The fig may be the oldest cultivated fruit. Carbonized figs found in a Neolithic village near Jericho date to about 11,400 years ago, predating the cultivation of wheat, barley, and legumes by roughly a thousand years.
Older than agriculture
Those ancient Jericho figs were a sterile, parthenocarpic variety, meaning they were propagated by cuttings, not seeds. Someone, over 11,000 years ago, noticed that certain fig trees produced seedless fruit and deliberately planted them. This is cultivation in its most basic form, and it happened before what we traditionally consider the dawn of agriculture.
Figs were central to the diet of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. The Greeks considered them a gift from Demeter. Romans associated the fig tree with Romulus and Remus. Cato the Elder reportedly held up a fresh fig from Carthage in the Roman Senate to argue that Carthage was dangerously close (only three days’ sail away) and must be destroyed.
Plato was known as a fig-lover (a “philosykos”). Dried figs were standard rations for Roman soldiers.
Fig wasps: a 80-million-year partnership
Most fig species depend on a specific species of fig wasp for pollination. The relationship is ancient: fossil evidence suggests figs and fig wasps have been co-evolving for at least 80 million years.
Here’s how it works: a female wasp enters the fig (which is actually an enclosed cluster of flowers) through a tiny opening called the ostiole, often losing her wings and antennae in the process. Inside, she lays her eggs in some of the flowers and pollinates others with pollen she carried from her birth fig. She then dies inside the fig.
Her offspring mature inside the fig. Males hatch first, mate with the females, chew exit tunnels, and die without ever leaving. Females emerge, collect pollen, and fly out to find a new fig, continuing the cycle.
The common fig variety you eat at the store (Ficus carica) is mostly a domesticated parthenocarpic cultivar that doesn’t require wasp pollination. But wild figs and many cultivated varieties (like the Smyrna fig) still depend on wasps. The enzyme ficin in figs digests the wasp, so you’re not eating whole insects, just fully broken-down protein.
Fig leaves and Bodhi trees
The fig appears in the opening pages of Genesis: Adam and Eve cover themselves with fig leaves after eating the forbidden fruit. In art history, fig leaves were used to cover the genitals of classical sculptures during periods of religious modesty.
The Bodhi tree under which the Buddha achieved enlightenment is Ficus religiosa, the sacred fig or peepal tree. It’s a different species from the common fig but the same genus. A descendant of the original tree (or so tradition holds) still grows in Bodh Gaya, India.
In Islam, the fig is one of the fruits of paradise. The Quran has a chapter called At-Tin (The Fig).
Inside-out flowers
A fig isn’t technically a fruit. It’s a syconium, an enlarged, hollow receptacle containing hundreds of tiny flowers on its inner surface. When you eat a fig, you’re eating the flower-bearing structure. The crunchy bits are the individual fruits (drupelets) that each flower produced.
This inverted architecture is why figs need wasps to pollinate them: the flowers are sealed inside and can’t be reached by wind or ordinary insects.
Dried figs were one of the ancient world’s most tradeable goods. They’re calorie-dense, lightweight, and last for months. Phoenician and Greek traders carried them across the Mediterranean. For armies, nomads, and sailors, dried figs were survival food.