Bananas are considered to be one of the earliest fruit cultivated by man. It is an ancient fruit that mentioned in various sacred texts of Oriental peoples.
In ancient times, the eating of fruit may well have been thought to induce sexual desire in both men and women.
The oldest reference to banana appears in the Ramayana (Sanskrit epic written by Valmiki in 2029 BC).
Armies of Alexander the Great also mentioned about the cultivation banana in the lower Hindus valley of India in 327 BC.
The Borobudur temple which was built in Java, Indonesia in 850 BC, shows stone carvings of banana being offered to the Lord Buddha.
Banana seems to have reached Africa by the first century CE and it arrived in southern China by about 200 CE.
During the same period it was taken eastward though the Pacific Islands, and the Arabs spread its cultivation throughout their lands as far north as Egypt.
During fourteenth century Arab traveler mentions the banana existing in the south of Morocco. In the fifteenth century the Portuguese called its Arab name of ‘al-vaneya’.
The islanders of Sao Tome celled the fruit ‘abana’ and Pigafetta mention seeing it in the Congo at the end of the sixteenth century, where it has long been grown.
Banana reached the New World in 1516 and its cultivation is distributed throughout the warmer countries situated in the region between 30 N and 30 S of the equator.
Banana during ancient times
