Dunno.
Wash little cave-brats mouth out if they grunted something dirty, I guess.
Truthfully, I have trouble with the 7000 year figure for olive oil, although I admit it is quite old. But no matter, it is a result of the development of agriculture as an industry. The only way to get enough olives to make it worthwhile pressing them for oil is if you are growing them in a planned, controlled setting.
And I think you have to admit that hunting as an organized activity goes back way, way, way before that. As any member of a hunting clan would tell you, they use EVERYTHING.
No doubt in my mind that animal fats/lards were in use way before olive oil.
But we can agree to disagree!
regards,
djf
There’s agriculture and then there’s agriculture.
Find a plot of land that has a high percent of something you like growing in it and then take a little time to kill off the stufff you don’t care for. year by year you eventually end up with an olive grove.
As a side note...I read once a few years ago that scientists now claim that wild pigs practice agriculture. THAT’S RIGHT! Pigs simply LOVE to eat tubers...thats roots that taste good. Apparently, wild pigs have their favorite tubers and rather than dig them up and eat them all up, they only eat part of them, and then re bury them so they can heal up and grow big again. They memorize the locations of lots and lots of these favorite tubers and visit them again and again year after year to re-harvest a portion of the root. The stuff they dig up that they aren’t extremely impressed with gets eaten up in it’s entirety.
Therefore, they are practicing agriculture...of a sort.
I would expect to see cavemen doing a similar type of agriculture...or even a bit more sophisticated. Plants in nature tend to grow in clumps. Once a caveman learns to identify a plant, the next step is to protect it from other plants and even from animals.