The Olive Tree and The Olympics: An Ancient Bond

The Olympic Games is the lead­ing inter­na­tional multi-sport event and the ulti­mate global cel­e­bra­tion of ath­leti­cism and unity.

In ancient Greece, where the Olympics began around 2,800 years ago, they were a major sport, cul­tural and polit­i­cal event.

According to Greek mythol­ogy, the Olympic Games became inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the olive tree, the god­dess of wis­dom, Athena’s gift to the city of Athens.

The ori­gins of the games can be traced back to the sanc­tu­ary of Olympia in the south­ern Peloponnese penin­sula, where the first recorded Olympic Games were held in 776 BC.

The games were part of a reli­gious fes­ti­val to honor Zeus, the father of the Greek gods and god­desses. For the ancient Greeks, train­ing the body and mind was a cru­cial aspect of child edu­ca­tion.

“The ideal of hero­ism was deeply embed­ded in the minds of the ancient Greeks,” Anna Gustafsson, a Finnish archae­ol­o­gist and writer based in Athens, told Olive Oil Times.

“There were no team sports in the ancient Olympic Games,” she added. ​“Instead, the com­peti­tors were striv­ing for indi­vid­ual glory. The events tested strength, endurance, courage, and speed, exactly the qual­i­ties cel­e­brated in a heroic sol­dier.“

“For boys from upper-class fam­i­lies, prac­tic­ing sports was vital to their upbring­ing and pre­pared them for com­bat,” Gustafsson said.

Delegations and ath­letes from ancient Greek city-states would march for days to appear in the games at Olympia. Held every four years, the qua­dren­nial peri­od­ic­ity of the games allowed ath­letes to train for the next edi­tion.

The Olympic Games were so impor­tant to the ancient Greeks that they used them as their cal­en­dar. For exam­ple, they would say, ​“the third year of the 21^st Olympiad,” to indi­cate that three years had passed since the last Olympics were held.

Hostilities between the Greek city-states of the time would also cease dur­ing the games so that ath­letes and spec­ta­tors could par­tic­i­pate undis­tracted.

“At the time, Greece had no cen­tral gov­ern­ment,” Gustafsson said. ​“Instead, the coun­try was run by inde­pen­dent city-states, which were often in con­flict with each other.”

“However, cul­tur­ally, the ancient Greek world was uni­fied,” she added. ​“This was partly thanks to the Panhellenic fes­ti­vals that brought Greeks together in peace­ful cel­e­bra­tion and reminded them of every­thing they had in com­mon, such as reli­gion and ideals.”

Gold medal glory has not always been the case at the Olympic Games. In ancient Greece, the typ­i­cal prize for the game win­ners was a wreath made with inter­twined olive branches from wild olive trees that grew at Olympia.

“There are many depic­tions of this in pot­tery paint­ings of the time,” Gustafsson said.
​“Winners could also receive valu­able prizes such as an amphora filled with olive oil, pro­ces­sions in their honor, bronze shields, or tripods.”

The olive tree was con­sid­ered sacred in ancient Greece and asso­ci­ated with peace and unity. Supplicants also held olive branches in tem­ples or when approach­ing per­sons of power to indi­cate their sta­tus.

The olive branch, used to honor the win­ners of the ancient Olympic Games, also indi­cated the olive tree’s more pro­found sig­nif­i­cance in ancient Greece.

Particularly in Athens, the olive gained polit­i­cal impor­tance, as expressed by the laws passed to pro­tect the trees. Whoever destroyed an olive tree faced the death penalty. Olive tree own­ers were not allowed to cut more than two feet (0.6 meters) from a tree in any one year; oth­er­wise, they would face hefty fines.

Historians have iden­ti­fied the rela­tion­ship between the olive tree and the Attica region as the begin­ning of a group of peo­ple — the then rulers of Athens — con­trol­ling a space.

Space (the land) sub­se­quently sub­sti­tuted blood­line and wealth as Athens’s pri­mary polit­i­cal power source.

Statesman Cleisthenes based the con­sti­tu­tional frame­work he intro­duced to the Athenians in the 6^th cen­tury BC, which finally led to the birth of democ­racy, on the strong con­nec­tion in the city-state of Athens between spa­tial con­trol and cit­i­zen­ship.

The olive tree was also an impor­tant food source for the ancient Greeks, who pri­mar­ily lived on olives, grapes used to make wine, and some grain, either bar­ley or wheat.

Olive oil was used in food prepa­ra­tion and served mul­ti­ple reli­gious and prac­ti­cal pur­poses in ancient Greek soci­ety.

“The sig­nif­i­cance of the olive oil in ancient Greece can­not be over-empha­sized,” Gustaffson said. ​“I don’t think that in our mod­ern world, we have any mate­r­ial that is sacred, prac­ti­cal and an impor­tant eco­nomic com­mod­ity all at the same time.”

“Olive oil could be a sacred gift to gods and used as a liba­tion at sanc­tu­ar­ies like Olympia,” she added. ​“Before ath­letic prac­tice, the ath­letes would anoint their bod­ies with olive oil to pre­pare their skin. They also cleaned them­selves after sweat­ing by rub­bing their skin with a mix­ture of olive oil and sand and then scrap­ing the dirt off.”

At the time, the aver­age annual con­sump­tion of olive oil for a cit­i­zen of a city-state totaled 40 to 50 liters: 15 to 20 liters were used for food prepa­ra­tion, another 20 liters for hygiene, two liters in cer­e­monies, three liters for lamps and 0.5 liters for med­ical pur­poses.

Gustafsson noted that olive oil, wine and pot­tery were among the most impor­tant com­modi­ties for inter­na­tional trade in ancient Greece.

“Trade with neigh­bor­ing coun­tries was one rea­son pros­per­ous civ­i­liza­tions flour­ished in Greece dur­ing the Bronze Era,” she said. ​“So, olive oil was one of the main dri­vers of life in Greece.”

The legacy of the olive tree in the Olympic Games has endured through the mil­len­nia.

In the 2004 Olympics held in Athens, along with their medals, the win­ners were sym­bol­i­cally dec­o­rated with an olive wreath, pay­ing homage to the ancient tra­di­tion.

In 2021, an olive tree was planted in the gar­den of the Olympic House in Paris ahead of the 2024 Olympics to sym­bol­ize peace and the games’ uni­ver­sal­ity.

“Some Olympic medals, such as those in Atlanta in 1996, also fea­tured an olive branch as a uni­ver­sal sym­bol of the spirit of the Olympics,” Gustafsson said.

“The roots of com­bin­ing the Olympics and peace are in the ancient Olympics,” she added. ​“Remember that dur­ing the games, the ancient Greek city-states observed a month-long peace dur­ing the games, and all atroc­i­ties ceased.”

From hun­dreds of Olympic ath­letes from war-torn coun­tries who gath­ered together dur­ing the 2024 Paris Olympics call­ing for peace to ath­letes such as moun­tain climber Jimmy Chin and world-famous ten­nis player Rafael Nadal, who have praised the impor­tance of olive oil in their diet, the ver­sa­til­ity of the olive tree as a time­less sym­bol of peace and the foun­da­tion of a healthy diet is still present in today’s Olympic Games and sports.

• Wired
• Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations