Dates the fruit are not very popular in the United States. Dates have been around for a very long time and we could even say they are responsible for Western Culture. In the bible we will see references to date palms, date palm fronds, date honey, and date the fruit. Date fruit was very critical to the survival of the early days 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. Dates were so important that it was key to keeping the subjugated under control.

If we look to ancient Sumeria we will find that dates were key 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 dates are nothing short of miraculous. Growing dates on the other hand is challenge. Date palms do not produce fruit for many years. Dates cannot be grown from seed. Dates may or may not produce fruit from seed, depending on whether they are male or female and if the fruit produced is edible. 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 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 the fruit can be 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 dessert dates, they are exceptionally sweet, but the more important dates are not as sweet. The inferior dates are by far more important to the development of civilization. While Medjool dates were reserved for royalty and were considered to be the Kings of Dates, there were other more important dates, there were the inferior tasting, but more important dates. These other dates comprising of hundreds of varieties were a staple food. The Medjool date 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.
Dates should be as well known as Sumeria and should be held in comparable esteem. We owe our civilization to dates. Without them, Western Culture would not have developed.

Author Bio: Buy date fruit the power fruit at Date Fruit The critical fruit and bread of the desert.

Category: Culture
Keywords: date fruit, dates, date palm