History of the banana

Banana is autochthon in South-East Asia, but the ancient Greeks already know it in 333 B.C. Based on the recording of Plinius, the army of Alexander the Great also tasted banana during their campaign in India. Arab traders took the banana to North-Egypt and the Middle-East in the 7th century.

Portugees took banana surcles to the Canary-Islands from West-Africa in the 15th century. A Spanish Dominican monk, Thomas de Berlengas, took banana to Danto Domingo in 1516 (later, he became the Bishop of Panama). Banana spread the whole American continent from this point. It became the main nutrition of slaves in America.




The transportation of banana was very problematic in the beginning. It became transportable only by the invention and spread of railways. In 1876, a banana cost 10 cents in the USA, which was equal to 1.5 liter milk. USA imported 11-16 million hands of bananas from Middle-America.

To Europe, in the beginning banana was imported only from the Canary-Islands by steamships. Though the demand of bananas was constantly rising, it was very hard to import it to Europe using primitive refrigeration equipments. In 1913, more than 2 millions of hands of bananas were imported to Germany. It became the symbol of exoticism and cosmopolitanism.