How did the olive become so sacred to the Mediterranean? To hear them talk it's more important than bread...

How did the olive become so sacred to the Mediterranean? To hear them talk it's more important than bread, even to people for whom the word "meal" literally translates to "to eat bread"

it's abundant, cheap and nutritious

because it grows in their shitty dust-ridden hilly rocky climate with ease.

This plus practically. Olive oil is used in countless things, Morso than butter in the North (the closest analogue). People use to wash with olive oil for crying out loud.

they still do in Turkey

Butter weren't a big thing in the Mediterranean?
t.Northerner

Fat has the densest caloric rate of the three macros

The Greeks called Thracians "butter-eaters" with derision

I swear I´ve seen spaniards making fried potatoes and dropping the cooking oil on top
olive oil is lighter and healthier than corn oil though

It still isn't really.

I'm not sure if you're using the word sacred metaphorically but it's not uncommon for commodities that have extreme cultural salience to acquire a sacred character; in the Southeast Solomons some cultures have developed a lot of religious beliefs surrounding bonitos

How did someone discover that sticking an olive in brine makes it edible?

In Rome butter was seen as little more than garbage, certainly not food, mostly used as lube, for example in cart wheels

probably someone hungry and saw these fruits everywhere, hated the taste, decided to put it in something to make it less rotten tasting since salted meat didnt taste rotten

butter doesn't last long in the mediterranean without fridges

I don't like olives

You're a nobody.

Why would you need butter when you have healthy as fuck olive oil?

this is bs unless you can prove otherwise

I don't really care to convince you desu. I know it not to be bs cause I've read it in a book, but I can't remember the name. The first time was a bit of a hyperbole on my part, but they did use it as lube for tools, which tells you about how little they valued the product itself

>I know it not to be bs cause I've read it in a book

You'll find a lot of bs in books, user. Not to say I don't believe you, but "I know it not to be bs cause I've read it in a book" is shoddy reasoning.

not just "any book" it was a pretty good one lad

This is false. We eat more bread than olive oil. However we use to put olive oil instead butter in sandwiches, fried meals, salads or stews.

no one can deny that /rancid/ butter in the Mediterranean climate would go straight to greasing gears, but to think that romans were raising goats, milking them, then churning butter that went only to lube instead of food is ridiculous, it might have been unfashionable for citizens but certainly still seen as food

fucking barbarian olives are goat

>even to people for whom the word "meal" literally translates to "to eat bread"

top kek im from Macedonia and its fucking strange how westerners find this weird, like, if you don't eat bread how are you full? I can eat literally any combo of vegetables/meat/eggs/dairy e.t.c. but without bread ill be hungry within an hour.

Olive oil made bread taste less like shit and grains so yeah it was important.

Also lude bath times rubbed down in the shit.

>top kek im from Macedonia and its fucking strange how westerners find this weird, like, if you don't eat bread how are you full? I can eat literally any combo of vegetables/meat/eggs/dairy e.t.c. but without bread ill be hungry within an hour.
If you think bread is filling then what about all the other grains (oatmeal, barley, quinoa, rice, bulgar, etc)? Those are even more filling, without being starchy and sharp in the stomach.

Okay, so your argument is somewhere in the library. nice

it's really not a big deal, just a minor curiosity, if it was actually relevant and I cared I'd be looking for it