In the early 1700’s, as more European countries established trade routes with the New World, certain commodities were brought back due to the demand for their unique flavors. Bananas and plantains were on this list. The very first bananas were thought to originate in New Guinea, then Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. They were finger size and acquired the Arabic name of banan, meaning finger. Over the centuries, they were domesticated and transplanted to wet, tropical lands on other continents by various cultures. The Cavendish species we are familiar with today appeared in the 1830s and is commercially grown worldwide to replace the Gros Michel variety that went extinct. As International trade plied the Atlantic Ocean transporting goods, some ships failed to return, and when rescue ships or navy patrols discovered some wreckage, bananas were to blame. It seems that the floating debris included wooden crates full of bananas. It was deemed the crates contained poisonous spiders and snakes that then escaped and bit the sailors aboard. A ship requires a healthy, knowledgeable crew aboard, or it will eventually sink. Bananas thus became a bad luck symbol, and sailors would not accompany the doomed vessels carrying bananas. This superstition still exists today as commercial fishing captains frown upon customers who bring aboard bananas. The real reason these ships sank was the lack of understanding of hurricane formations and their devastation to air-powered sailing vessels. Or it was the concentration of radioactive Potassium 40 found in bananas that gave the sailors a lethal dose of radioactive exposure. OR, it was because the young sailors were primarily homosexual and a boat load of organic dildos and gallons of rum aboard turned the ship into a deadly orgy of out-of-control homosexual behavior. Knowing humans, science firmly believes this last scenario gave bananas a bad rape….err…rap.
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