A new article in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences encouraged me to delve into the history of bananas this week, and while I didn't get quite so carried away as I did last week with coconuts, it was a close call.
Bananas are really interesting: in part, because the evidence for their domestication is so old (ca 5000 BC), and in part because the main evidence is from tiny silicon plant remains called opal phytoliths that appear in the shapes of volcanoes. Really, how cool is that?
The earliest banana cultivation identified so far is in Kuk Swamp, a site in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, where bananas have been growing for over 15,000 years, and people have been deliberately planting them for at least 7,000 years. In addition to the PNAS article, if you're interested in chasing down first-hand research, you should check out Volume 7 of the open access journal Ethnobotany Research & Applications, several articles of which are among other references listed on my new History of Bananas article.
Perrier X, De Langhe E, Donohue M, Lentfer C, Vrydaghs L, Bakry F, Carreel F, Hippolyte I, Horry J-P, Jenny C et al. 2011. Multidisciplinary perspectives on banana (Musa spp.) domestication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition.
Volume 7 of the Ethnobotany Research & Applications includes loads of recent banana research, and it is all free to download.
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