A brief history of the apple from unique angles

Paradise – 401 B.C.

Xenophon, a Greek historian, finds much inspiration at the sight of Persian fruit gardens. It appears that wanting what the neighbor has might be as old as history itself. In any case, he eventually established a personal estate, complete with walled fruit garden, known to the Persians as “pairidaeze”. From Persian to Latin, paradisus; to English, paradise.

Fruit – 200 B.C.

Latin has evolved from a dialect to a rightful language. The word “fruor” meant “I delight in”. This is the root of the word fruit today, and a very appropriate one, don’t you think?

Apple – 100 B.C.

The Roman Empire has a significant impact on the migration of apples. Romans had adopted the cultivation methods established by the Greeks and Persians and proceeded to bring the apple along as they conquered new territory (or attempted to do so). Thus the sweet fruit of paradise found its way to Europe and Britain. The Roman goddess of the fruit tree is named Pomona. In French, apple becomes “pomme”.

Paradise – 1571 years later

Hugo Van Der Goes depicts The Fall of Man in a now famous painting. Its main subject is, of course, the apple tree of Biblical proportions, along with Adam, Eve and a certain devilish figure who needs no further description. Interestingly, while Biblical text had been known and reserved mainly to the few who could read, this initial painting inspired so many other artists to depict the famous account of The Fall of Man by inserting apples and apple trees into their work that illiterate Christians began to consume more apples. An act of defiance, or temptation?

Traditional stories about the forbidden fruit and our aspiration to enter a paradise and take part in a feast of abundance, exist in one form or another in most spiritual and religious beliefs.

“Man’s idea of paradise centers on an abundance of cultivated fruit, its sensual irresistibility and the consequential calamity of its seduction,” observes the Midwest Apple Improvement Association, “[fruits] have taken their rightful place in the pleasure gardens of the wealthy throughout the world in spite of the almost instinctive knowledge that eating them may lead one to a life of chaos and destruction.”

How did we get here from there?

Historians and archaeologists date agriculture back as far as 8000 B.C. You may have heard the term “fertile crescent”. Roughly, this is the land around the Lower Nile, Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Hunter/gatherer societies began to settle here and to establish means of acquiring sustenance in the form of cultivation. Apples originated in eastern Kazakhstan. As these early civilizations traveled and traded, so did the apple migrate to ever broader territory. This, it turns out, is also the beginning of gene transfer, presumably through their seeds, allowing trees issued from different regions and species to share the same space.

Dried apple slices dating back to 2500 B.C. were unearthed from the tomb of Queen Pu-Abi in Southern Iran, thus linking the apple to social status and royalty. A thousand years later, a northern Mesopotamia apple orchard is sold. How do we know this? A receipt, in the form of a tablet, records the sale and cost: 3 sheep.

Horticulture is well on its way by 323 B.C. as Greek philosopher Theophrastus begins the science of botany. He observes and describes at east 6 varieties of apples and writes extensively on the practices required for optimum production and quality.

By 200 A.D. Hippocrates, one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine, recommends sweet apples as aids to digestion and sour apples constipation and fainting. Makes one wonder about people’s overall dietary habits at the time. However, it appears his instincts were later confirmed by the Medical School of Salerno, Italy, where in 1100 A.D. students learn the therapeutic value of apples specifically in the case of bowel disturbances.

The fascination with apples is not limited to the fruit or its consumption, in 1240 A.D. Bishop  and naturalist Albertus Magnus of Cologne, incessantly ponders the possibility that a fruit tree might have a soul. By 1665, the apple reveals yet another area of focus for the inquisitive, scientific mind when Sir Isaac Newton observes an apple fall to the ground in a straight line and immediately surmises there must be a logical explanation.

By the 20th century, test with monkeys where an apple or other fruit is dropped in different slots behind a wall to hide its trajectory, the animals invariably place their hands straight below where the apple was released at top even though they do not see its course. Perhaps they grasp the literal meaning of “the apple never falls far from the tree”, rather than toil over its deeper significance. When sweet sustenance is at hand, gravity, though not out of sight, is out of mind.

Let us chew on this for a while and take a bite at the rest of the apple’s history in a later article, shall we?

Source:

The Midwest apple Improvement Association