The olive is not just a symbol of Dalmatia
The olive oil and dalmatia go together in perfect harmony. The olive could certainly be featured on the flag, representing Dalmatia as a region in Croatia.
It encapsulates everything that embodies the Dalmatian spirit. Do you know who the true Dalmatian is? The one who produces the finest olive oil. Everyone envies him, but unfortunately, he mostly produces it for himself, his family, and his friends. It’s challenging to find the right oil to buy; you must know the intensity of its aroma. Lower intensity likely means it has been mixed with regular sunflower oil. There are secret paths to discovering original olive oil and only locals know it.
The olives we see around us in the Mediterranean region are about 6,000 years old and tamed by ancient people in Syria and Palestine. As the Mesopotamian civilization spread westward to Egypt, and later its knowledge and culture reached ancient Greece, so did the olive (olive saplings and oil production techniques).
Who brought the olive to Dalmatia? It seems it arrived with the first Greek immigrants or colonizers who began exploring the southern part of the coast and founding the first Greek cities in the region. They merged with the previous inhabitants of the coast, the Illyrians, in the 4th century BC and conveyed all they knew about tools, food, and organization. The Illyrians listened because the Greeks did everything better and more advanced, of course. Thus, they also introduced them to the olive.
Since then, every Dalmatian family has their olive tree or trees. If they do not have properties on islands, inherited from their relatives, growing their olive trees for centuries, they at least put a few of them in the garden or even balcony.
The next time you taste olive oil, try to remember the journey it has taken from history to the present day. The olive is not just a symbol of Dalmatia but also of the development of the civilization, we know today.