Banana Agricultural Origins in Africa

Peter Robertshaw writing in September/October's Archaeology magazine reports on excavations at Munsa, Uganda, where he'd been working on archaeological evidence of colonial period Bunyoro sites. Deep core testing discovered opal phytoliths from bananas, dated to 5,000 years ago. Bananas originate from Southeast Asia and were thought to have been brought to Africa via Madagascar no more than 2,500 years ago; this discovery seriously shakes up previously held notions of how long ago connections between Africa and Southeast Asia were made.

• Africa's Earliest Bananas, Peter Robertshaw in Archaeology magazine
• Domestication of Plants and Animals
• Opal Phytoliths and Archaeology

This great image of a banana cross-stitch project was taken by eye of einstein.