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An olive oil miracle: Clazomenae



 
 
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Old June 15th, 2008, 07:50 AM posted to rec.travel.budget.backpack,rec.travel.europe,soc.culture.turkish,rec.travel.asia
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Default An olive oil miracle: Clazomenae

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An olive oil miracle: Clazomenae

By BAHAR KALKAN

The `factory' that has come to light in the
ancient city of Clazomenae represents the earliest
example of the technology still used in today's
production of olive oil.

Olive tree, olive branch, olive, olive oil...
These words evoke celebrated legends and fables
that have been the subject of folksongs and even
featured in the scriptures...The olive pit is one
of the three seeds that when placed in Adam's
mouth took root and grew. When the Flood was over
the good tidings were carried in the beak of the
dove, the symbol of man making peace with God on
the one hand and with nature on the other. It was
olive oil that provided the `everlasting' light in
the temple that Pharaoh Ramses III built for the
Sun god Ra.

Athena, the goddess of wisdom, science and art
earned the right to become the city's protector
when she presented Athens with the wild olive tree
she had grafted. Olive leaves formed the crown
placed on the heads of the winners of the ancient
Olympic Games. The oil of the olive was the
`golden liquid' that saved Ali Baba in the Tales
from the Thousand and One Nights. The olive is the
tree of the Holy Scriptures, mentioned in both the
Old and the New Testament, and also in the Koran.
This sacred tree is the symbol of rebirth,
immortality, affluence and plenty, tranquillity
and abundance, peace and civilisation.*

ORIGIN OF THE MIRACLE

In Urla near Izmir I listened to a story where
these words were mentioned. It was told by Prof.
Dr. Guven Bakir, who together with his team has
been excavating the antique city of Clazomenae for
25 years for Ege University's Department of
Archaeology. Although we were not in the shade of
the delicately fluttering silvery leaves of
century old olive trees, we were just as
appropriately in the city of Clazomenae, the city
where everything that revolves around olives and the
miracle first took place. Our story goes back to
the 12th or 11th century BC, when people migrating
from Greece sought a new home in Western Anatolia.
There they generally settled on the peninsulas,
establishing their Ionian civilisation. When they
first arrived, the newcomers became farmers who
rarely left their own environs.

Equality is their biggest virtue. They know that
without equal share there cannot be equal defence.
But the peaceful life of the Ionians is shattered
by the arrival of the Cimmerians in the 7th
century BC. For 50 years they are not left in
peace, and survive by establishing colonies in far
away lands. They live in Thrace, around the shores
of the Black Sea, in Northern Anatolia, on the
coast of the Sea of Marmara and in remote parts of
the Aegean Sea. Some of them go to Egypt and
Palestine as mercenary soldiers. They return after
fifty years... more experienced, more
knowledgeable, and having added trade to their
means of making a livelihood. They start exporting
their products to their colonies, and among these,
olive oil is the most important.

ANCIENT OLIVE OIL FACTORY

The olive oil factory in Clazomenae, which is the
setting of our story, is one of the places where
this olive oil production takes place. It is
situated in the city's `industrial estate'.
Immediately below it are the blacksmiths, and the
potters are a little further away. The time is the
6th century BC. This workshop is quite unique. The
production technology used here is not found
anywhere else, either in this era or even in
plants built much later. First of all it has a
three compartment oil separation system, so
evidently oil production was going on more or less
constantly.

Secondly, the mill stones that turn around in a
grove quickly crush the olives. Thirdly, when the
big press is put into operation for large-scale
production, a complicated but practical capstan is
used.

It is these three elements that set this workshop
apart from all those of its own time, and these
that make it the world's earliest representative
of the technology used in the production of olive
oil today. We know that the method used by all the
workshops dating from that period that have been
found, right up to the 4th century BC, is
primitive and very basic. It consists of pressing
the oil into a container, letting it settle,
skimming off the oil, emptying the container and
then repeating the process.

