Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The growing of olive trees dates back to early Greek history. Olive plantations are a long-term investment: it takes more than twenty years for the tree to provide fruit, and it only fruits every other year. Grapes also do well in the rocky soil, but demand a lot of care. Grapes have been grown since the Bronze Age.
The grape clusters, vines and wine cups that adorn Greek coins from classical times bear witness to the importance of wine to the ancient Greek economy. With every major trading partner, from the Crimea , Egypt, Scythia, Etruria and beyond, the Greeks traded their knowledge of viticulture and winemaking, as well the fruits of their own production.
Dionysus with Hermes, a silenus and grapes Wine boy at a symposium. The origins of wine-making in Greece go back 6,500 years [9] [10] and evidence suggesting wine production confirm that Greece is home to the second oldest known grape wine remnants discovered in the world [6] [9] [11] and the world's earliest evidence of crushed grapes. [9]
[18] [32] Many of the grapes grown in modern Greece are grown there exclusively and are similar or identical to the varieties grown in ancient times. Indeed, the most popular modern Greek wine, a strongly aromatic white called retsina , is thought to be a carryover from the ancient practice of lining the wine jugs with tree resin, imparting a ...
The culture of the ancient Phoenicians was one of the first to have had a significant effect on the history of wine. [1] Phoenicia was a civilization centered in current day Lebanon . Between 1550 BC and 300 BC, the Phoenicians developed a maritime trading culture that expanded their influence from the Levant to North Africa , the Greek Isles ...
In ancient Greece, fruit and vegetables were a significant part of the diet, as the ancient Greeks consumed much less meat than in the typical diet of modern societies. [68] Legumes would have been important crops, as their ability to replenish exhausted soil was known at least by the time of Xenophon .
When an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, new animals and plants competed to survive on a changing planet. Grapes were the unlikely winners 60 million years ago.
Agriculture in ancient Greece was hindered by the topography of mainland Greece that only allowed for roughly 10% of the land to be cultivated properly, necessitating the specialised exportation of oil and wine and importation of grains from Thrace (centered in what is now Bulgaria) and the Greek colonies of Pontic Greeks near the Black Sea.