Remains of 8,000 Year Old Olive Oil Exposed in the Galilee
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| Photo by IAA |
In 2011–2013 Dr. Ianir Milevski and Nimrod Getzov of the IAA directed an archaeological salvage excavation at ‘En Zippori in the Lower Galilee. This excavation led to research that indicates olive oil was already being used in the country 8,000 years ago, in the sixth millennium BC.
Getzov and Milevski methodically sampled the pottery vessels found in the excavation in order to ascertain what was stored in them and how they were used by the site’s ancient inhabitants. Together with Dr. Dvory Namdar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Institute of Earth Sciences, they took small pieces of pottery and utilizing chemical methods for extraction and identification examined the organic remains that were absorbed in the sides of the vessel.
According to Milevski and Getzov, “It seems that olive oil was already a part of the diet and might also have been used for lighting. Although it is impossible to say for sure, this might be an olive species that was domesticated and joined grain and legumes – the other kinds of field crops that we know that were grown back then. Those crops are known from at least two thousand years prior to the settlement at ‘En Zippori. With the adoption of olive oil the basic Mediterranean diet was complete. From ancient times to the present, the Mediterranean economy has been based on high quality olive oil, grain and must, the three crops frequently mentioned in the Bible.”
These tests revealed that the pottery dating to the Early Chalcolithic period contained olive oil. A comparison of the results of the extraction from the archaeological sherds with those of modern, one year old oil, showed a strong resemblance between the two, indicating a particularly high level of preservation of the ancient material, which had survived close to its original composition for almost 8,000 years. Two of the twenty pottery vessels which were sampled were found to be dating back to approximately 5,800 BC. According to the researchers this discovery at Zippori, is the first evidence for the use of olive oil and together with earlier findings from Kfar Samir, Israel, this is the earliest evidence of olive oil production in the country and possibly the entire Mediterranean basin.
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| Photo by IAA |
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