Zeytûn: The Olive Whose Domestication Began in the Kurdish Mountains

Mero Ranyayi
7 hours ago
6 min read

Zeytûn: The Olive Whose Domestication Began in the Kurdish Mountains

Zeytûn is the Kurdish word for the olive, and the olive is the world’s most ancient cultivated tree — and its domestication, a 2013 study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B concluded, began in Kurdish regions. Genetic analysis, molecular dating, fossil records, and climate modelling were combined to show that the south Taurus Mountains — the mountain zone of what is today northern Kurdistan — were the primary cradle of olive domestication: the place where human beings first selected wild olive trees and began to cultivate them, some six thousand years ago, setting in motion the process that would eventually produce the olive groves of Spain, Italy, Greece, and the whole Mediterranean world. The tree the world calls Mediterranean has Kurdish roots. This is the most extraordinary origin claim this series has made. Previous articles established that the walnut, the apricot, and the pomegranate all have wild ancestors in the Zagros and Taurus mountains that are the Kurdish heartland. The olive goes further: it was not merely wild in these mountains — it was domesticated here. The olive grove of ancient Mesopotamia, the oil lamp of the earliest civilisations, the tree of peace, the tree of life, the fruit that fed and lit the ancient world — the line from all of that runs back to an olive tree in the south Taurus, in the hands of a Kurdish-region farmer, six thousand years ago. This is the one-hundred-and-twenty-sixth article in the series. Olives are now grown and beloved across the whole Mediterranean and beyond, and this series claims no monopoly. What it claims is zeytûn, by its Kurdish name, in its Kurdish mountains, from which the olive tree came.

Key Takeaways

• A 2013 peer-reviewed study found that the olive tree was first domesticated in Kurdish-region mountains

• The south Taurus Mountains (northern Kurdistan/Bakur) are the primary cradle of olive domestication

• Olives have been cultivated in the Tur Abdin / Midyat region for centuries by Kurdish and Syriac communities

• Used cured in brine, as olive oil, and on the Kurdish breakfast table — a staple of the Kurdish meze

Quick Facts

Kurdish Name: Zeytûn (زەیتوون, olive; the oil is rona zeytûnê, olive oil)

Origin: Domesticated in the south Taurus Mountains (northern Kurdistan), circa 6,000 years ago

Grown in: Tur Abdin / Midyat region and the Kurdish-Syriac southeast of Bakur

Eaten: Cured in brine (black or green), with breakfast, in salads and meze; the oil used in cooking and preservation

In the Kurdish Kitchen

In the Kurdish kitchen, the olive appears primarily in its cured form: the black or green brine-preserved olive that sits on the breakfast table beside the cheese and the honey, and on the meze plate beside the labneh and the pickles. Curing olives is itself a form of preservation — fresh olives are bitter and inedible; it is brine or salt that transforms them, over weeks of slow curing, into something mild and complex, the bitterness becoming depth and the green flesh turning to soft gold-black. This transformation is a craft that the Kurdish and Syriac communities of the Tur Abdin and Midyat region have practised for centuries, since the same olive groves that surround the ancient monasteries of the plain also supplied the monasteries’ table. Olive oil extracted from these groves has been used for cooking, for preserving other foods (the oil that seals the top of a jar of kaymak, that is poured over labneh), for soap, and for lighting — all the uses the ancient world depended on, and that the Kurdish-region farmer was the first to develop systematically from the tree. On the Kurdish breakfast table, both black and green olives appear, marinated in olive oil with garlic and herbs, or plain from the brine, as one of the first and most natural accompaniments to bread and cheese. Their slight saltiness balances the richness of the kaymak, the sweetness of the honey, and the sourness of the reçel. They are the oldest thing on the table.

The Tree of Life’s Oldest Home

This series has been making a particular kind of claim for several articles now: that the Zagros and Taurus mountains, the spine of Kurdistan, are the wild or cultivated origin point of many of the world’s most important food crops. The walnut, the apricot, the pistachio, the pomegranate — their wild ancestors are found in the Zagros forests. These are remarkable facts. But the olive claim is in a different category. It is not just that wild olives once grew in the Kurdish mountains. It is that the process of domestication — the deliberate selection and cultivation of olive trees by human beings, the transformation of a wild tree into the agricultural crop that would eventually spread across the entire Mediterranean world — began here. The genetic data places that origin in the south Taurus Mountains, which are Kurdish in the most direct possible sense: the south Taurus runs through Bakur, through the provinces of Mardin, Siirt, Hakkari, and the surrounding region, through the same landscape where this series has found the pit-roasted büryan, the black volcanic city of Amed, the winter stew of Bitlis. Six thousand years ago, someone in those mountains chose an olive tree worth keeping. Every olive on every table in every country in the world descends, in some part, from that choice. The honest note is essential here. Olive domestication is a complex story, and subsequent research has noted the possibility of multiple domestication events across the Mediterranean; the olive’s spread involved Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans as much as the people who first started it. The world’s olive industry belongs to no single people. But the Proceedings of the Royal Society B 2013 study is peer-reviewed and its claim — primary domestication in the Kurdish-region mountains — has not been overturned. The tree the world calls its own began in Kurdish hands.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did the olive really originate in Kurdish regions?

According to a 2013 study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the primary centre of olive domestication is the northeastern Levant / south Taurus Mountains — the mountain zone of what is now Bakur (northern Kurdistan). Using genetic data, fossil records, and climate modelling, the researchers concluded that western Mediterranean regions were not primary centres of domestication. Some subsequent research has noted additional complexity, but the south Taurus / northeastern Levant origin remains the dominant finding.

Where are olives grown in Kurdistan today?

Olives are cultivated in the Tur Abdin and Midyat region of Mardin province (eastern Bakur), where Kurdish and Syriac communities have farmed olive groves alongside ancient monasteries for centuries. The southern and southeastern zones of Bakur more broadly are historically part of the Levantine olive-growing region. Olive oil and cured olives from this area have been part of the local diet and economy since antiquity.

How are olives used in Kurdish cooking?

Primarily as cured table olives — black or green, brined or salt-cured, served at breakfast alongside cheese and bread, and as part of the meze spread. Olive oil is used in cooking and as a preserving agent (poured over labneh, used in marinades). Olives also appear in salads, as garnish, and marinated with herbs and garlic. They are a staple of the Kurdish morning table.

Conclusion

Zeytûn is the one-hundred-and-twenty-sixth article in this series, and the one that sets the most ambitious claim. This series has documented, over one hundred and twenty-six articles, what grows in the Kurdish mountains: the walnut, the apricot, the pomegranate, the wild thyme, the sour rhubarb, the sumac berry, the mountain honey. Now it adds the olive: not just a food grown here, but a food born here, domesticated in the south Taurus Mountains of Bakur six thousand years ago, then spread by trade and empire across the whole Mediterranean until it became one of the most universal foods on earth. That universality belongs to no single people. But its beginning belongs to these mountains. One hundred and twenty-six articles in, zeytûn stands for the deepest and most sweeping fact this series has found: that the Kurdish mountains did not just feed their own people — they fed the world.