May 20

Tamale Tuesday Twist present...... Today´s story.

Hi guys!!! Today I will share with you the banana story!
The origins of the banana are as complex and convoluted as the nature of the banana’s taxonomic origins themselves.  Archeologists have focused on the Kuk valley of New Guinea around 8,000 BCE (Before Common Era) as the area where humans first domesticated the banana.  Additionally, though this is the first known location of banana domestication, other spontaneous domestication projects may have occurred throughout the Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.  Therefore, Kuk is the first known instance of banana domestication, but it is probably not the cradle from which all other domesticated species sprang. From New Guinea, the Kuk domesticated variety appears to have spread to the Philippines, and then radiated widely across the tropics.  Researchers find it difficult to trace the diffusion of the banana after its arrival in the Philippine islands, and in many cases, it appears the banana was introduced into areas only to be reintroduced, and in a sense, rediscovered, hundreds or thousands of years later.  Adding to the confusing tangle of banana proliferation is the parallel development of hybrid fruits.  Human ingenuity manipulated the seedless, and thus asexual, forms of domesticated bananas into hybrids by careful techniques of culling and planting that fused and refined different domesticated varieties.  Thus, the origins of the banana have been difficult at best to pinpoint.  In general, however, it can be said that bananas originated in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific around 8,000 to 5,000 BCE. From New Guinea and the Philippines, bananas dispersed far and wide across the tropics, in all directions.  It is probable that bananas arrived in India, Indonesia, Australia, and Malaysia, within the first two millennia after domestication.  Plantains may have been grown in eastern Africa as early as 3000 BCE, and in Madagascar by 1000 BCE.  The plantain had certainly reached the African continent between 500 BCE and 500 CE.  Buddhist literature notes the existence of the banana in 600 BCE, and when Alexander the Great’s expeditions led him to India in 327 BCE, he stumbled across the fruit.  Perhaps most surprising, the banana may have arrived in South America well ahead of Europeans, as early as 200 BCE, carried by sailors of Southeast Asian origin.  By the 3rd century CE, plantains were being cultivated on plantations in China. 
lots of love...
Queen