The cultivated olive (Olea europaea) had its origin in the wild olive. According to De Candolle, the home of the wild olive is "East and West of Syria and Palestine, from the Punjab as far as Portugal, the Canary Islands and Morocco, and beyond to Macedonia and the Caucasus." In the Holy Land, the wild olive tree (Olea europaea var. oleaster) flourished in the woodlands of the Carmnel hills, in Samuaria, Lower Galilee and in Gilead, and it is reasonable to infer that the cultivated kind is an outgrowth fromn it. Even today, it is seen in the vestiges of natural forest stands in those areas. In the Neolithic period (7th to 5th Millennium BC) in the Middle Stone Age or Mesolithic period (10,000-6000 BC) and perhaps earlier still-in the Old Stone Age or Paleolithic period (prior to 10,000 BC), primneval man in what is now Israel dwelt in eaves adjacent to Mount Carmel and in Galilee, and in other localities where the wild or semi-wild olive throve. The fruit of this spontaneous plant was not rich in oil; but, for all that, it sufficed to sustain the ancients. As the aeons passed, the developing mind of man learned to await ripening for his taste or to alleviate its bitterness through pounding or salting. It will be a pardonable anachronism to refer here to three literary citations relative to that bitterness. "For really there is no tree bitterer than the olive" (Midrash, Mechilta, Beshalah, 18a). Addressing the Almighty, the dove says: "Lord of the universe, may my food be as bitter as the olive and entrusted to Thine own hands and not he as sweet as honey and entrusted to hands of flesh and blood" (Babylonian Tal-