When humankind first encountered this fruit thousands of years ago we were probably not impressed by the almost inedible giant wild bananas. Historic mutations, rare and accidental, produced seedless bananas through chromosome triplication. Ancient humans focused on these seedless, pollen-less mutants to generate progressively more edible crops. Eventually, edible banana flesh retained only a few vague traces of the viable seeds once carried in the ancestral wild stock.
Ancient plant breeders grew edible bananas by grafting sterile mutants onto wild stems. This process was repeated for thousands of years to produce the emasculated, sterile -- and defenceless -- plantation banana that currently feeds millions of people globally.
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In the tropics, you can still find other, less desirable banana varieties, mainly grown as a starchy food staple rather than a sweet treat. But these tropical bananas aren't much like their commercial cousins in North American supermarkets. They taste bland. Their texture is often fibrous and mealy. North American consumers would probably find them quite unpalatable compared to the Cavendish, which is sweeter and smoother-textured.
The Cavendish banana being so well suited for human consumption doesn't weaken the case for evolution. Humans have made many fruits more compatible with their desires, from seedless fruit to even square watermelons. There are many kinds of banana that are not edible or as useful to humans, for example, here is a picture of a wild banana that is hardly as edible:
For more interesting varieties of banana, check out this article with some interesting bananas.
He mentions the 'Tab at the top' to peel the banana. Funny thing is, if you watch monkeys, they peel the banana from the bottom. Apparently, this is a much better way to do it, as you get far less of the stringy stuff attached to the banana (more of it stays with the peel). Then, the stem becomes a handle.
since i'm low on potassium our doctor has suggested that i eat two bananas a day - l like bananas but find eating two a bit of a chore !
doc also warned my wife that if i start climbing trees , i'll have to cut back on bananas <GRIN> .
can i still be an evolutionist even when a eat two banas a day - or is that going to cloud my memory power even more - mebbe i'll better tell the doc about these findings - he likes funny stories when he's seeen a lot of cranky old people (that excludes me , of course) <GRIN> .
hbg
He mentions the 'Tab at the top' to peel the banana. Funny thing is, if you watch monkeys, they peel the banana from the bottom. Apparently, this is a much better way to do it, as you get far less of the stringy stuff attached to the banana (more of it stays with the peel). Then, the stem becomes a handle.
this must be true . they seem to be a lot smarter than humans - they certainly aren't throwing bombs at each other , develop an atom bomb ... and other stupid things .
they apparently were able to shed a lot a dumb ideas we humans have developed .
hbg
Domestic fruits were probably the last plants to be domesticated, apart from North and South America, where no fruits were domesticated. All of them of which i know require grafting to wild plants to produce the desired fruit product--from apples to grapes to olives to bananas. The banana was probably first domesticated in New Guinea, although if not there, it was definitely domesticated first in southeast Asia. If the archaeological evidence has been correctly interpreted, the banana was first domesticated 8000 ybp, which would make it the earliest domesticated fruit, by several thousand years.
All apples derive from the domesticate in western Asia, in what we call Turkey, although there is a claim for central Asia, which is disputed. It is a member of the rose family. There is now a claim that the fig was domesticated more than 11,000 ybp, and if that is true (the claim is still not established, which is to say, accepted by the majority of scientists with a dog in the fight), that means that figs are the oldest domesticated plant, older than wheat, rice and beans.
The faithful bible thumpers, i'm sure, eat this shit up. But the claim is absurd for another reason, and that is that the wild ancestors of nearly every domestic plant in the world--wheat (both emmer and einkorn), barley, rice, corn (as in maize), beans, gourds, yams, potatoes, apples, etc.--still exist in their original habitats. It makes it ridiculously simple to trace the domestication of plants in time and space.
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