Luckily for any time travelling olive haters, ancient olives would probably taste a lot different. Olives aren’t edible when you pick them off the tree because they have an incredibly bitter chemical called oleuropein. Ancient people soaked olives in salt water for months at a time to remove the oleuropein, but most modern olives are treated with lye because it only takes a day or so. You can buy salt cured olives and most people believe they taste a lot better