The Nutritious Medjool Date And Civilization

The most important date was probably a not very sweet date, but the King of dates is the Medjool Date. It is a very large and sweet dessert date. Dates may have been responsible for Western Civilization. With dates people had a staple food. Date palms produce a lot of food once per year and the date can be stored for prolonged periods of time. The fruit loses moisture over time, but it can be stored for many months and even years. The date allowed people to survive in the desert. In ancient Sumeria the fruit was very important and was addressed and specific laws were written to address issues pertaining to date farms. The bread of the desert was the date and it probably still continues to be the date. It was a large source of food and following wars it was often used to subjugate conquered people, by limiting or cutting down date palm orchards.
More likely than not the palm is the tree of life mentioned in the Bible. The date palm provided everything needed to live on, that is why it is most likely that the date palm was the tree of life. The date palm was used for just about everything from weaving baskets, to house furniture, to providing food, to providing fuel, to providing feed for animals, to providing building materials. People lived from the date palm, there was no waste, it was the tree of life. Even though the date palm was known as the tree of life, it is actually not a tree at all.
You would think that dates are not as important now a days where we have alternate sources of food, but that is not the case. Dates continue to be a staple food of the desert in North African and the Middle East and some governments are aggressively propagating the date palms. It is probably the only fruit tree that can be grown in the desert to produce fruit. Desert people still depend on the date fruit and still live from the date. A family can live from a date orchard. A date palm can live about 150 years, so it is enough to feed two generations. Once the hard work of growing one orchard is done, the following generation will have a stable source of food and can do something else. This may have been how people started to do other things and how civilization started to develop.
Once a year there is a special season called Ramadan, where Islam requires fasting and the fast is often broken by eating dates. There is a date that is grown and consumed for these purposes. The fruit ripens early and can be eaten before it ripens fully. This date fruit often referred to as the Ramadan date is not fully ripened, but unlike other fruit it is not bitter and it can be eaten. In the US other dates are consumed in place because that is all that is available. Southern California and Arizona grows most of the dates in the United States and are not harvested until around September. Ramadan takes place in August, so the Medjool like most other dates ripens too late in the year to be consumed for Ramadan.
The Medjool date is valued for its sweetness and it was once reserved for royalty, now a days you can buy it at most local grocery stores. It is still the most expensive date you will find, but it is within everyones reach. The date has a lot of carbohydrates, potassium, and cleansing qualities. It is a power food, because its nutritional content on an ounce for ounce basis cannot be beat.