, harvested olives were drenched in hot water, crushed and pressed. The lighter oil rose to the top of the vat while the water was drawn off through a spout at the bottom. Olives have been cultivated on Crete since at least the mid-third millennium B.C. The many pithoi (large pottery jars) uncovered in the early second-millennium B.C. palace of Knossos—home of the legendary king Minos—attest to olive oil’s […]
