Prima Ficus

The fig has to be the first fruit ever. Don't say that it was the apple, referring to the incontestable Adam and Eve story, and even if the seductive fruit was the apple, it was fig leaves the couple used to clad the crucial areas of their bodies. So even if the fig was not the first fruit, fig leaves were surely the first clothing ever. There is another thing wherein the fig comes first, at least for the Romans. It was the first fruit to mark the end of summer, the first sign of the coming fall and winter. Prima Ficus, literally "the first fig," was the term used for the first day in August when one feels the change of weather turning away from summer towards autumn. 

Actually, apples and figs start to ripen around the same time. But figs are so perishable when fresh, and apples can keep much longer, both on the trees and after the harvest, that we see the apple as the true fall fruit. It takes time for the fig to be totally and truly ripe, to have the almost honey-like nectar to fully develop. The Romans must have observed that when the first fig is fully ripe, summer is almost over. It is not only the Romans who felt this way. In Arabic, the fig is sometimes referred to as "Kharif," the word for fall harvest. Figs are described as the fruit descended from paradise by the prophet Muhammad. The word for fig in Arabic, al-Tin, also refers to the Sura 95 of the Quran starting with the oath "By the fig and the olive?"

It is one of the shared fruits that are mentioned in all monotheist religious texts. 

The fig ranks fourth in ripening in the holy "Seven Species" mentioned in the Talmud and the Bible. First, the grains are harvested, wheat and barley, then comes the grapes, followed by figs. The rest belong to the fall and winter, in sequence...