All about Banana - History

… in other words, if something good comes your way, take advantage of it!

 In the beginning, the banana was no more than 6 to 8 cm long and was filled with many seeds. It was man who domesticated the banana tree in its present edible form. The earliest fossil evidence goes back to the tertiary period in India, where in 500 to 600 BC, the banana was considered to be the fruit of paradise: the Hindus claimed it was a banana that Eve offered to Adam. In Sri Lanka, they take the story a step further, saying that Adam and Eve used banana leaves to cover themselves when they were chased out of the garden of Eden. In fact, the wild banana was valued for many things aside from its fruit, and many of those early uses still survive today. From the stem (or false trunk) that provided fibre, they made cords, rope, clothing and bags and quickly came to see that the tree provided excellent floats for their boats. The heart of the stem was used as animal fodder, the leaves for shelter, cooking wrappers, serving utensils and even "paper" for writing.

When Alexander arrived in India, he forbade his troops from eating this yellow fruit, which he said was too rich and heavy and thus liable to sap his troops' strength. Though science came to recognize the energizing properties of this fruit, various eras and continents have held contradictory beliefs about it. Nicknamed "intelligence salt" because of its high phosphorus content, it became a symbol of the fragility and instability of worldly things in Buddhist philosophy.