One of the earliest records of any fruit eaten by people of the Middle East is the common fig (Ficus carica). Remnants of figs have been found in archeological excavations dating back to the Neolithic era, about 1000 BM (Before Moses).
The fig is the first tree mentioned in the Bible in the story of Adam and Eve. Some biblical scholars think the fig, and not the apple, was the forbidden fruit picked by Eve in the Garden of Eden. Chauvinistic males also believe the penalty for this unauthorized fruit-picking was a sorrowful menstrual cycle. The scratchy leaves of this tree were reportedly used to cover the genitalia of the first humans. I am not certain which fig species the Bible refers to; however, Ficus carica is known from that time and historic region, and it does produce several crops of edible fruit per year.
The fig is native to Caria--an ancient region of Asia Minor between the Mediterranean and Black Seas. It grows readily from seeds and cuttings, especially along water courses and rich, bottom lands, and was introduced by people throughout the Holy Land. Fig trees provided shade, fire wood and several crops of nourishing fruit a year. Dried figs could be squeezed into loafs or placed on strings and used as food during long, arduous journeys across the desert.
Kalamata string figs. In ancient times people carried strings of dried figs such as these on long arduous journeys across the desert. The figs provided them with a nutritious high protein, high carbohydrate food source in a region where food was scarce.
The actual edible "fruit" of a fig tree is called a syconium--a hollow structure lined on the inside with hundreds of tiny unisexual flowers. A tiny female wasp (Blastophaga psenes) enters an opening on the syconium to pollinate the flowers.
In Ficus carica, only the syconia of female trees are edible, and without pollination they typically do not ripen and fall from the branches. [There are parthenocarpic varieties in which the seedless syconia ripen without pollination.] Male trees, called caprifigs, produce inedible syconia containing wasps and pollen-bearing male flowers. [Capri refers to goat and the syconia were apparently fed to livestock.] During the late 1800s, Calimyrna fig growers in California were puzzled why their trees would not set fruit. They discovered that the female trees needed the fig wasp and male caprifigs from the Old World. Each June in California's hot Central Valley, bags of wasp-bearing caprifigs are placed in the Calimyrna orchards.
This amazing pollination process is called caprification and the crunchy, seed-bearing syconia have a superior nutty flavor. [Premium fig newtons are made from caprified figs and contain numerous seed-bearing nutlets or endocarps.] So the next time you bite into a fig newton, think about all the history of this tree and its symbiotic pollinator wasp, and how it affected our lives by providing food and itchy leaves for the first naked humans.
Source
History Of Which Figs Grew In The Middle East