Or possibly Native Americans developed maize systematically over nearly two thousand years, beginning with the wild grass Teosinte, gradually adapting it into a staple crop. More here.
As for bananas, the earliest known cultivation was in what's now India, 2500 years ago. Alexander the Great brought bananas to the West in the 300s BCE. And they spread throughout Africa, undergoing many mutations which produced different types. Gradually they were crossbred to the point where they have absolutely no "sex life" at all, which is why every new banana tree is a clone of another one, and why a blight is such a big deal. More here and here.
I think the word you were looking for might not be "evidence," but "suggestion." Besides, consider what you're suggesting. If there were an alternate timeline in which, say, corn never existed, the world would be so different from the one we know as to be nearly unrecognizable.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-23 02:48 am (UTC)As for bananas, the earliest known cultivation was in what's now India, 2500 years ago. Alexander the Great brought bananas to the West in the 300s BCE. And they spread throughout Africa, undergoing many mutations which produced different types. Gradually they were crossbred to the point where they have absolutely no "sex life" at all, which is why every new banana tree is a clone of another one, and why a blight is such a big deal. More here and here.
I think the word you were looking for might not be "evidence," but "suggestion." Besides, consider what you're suggesting. If there were an alternate timeline in which, say, corn never existed, the world would be so different from the one we know as to be nearly unrecognizable.