The Date Fruit Was Important To Western Civilization

The date is not very popular in the United States. These fruits have been around for a very long time and we could even say they are responsible for Western Culture. In the bible we see references to date palms, date palm fronds, date honey, and the date. The fruit was very critical to the development of civilization. Stable sources of food such as dates allowed humans to develop. It allowed time to ponder and bring new ideas into fruition.

Historians are very familiar with date orchards and their importance to the development of early civilizations. Without date orchards many early civilizations where crippled and unable to fight off enemies. Following the conquest of various states, the conquering civilization would often destroy many of the date orchards to insure the conquered people would not be able to rebound. The fruit was so important that it was key to keeping the subjugated under control. When we look to ancient Sumeria we will find that dates were a key food and we will find that many laws were written around dates. Dates were a very integral part of early Sumeria and even today much of the middle east continues to depend on dates as a stable food. There were other foods that were important, but dates were considered the bread of the desert.

More interestingly dates have an enormous amount of nutrients and are associated with a decrease in many types of cancers. Dates also have a lot of fiber and are excellent for cleaning the stomach. In short the fruit is nothing short of miraculous. Growing this fruit on the other hand is a challenge. Date palms do not produce fruit for many years. The palms can be grown from seed, but it takes many more years to determine if the palm will produce fruit. The palm may be a male or female and the quality of the date varies. When dates are produced from seed, you don’t know what you are going to get. Dates grown from shoots are consistently the same. You get Medjool dates from shoots coming from Medjool date palms, but you may not get Medjool dates from seed. Growing dates from seed can be very interesting, but you may not see any fruit for 14 years or more and once you actually see fruit you could have an entirely different variety. The exciting part of growing dates from seed, is that you may get a variety never seen before.

Medjool dates are a dessert fruit because they are exceptionally sweet. The not so sweet dates are not as tasty, but were more important to the development of civilization. Other varieties of dates provided a staple food that could be stored for prolonged periods of time. The Medjool is sought in the United States, because it is an awesome fruit with a lot of nutritional value, but in fact civilization was a result of lesser known and not so great tasting dates. Even though the date is not well known in the US, the fruit is gaining a lot of popularity among athletes, because it is loaded with energy and nutrients. The date is considered a power food.

Eat date fruit the most important fruit to western culture and get healthy.