[Sca-cooks] Another, older, banana found in London
Terry Decker
t.d.decker at att.net
Wed Jul 14 20:09:26 PDT 2010
This is a find that has been previously discussed on the list (originally in
2001), rather than a new discovery. The 1999 date is important because it
is close to the time of the actual dig. Several years after the discovery,
the banana was genetically determined to be a plantain (if memory serves).
The article pre-dates the lab work, which means that the author only had
access to the tentative identification and further research negated the
probability of it being a sweet banana.
The poster on the Calontir list makes the error of assuming the plantain was
deposited in the mid-15th Century. The site is a midden which, IIRC, was a
fish market with live tanks, that was abandoned in the 15th Century and
became a trash dump. The plantain was located at a level of the midden
placing it in the early to middle 16th Century and it was determined not to
be a more modern intrusive artifact. Hmmm, "fish ponds in Southwark" is the
article description of the site.
One of the people on the project started a paper on exotic fruit being
marketed during the Tudor dynasty, but I haven't heard anything more about
it.
Bear
> Please explain how it being written in 1999 negates the probability of it
> being a plantain instead of the sweet bananas that we get in the stores??
>
>
> De
>
> -----Original Message-----
> If you read the date on the article, it's from 1999.
>
> /Margaret
>
> On Wed, 14 Jul 2010, otsisto wrote:
>
>> This is more likely plantain.
>>
>> De
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From the Calontir list.
>> Stefan
>>
>> Begin forwarded message:
>>
>>> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/370550.stm
>>> Older than I thought (Mid 15th C, not early 16th) and in a trash heap,
> not
>> a toilet.
>>>
>>> And the article suggests that they may actually have been common.
>>>
>>> Jane
>
>
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