Where do apples come from?
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History of Apples


Apple trees grew wild in Central Asia and western China beginning possibly about two to ten million years ago, around the time that the first humans were evolving. Apples are related to roses, berries, peaches, almonds, and many other fruiting plants. Early apples may have been smaller and more sour than modern apples - more like crabapples. Horses, which also lived on the steppes of Central Asia, were eating apples five million years ago.

When modern people arrived in Central Asia about 50,000 BC, they probably began to eat apples right away. By about 6,500 BC, people were carrying apple seeds west to West Asia and east to China, planting apple trees, and eating apples there too. The Bible in English has Adam and Eve eating an apple, but actually in Hebrew it just says that they ate a fruit, and not what kind; the apple comes from a Latin translation.

shopkeeper with apples and other fruit in a display case
Shop with apples and other fruit on display
Mir Sayyid ‘Ali,"Nighttime in a Palace," detail,
Safavid or Mughal, ca. 1570 AD (now at Harvard)

Still, apples were among the first plants that people planted on purpose. By 2000 BC, people were eating apples in Greece and Italy, and by 1300 BC there were a few apple trees in Egypt. Before the Romans came to England there were already apples there, too. People mostly don't grow apples in Africa or India, because it's too close to the equator for apples to grow well. Apples need cold nights to ripen well.

two men grinding apples and pressing cider
Grinding apples and pressing cider
(Vinetum Britannicum; London 1678)

For ancient and medieval people, the best thing about apples was that they came ripe just as it was getting cold and they would keep all winter, so you could have food even when nothing was growing. People sliced apples and dried them in the sun to make dried apples, and they stored them in underground cold bins just as whole apples, but mostly they pressed the apples with wooden presses to make cider. If you let the apple cider ferment with yeast, it becomes a slightly alcoholic drink, and the alcohol preserves the apple juice all winter. Apple cider was the main alcoholic drink of many people in northern Europe. When the Spanish, and then the English came to North America, they both brought apples with them in the 1600s AD, to make apple cider. All along the East Coast and in the Pacific Northwest, apple cider was again many people's main drink until Prohibition put the cider orchards out of business in the 1920s.

Apple Project
More about Central Asian food

Bibliography and further reading about apples:




Applesauce recipe
Apple pie recipe
Baked apples recipe
Quick baked apples
Apple crisp recipe
Central Asian Food
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