Reconstructing west-coastal bantu vocabulary as evidence for early banana cultivation in central africa

Abstract

Lexical data has been key in attempts to reconstruct the early history of the banana (Musa spp.) in Africa. Previous language-based approaches to the introduction and dispersal of this staple crop of Asian origin in humid sub-Saharan Africa have suffered from the absence of well-established genealogical classifications and inadequate historical-linguistic analysis. To overcome these hurdles, we focus in this article on West-Coastal Bantu (WCB), one specific branch within the Bantu family whose genealogy and diachronic phonology are well established. We reconstruct three distinct banana terms to Proto-West-Coastal Bantu (PWCB), i.e. *dɪ̀-ŋkòndò/*mà-ŋkòndò ‘plantain’, *dɪ̀-ŋkò/*mà-ŋkò ‘plantain’ and *kɪ̀-túká/*bì-túká ‘bunch of bananas’. From this new historical-linguistic evidence we infer that AAB Plantains, one of Africa’s two major cultivar subgroups, already played a key role in the subsistence economy of the first Bantu speakers who assumedly migrated south of the rainforest around 2500 years ago. Furthermore, we analyze four innovations that emerged after WCB started to spread from its interior homeland in the Kasai-Kamtsha region of present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) towards the Atlantic coast, i.e. dɪ̀-kòndè ‘plantain’, kɪ̀-tébè ‘starchy banana’, banga ‘False Horn plantain’, and dɪ̀-tòtò ‘sweet banana’. Finally, we assess the historical implications of these lexical retentions and innovations both within and beyond WCB and sketch some perspectives for future lexicon-based research on the history of the banana.