SC - A question

[Christi Rigby]

> Warning! Warning Will Robinson!  Andrea..... Bananas are
> period dating back to pre-Roman times.  Hannibals army
> were among the first Western Europeans to taste bananas.

Pliny specifically gives credit to Alexander the Great's army which invaded
India and provides a description of the banana.  The fruit was apparently
unknown in the Mediterrenean Basin in 1st Century CE, so I doubt Hannibal
found any on his alpine elephantine excursion.

> The reference to a huge bunch of grapes so big in Exodus
> in the Old Testement so large that two men carried it between
> them on poles has fairly universally been accepted as a King
> James mistranslation of a bunch of bananas.  

Highly questionable, given Pliny.  I would like to know the source for that
"universally accepted".  I also remember that some sources claim Abel's
pottage was coffee and Cain killed him because he needed his morning cuppa,
which from the evidence is a case of wishful thinking.

The best evidence is that bananas were brought to the Middle East and North
Africa around 700 CE as part of the Islamic expansion and were brought to
Central Africa as part of the Arab slave trade.  They are believed to have
arrived in Madagascar about 300 CE during a migration from Indonesia and
were traded into South Africa from there.

They were grown
> in the Canary Islands by the Portugese before the discovery of the 
> New World.   A number of items now grown so extensively in the
> New World are actually Old World!  

The Portuguese found bananas in West Africa and imported them to the
Canaries where they began cultivating them.  The Spanish took the Canaries
in the late 15th Century and in 1516, bananas were transported to the New
World.

True, period bananas are not
> similar to modern breeds you get at the Safeway, but they are 
> absolutely period!  To find recipes, you will need to look at early
> Islamic and Judaic cookery (they will be hard to find I 
> think).  Period
> bananas look more like those stubby reddish ones you see on 
> ocassion in some larger stores.
> 
> Akim Yaroslavich
> "No glory comes without pain"

While there has been selective breeding to improve the stock, the banana
varieties available today were available in period, though they may not have
been in a commonly frequented local.  IIRC, the Cavendish, which is today's
common yellow banana, is out of Asia and is the choice commercial banana
because it is hardier than the Big Mike (originally from the Canaries) that
it replaced in the trade and that small yellow and small red bananas were
also being grown in the Canaries.

Bear