Blog
One million trees
July 12, 2019
By Rita Henss
“Several hundred years,” the young man replies, when we ask him how old the gnarled olive trees are behind his parents’ house. Like human faces, furrowed and lined, the massive trunks testify to the course of time. Their hard wood is riven with cracks and fissures; some have been crudely patched up with lumps of stone.
Olives are a vital part of Cypriot cultural history. Islanders were already eating the fruits of the wild oleao oleaster in 6,000 BC, and by the late Bronze Age they were cultivating olives. Even before Roman times, Strabo the Greek geographer mentions oil and wine production in Cyprus.
Modern researchers have found an abundance of historic presses throughout the island, both in rural areas and coastal areas such as Paphos, Curium and Amathus, which suggests there was a thriving export trade. Cypriot-style amphoras found in Alexandria suggest that the oil trade reached as far as Egypt.