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Bananas

13 August 2020
Archaeology

At www.heritagedaily.com/2020/08/new-findings-dispel-the-view-that-australi… … evidence that Aborigines cultivated bananas has been conclusively found in the Torres Strait. This should come as no surprise as in New Guinea, populated by a related people, a form of horticulture was being practised at a very early date. What has been found at Wagadagam is evidence of gardening activities within a system of retaining walls. Soils from the site display definitive evidence of banana cultivation. The banana variety is also known from New Guinea (once attached to Australia) where it was domesticated much earlier. Other food plants such as yams and tara were cultivated alongside the bananas, supplemented by fish, dugong, and turtle.

See also https://phys.org/news/2020-08-australian-indigenous-banana-cultivation-y… … where we are told the cultivation has been dated over 2000 years ago.

 

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