From Egyptian and Assyrian remains, as well as from tradition and the most ancient writings, we find that the date-palm grew in abundance in the region lying between the Euphrates and the Nile. Egyptian monuments contain fruits and drawings of the tree.[1504] Herodotus, in a more recent age (fifth century before Christ), mentions the wood of the date-palms of Babylonia, and still later Strabo used similar expressions about those of Arabia, whence it seems that the species was commoner than it is now, and more in the condition of a natural forest tree. On the other hand, Carl Ritter makes the ingenious observation that the earliest Hebrew books do not speak of the date-palm as producing a fruit valued as a food for man. David, about one thousand years before Christ, and about seven centuries after Moses, does not mention the date palm in his list of trees to be planted in his gardens. It is true that except at Jericho dates seldom ripen in Palestine. Later, Herodotus says of the Babylonian date-palms that only the greater part produced good fruit which was used for food. This seems to indicate the beginning of a cultivation perfected by the selection of varieties and of the transport of male flowers into the middle of the branches of female trees, but it perhaps signifies also that Herodotus was ignorant of the existence of the male plant.
To the west of Egypt the date-palm had probably existed for centuries or for thousands of years when Herodotus mentioned them. He speaks of Libya. There is no historical record with respect to the oases in the Sahara, but Pliny[1505] mentions the date-palm in the Canaries.
The names of the species bear witness to its great antiquity both in Asia and in Africa, seeing they are numerous and very different. The Hebrews called the date-palm tamar, and the ancient Egyptians beq.[1506] The complete difference between these words, both very ancient, shows that these peoples found the species indigenous and perhaps already named in Western Asia and in Egypt. The number of Persian, Arabic, and Berber names is incredible.[1507] Some are derived from the Hebrew word, others from unknown sources. They often apply to different states of the fruit, or to different cultivated varieties, which again shows ancient cultivation in different countries. Webb and Berthelot have not discovered a name for the date-palm in the language of the Guanchos, and this is much to be regretted. The Greek name, phœnix, refers simply to Phœnicia and the Phœnicians, possessors of the date-palm.[1508] The names dactylus and date are derivations of dachel in a Hebrew dialect.[1509] No Sanskrit name is known, whence it may be inferred that the plantations of the date-palm in Western India are not very ancient. The Indian climate does not suit the species.[1510] The Hindustani name khurma is borrowed from the Persian.
Further to the East the date-palm remained long unknown. The Chinese received it from Persia, in the third century of our era, and its cultivation was resumed at different times, but they have now abandoned it.[1511] As a rule, beyond the arid region which lies between the Euphrates and the south of the Atlas and the Canaries, the date-palm has not succeeded in similar latitudes, or at least it has not become an important culture. It might be grown with success in Australia and at the Cape, but the Europeans who have colonized these regions are not satisfied, like the Arabs, with figs and dates for their staple food. I think, in fine, that in times anterior to the earliest Egyptian dynasties the date-palm already existed, wild or sown here and there by wandering tribes, in a narrow zone extending from the Euphrates to the Canaries, and that its cultivation began later as far as the north-west of India on the one hand and the Cape de Verde Islands[1512] on the other, so that the natural area has remained very nearly the same for about five thousand years. What it was previously, palæontological discoveries may one day reveal.
Banana—Musa sapientum and M. paradisiaca, Linnæus; M. sapientum, Brown.
The banana or bananas were generally considered to be natives of Southern Asia, and to have been carried into America by Europeans, till Humboldt threw doubts upon their purely Asiatic origin. In his work on New Spain[1513] he quoted early authors who assert that the banana was cultivated in America before the conquest.
He admits, on Oviedo’s authority,[1514] its introduction by Father Thomas of Berlangas from the Canaries into San Domingo in 1516, whence it was introduced into other islands and the mainland.[1515] He recognizes the absence of any mention of the banana in the accounts of Columbus, Alonzo Negro, Pinzon, Vespuzzi, and Cortez. The silence of Hernandez, who lived half a century after Oviedo, astonishes him and appears to him a remarkable carelessness; “for,” he says,[1516] “it is a constant tradition in Mexico and on the whole of the mainland that the platano arton, and the dominico were cultivated long before the Spanish conquest.” The author who has most carefully noted the different epochs at which American agriculture has been enriched by foreign products, the Peruvian Garcilasso de la Vega,[1517] says distinctly that at the time of the Incas, maize, quinoa, the potato, and, in the warm and temperate regions, bananas formed the staple food of the natives. He describes the Musa of the valleys in the Andes; he even distinguishes the rarer species, with a small fruit and a sweet aromatic flavour, the dominico, from the common banana or arton. Father Acosta[1518] asserts also, although less positively, that the Musa was cultivated by the Americans before the arrival of the Spaniards. Lastly, Humboldt adds from his own observation, “On the banks of the Orinoco, of the Cassiquaire or of the Beni, between the mountains of Esmeralda and the banks of the river Carony, in the midst of the thickest forests, almost everywhere that Indian tribes are found who have had no relations with European settlements, we meet with plantations of Manioc and bananas.” Humboldt suggests the hypothesis that several species or constant varieties of the Banana have been confounded, some of which are indigenous to the new world.
Desvaux studied the specific question, and in a really remarkable work, published in 1814,[1519] he gives it as his opinion that all the bananas cultivated for their fruits are of the same species. In this species he distinguishes forty-four varieties, which he arranges in two groups; the large-fruited bananas (seven to fifteen inches long), and the small-fruited bananas (one to six inches), commonly called fig bananas. R. Brown, in 1818, in his work on the Plants of the Congo, p. 51, maintains also that no structural difference in the bananas cultivated in Asia and those in America prevents us from considering them as belonging to the same species. He adopts the name Musa sapientum, which appears to me preferable to that of M. paradisiaca adopted by Desvaux, because the varieties with small fertile fruit appear to be nearer the condition of the wild Musæ found in Asia.
Brown remarks on the question of origin that all the other species of the genus Musa belong to the old world; that no one pretends to have found in America, in a wild state, varieties with fertile fruit, as has happened in Asia; lastly, that Piso and Marcgraf considered that the banana was introduced into Brazil from Congo. In spite of the force of these three arguments, Humboldt, in his second edition of his essay upon New Spain (ii. p. 397), does not entirely renounce his opinion. He says that the traveller Caldcleugh[1520] found among the Puris the tradition that a small species of banana was cultivated on the borders of the Prato long before they had any communications with the Portuguese. He adds that words which are not borrowed ones are found in American languages to distinguish the fruit of the Musa; for instance, paruru in Tamanac, etc., arata in Maypur. I have also read in Stevenson’s travels[1521] that beds of the leaves of the two bananas commonly cultivated in America have been found in the huacas or Peruvian tombs anterior to the conquest; but as this traveller also says that he saw beans[1522] in these huacas, a plant which undoubtedly belongs to the old world, his assertions are not very trustworthy.
Boussingault[1523] thought that the platano arton at least was of American origin, but he gives no proof. Meyen, who had also been in America, adds no argument to those which were already known;[1524] nor does the geographer Ritter,[1525] who simply reproduces the facts about America, given by Humboldt.