Debating early African bananas

Neumann et al. in a new Quaternary International article "First farmers in the Central African rainforest: A view from southern Cameroon", report a combination of archaeobotanical, apynological and historical linguistic evidence for the nature of early Bantu economies on the northwestern rainforest along margins of central Africa in the First Millennium BC. This includes updated and important discussions of pearl millet, tree nut use (like Canarium and oil palm). These societies brought savanna millet agriculture with them and took advantage of drier conditions to cultivate millet in marginal forest environments, while utilizing (and managing?) forest tree resources as well. Of relevance to those who have argued that bananas were fundamental to early Bantu economies in the rainforest zone (e.g. Blench 2009), however, is the lack of evidence for bananas in these newer excavations. The article includes a short paragraph on bananas, with some quite  critical comments on the issue of early African banans ("act two" in the history summarized below on this blog). They note that study in their samples "several thousand phytoliths already counted, no evidence for Musa could be detected. This sheds further doubt on the banana phytoliths from the contemporary third millennium BP site Nkang" and also they argue that, "There are also ecological arguments against cultivation of banana during this period. As is shown in the following, the climate was much more seasonal in the second half of the third millennium BP and thus unfavourable for plantains which require a humid climate without any major oscillations"

So the debate is out in the open. I don't think there is question of whether the reported phytoliths of Nkang are from Musa, but the worry is surely whether these phytoliths are actually of Iron Age date. They are not directly dated, and the possibility of intrusive or contaminating material from later, when bananas are such a prominent part of the present landscape, contamination is what we need to worry about. On the other hand Nkang is not in exactly the same area as the site studied by Neumann et al, so supporters of the early banana hypothesis might point to diverse and varied economies in the Iron Age. All the more reason to chase more archaeobotanical sampling in the region: we are still reliant on a just a few sites.

Globalization of bananas in 3 acts. Recent updates

Bananas are an intriguing fruit. Quick growing, and tall, tropical herbs, rather than real trees, known pretty much everywhere today from the most temperate climes, as a typical and inexpensive table fruit, while in other places they serve as starchy staple alongside or even instead of tubers or cereals (and as the base for beer-brewing). Because most cultivated bananas are seedless hybrids tracking them archaeologically is difficult. Various lines of archaeological, linguistic and ethnobotanical evidence were pulled together a couple of years ago in a journal issue, while this year saw some updated syntheses, or at least attempts at synthesis. The origins of cultivated bananas seems to have focused on New Guinea, and the First Act can be regarded as the dispersal throughout most of tropical Asia. A PNAS article this summer, with 18 co-authors, across botany, linguistics and archaeology provided a model of integrating genetics and historical linguistics (with rather more limited archaeology) for tracking the early evolution, diversification of bananas, mainly in SE Asia [pdf]. I still have issues with how the hybridization between A and B genomes took place. The authors postulate an anthropogenic dispersal of M. balbisiana (B), and do not really deal with any potential role of South Asian balbisiana in hybrid bananas. Both parts of India (Orissa through Assam) and Sri Lanka have wild Musa balbisiana; Sri Langa has reports of wild M. acuminata too. It seems clear that Pleistocene (to early Holocene) humans in Sri Lanka were using and probably consuming wild bananas. In addition to the seeds from Beli-lena cave reported years ago by Kajale (in Harris and Hillman's volume Foraging and Farming). To this can be added new phytolith finds, in well-dated stratigraphic context from Batadomba-lena, published in Journal of Human Evolution this past summer. Ongoing phytolith analyses from other Sri Lanka caves, including some work here in London, will have more ancient Musa phytoliths to report soon. It may well be that wild Musa use in Sri Lanka was a dead-end with regards to early cultivars, but it seems premature to rule it out entirely.

Second act: the introduction of bananas and plantains to Africa. Probably the best general account of this is still to be found in the 1999 article by De Langhe and De Maret, and it was also addressed in several of the papers in the 2009 Ethnobotany Research and Applications issue on bananas. But for a summary that places this in the wider context of the translocation of crops, weeds and commensal animals across the Indian ocean, from Asia to  Africa see the paper I jointly authored with some other members of the Sealinks project, published in Antiquity this past summer, " Across the Indian Ocean: the prehistoric movement of plants and animals." The evidential lynch-pin for the a pehistoric/Iron Age translocation of bananas (or plantains) remains a single site in Cameroun with reported phytolths, Nkang. This limited evidence, of course, until or unless more is found may be open to critique-- which has been coming from some quarters of Africa archaeobotany. For the latest installment see the recent Neumann et al article in Quanternary International. A short blog here.

Third act: Gobailization via refigerator vessels and 20th century AD supermarket culture. For some account of the modern technology involved in the mass shipping and then ripening of supermarket bananas, specifically in New York city, see this recent blog at Edible Geography.The book Banana: the fate of the fruit that changed the World by Dan Koeppel, deals with this and much, much more; and I have discovered he has his own banana blog.

New e-volume on the origins & spread of bananas

Just published is a special issue of the on-line, open access journal Ethnobotany Research and Applications, devoted to the "History of Banana Domestication". For those unfamiliar with the journal, it is worth watching, as it publishes a wide range of ethnobotanical papers, including several that have been relevant to studying crop origins and traditions of use. The journal is free, after one registers, and articles can be downloaed as PDF. This special banana issue arrises from a session at the Dublin World Archaeological congress. It starts on page 163 of Volume 7.

The contents are as follows:

Special Issue: History of Banana Domestication

Why Bananas Matter: An introduction to the history of banana domestication...Edmond De Langhe, Luc Vrydaghs, Pierre de Maret, Xavier Perrier, Tim Denham [link to this abstract]

Bananas and People in the Homeland of Genus Musa: Not just pretty fruit...Jean Kennedy

Combining Biological Approaches to Shed Light on the Evolution of Edible Bananas...Xavier Perrier

Differentiating the Volcaniform Phytoliths of Bananas: Musa acuminate...Luc Vrydaghs, Terry Ball, H. Volkaert, Ines van den Houwe, J. Manwaring, Edmond De Langhe

Relevance of Banana Seeds in Archaeology...Edmond De Langhe

Impressions of Banana Pseudostem in Iron Slag from Eastern Africa...Louise Iles

Banana (Musa spp.) Domestication in the Asia-Pacific Region: Linguistic and archaeobotanical perspectives...Mark Donohue & Tim Denham

Banana Cultivation in South Asia and East Asia: A review of the evidence from archaeology and linguistics...Dorian Q. Fuller & Marco Madella [download pdf]

Early Bananas in Africa: The state of the art...Katharina Neumann & Elisabeth Hildebrand

Bananas and Plantains in Africa: Re-interpreting the linguistic evidence...Roger Blench