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The Philippine Journal of Science 
1915 
Peruvian, Garcilaso de la Vega, who says that “at the time of 
the Incas, maize, quinoa, the potato, and in the warm and tem- 
perate regions bananas formed the staple food of the natives. 6 ” 
To this we can add Humboldt’s own observation that “on the 
banks of the Orinoco, of the Cassiquairi or of the Beni, between 
the mountains of Esmeralda and the banks of the river Caronoy, 
in the midst of the thickest forest, almost everywhere that Indian 
tribes are found, tribes which have had no relations with 
European settlements, we meet with plantations of Manioc and 
bananas.” 
The bananas which are presumably indigenous in America 
and which Humboldt and other writers observed and used to 
sustain their argument are probably those that were introduced 
into America in comparatively recent times. The editor of the 
Journal of Heredity 7 says: “Sixteenth century writers commonly 
call the fruit Apples of Paradise or Adam’s Fig.” The name 
banana gradually came into use in that century; it is the ver- 
nacular name given to the fruit by a tribe in the African Kongo. 
De Orta mentions it in 1563, while Hartwell 8 says: “Other fruits 
there are, termed Banana, which we verily think to be the 
Muses of Egypt and Syria.” Thus the fruit, carrying with it 
the name which may have come all the way from its first station 
in the Indo-Malayan region, reached the Mediterranean and after 
the colonization of those islands — the Canaries. From the Grand 
Canary it was introduced to the New World in 1516, according 
to the very definite statement of Captain Gonzalo Fernandez de 
Oviedo y Valdes, 9 who heard the story “from many people.” He 
ascribes the introduction to Hispaniola (Santo Domingo) to the 
“reverendo padre fray Thomas de Bernalanga, de la Orden de 
los Predicadores,” “and from here,” he continues, “it has spread 
to the other villages of the islands, and to all the other islands 
populated by Christians, and has been carried to the mainland; 
and in every region where it has been established, it has yielded 
excellent results.” 
It seems that there are reasons enough to consider that south- 
eastern Asia is the native country of the banana, and that here 
will be found the most extensive development of varietal forms. 
6 De Candolle, Origin of Cult. Plants, 304. 
7 Journ. Heredity 5 (1914) 277-278. 
8 Pigafetta’s Congo (1597) in Coll. Travels 2 (1746) 553; fide, Journ. 
Heredity 5 (1914) 277. 
"Oviedo, Hist. Gen. y Nat. de las Indias 30 (1535) cap. I. 