KNOWING THE LANGUAGE OF THE SOIL

Indeed our own workshop has used this method in
its earliest period, but is perhaps abandoned when
the Persians arrive in 550 BC. The Persians, like
the Cimmerians, do not give the Ionians peace.
They burn and destroy, forcing them to leave their
homeland.

But the Ionians are not about to give up this
fertile soil. In 530 BC they begin to resettle
their land, and the owners of the workshop return.
But this time they introduce a completely new
system: the advanced technology that we have just
described. How did they discover a system so
advanced for its time? No one has yet answered
this question. For this workshop has no
contemporary. There are only two other early
examples of a three compartment oil separation
system: one in Spain from the Roman era, another
in Cyprus dating from the mediaeval period under
Venetian rule. Both are hundreds of years younger
than our workshop. It is clear that nature itself
gave Ionia's philosophers of nature the answers to
their questions. It is clear that they learned the
language of the soil well and understood what it
told them. What they had learned theoretically
from observation they applied to industry.

So is this the only example in Anatolia? What
about the past and the future? Who knows? As
research in the bottomless well of Anatolia's
ancient past progresses we may make new
discoveries. Let us return to our workshop, to the
factories from which the Clazomenaean merchants
get tons of oil. For storage and export they use
amphoras that also are specially produced in
Clazomenae. They load them onto ships one by one.
Yet fresh disaster awaits, and the lifetime of
this workshop lasts for just 30 years. During the
Ionian revolution in 500 BC Clazomenae gets its
share of Persian wrath. The population flees and
does not return for a hundred years, by which time
no one remembers the workshop. Deep in the ground
it falls into a slumber. this project has taken
ten years and only since November 2004 has the
factory started to produce olive oil once again,
proving its immortality...

THE WORKSHOP IS RESTORED

Hundreds of years, thousands of years go by. And
new heroes appear before us. The leading roles are
now taken by our storyteller Guven Bakir and his
colleague, graphic designer Ertan Iplikci.
Together with their teams they discover the
factory after nearly 2500 years in the depths of
the earth. The word of the miracle is spread.
Ertugrul Kale from Greenactive comes to meet them.

Komili, one of Turkey's foremost olive oil
producers is captivated by the charm of the story.
The company declares its intention of restoring
the workshop. They even want to use materials
unique to the region and true to the era, avoiding
anything unnatural. Ertan Iplikci is the project
manager and Kutay Ozer is the architect. They cast
their moulds with the adobe whose recipe they have
acquired from their elders who are skilled at this
craft. White Urla stones form the foundation and
the unfired, sun-dried clay bricks form the walls.

Carpenters produce the wooden tools and
mechanisms, while their iron reinforcements are
beaten by blacksmiths. Reeds are laid on the roof
of the factory. The mill stones are shaped by
capable hands. It is easier said than done: : this
project has taken ten years and only since
November 2004 has the factory started to produce
olive oil once again, proving its immortality...

THE STORY DOES NOT END HERE

This story does not end for as long as our heroes
labour and their patience is not exhausted. They
are now pursuing more adventures.

Having bought an early 20th century olive oil mill
in one of Urla's villages they plan to move it
next to the factory and get that back into working
order as well. This way we shall be able to
compare the methods used by two olive factories
separated by an age gap of 2500 years. They also
want to build a miniature workshop for children on
the site. The children will bring along their own
olives, and working collectively in the
traditional way will grind the olives to a pulp in
the mills. They will tighten the presses and leave
it to rest in glass filters with taps; then bottle
the extracted oil and stick on labels that they
themselves have designed. In this way they will
get to know nature; the thing they have produced,
and the value of their labour.

The sacred liquid from the immortal tree will
never be missing from their lives.


* Artun Unsal, the Track of the Immortal Tree,
Yapi Kredi Yayinlari.

We thank Prof. Dr. Guven Bakir of Ege University's
Department of Archaeology for providing the
information used in this article.
 




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