ABSTRACT
The earliest evidence of banana cultivation has been found in the highlands of New Guinea, dating back at least 7,000 years. There in a small area called the Kuk Swamp, twenty feet below the surface, scientists discovered traces of plowing, drainage ditches and even post holes. Banana cultivation gradually spread northeast from New Guinea to Indonesia, Malaysia, Borneo, the Philippines and on into southeast Asia, over a period of about 2,000 years. Banana cultivation gradually spread from New Guinea to all the scattered islands of near and far Oceania. Bananas were also introduced to Africa separately from India, 4,000-5,000 years ago. By then, active trading was being conducted across the Indian Ocean via outrigger canoes. The first great banana merchant was Carl Augustus Frank, a German immigrant whose home base was near New York. His infatuation with bananas began in 1865 when he was a steward on a Pacific mail ship.
