The History of the Apple Tree

Hi, this is Yolanda Vanveen, and in this segment we're going to learn all about the history of apple trees. Now apples of course are one of my favorite fruits. I just love apples and I love apple juice and everything that you can make with an apple. And they're so healthy for you, they have every single vitamin that you need and lots of antioxidants. But they have a fascinating history as well. Because apples are closed linked to the human history. As long as humans have been on earth, there's been apples. And it goes back into history and they actually have proof of that. The bible mentions that Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden because they ate the apples off of the tree of knowledge. So they actually took the apples with them, and they brought them all over the world. And originally the apples were found in the Middle East, so history is actually proving that point. And wherever man has gone they've brought the apples with them. So the first recorded history of the apple is in eight thousand BC along the Nile River. They found some apple seeds and some proof that there were apples there. So that was a long time ago, eight thousand years before Christ, so we're talking ten thousand years ago there were apples on earth. In twenty-five hundred BC, they found dried apples in Iran in the tombs, so they've been associated with royalty for as long as history has been known to man as well. And in eight hundred BC in Homer's Odyssey, apples were mentioned. In one hundred BC the Romans brought apples with them all over Northern Europe as they invaded the whole continent. And that's how apples got all over Europe. And then in sixteen-thirty, is the first recorded history in the Americas that we have found apples. There were some native apple varieties as well that the Indians had used too. But most of the apples that we see today are from those original apple varieties that came from Europe. And in sixteen-sixty-five Sir Isaac Newton discovered the whole theory of gravity based on watching an apple fall from a tree. So it's a very important fruit to our history. And in the early eighteen hundreds the most famous person related to the apple in America is the Johnny Appleseed. And he realized that apples were such an important food for people and all the pioneers were going to the West Coast, so he actually took apple seeds with him and gave them to everyone that he could find along the way. And mostly in the Midwest so they could bring them out west with them. And that is how the apple got all over America. And the saying an apple a day keeps the doctor way actually came from 1904 at the St. Louis expo, so it's a really good fruit that's been around and they're learning more and more about the fruit everyday. And in the last ten years they've actually been able to put different genes into the fruit so that they're most disease resistant, and that way we will have apples for many generations to come.