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Ghent University Academic Bibliography2000-01-01T00:00+00:001dailyThe Introduction of Sugarcane in West-Central Africa: Insights from Comparative Bantu Word Histories
https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/01HT2JKE3W3RG252Q1C924SRR0
Van Acker, SifraPacchiarotti, SaraBostoen, Koen2024Due to the extreme scarcity of archaeological and historical data, little is known about the introduction of Southeast Asian crops such as banana, sugarcane, taro, and greater yam in Africa, nor about the role they played in the subsistence and lifeways of ancestral African communities. Therefore, in this article, we closely examine comparative lexical data as a source to reconstruct the history of sugarcane in West-Central Africa. We focus, more specifically, on one branch of the Bantu language family, i.e., West-Coastal Bantu, in conjunction with data from Bantu languages spoken in the Congo rainforest and further south. We argue that despite their shared origins, sugarcane and banana were not introduced into Africa as part of one single Southeast Asian package. Sugarcane made its way through West-Central Africa together with crops of American origin such as maize, cassava, peanut, common bean, and (sweet) potato as part of the so-called “Columbian Exchange”, i.e., not earlier than the 16th century CE, while the ancestry of bananas in the Congo rainforest area probably goes back to the Early Iron Age, i.e., about 2,500 years ago.application/pdfhttps://biblio.ugent.be/publication/01HT2JKE3W3RG252Q1C924SRR0http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-01HT2JKE3W3RG252Q1C924SRR0http://doi.org/10.53228/njas.v33i1.1107https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/01HT2JKE3W3RG252Q1C924SRR0/file/01HT2K6M4CCHMN45CX96T3SH7Venginfo:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/724275No license (in copyright)info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessNordic Journal of African StudiesISSN: 1459-9465Languages and LiteraturesCentral Africahistorical linguisticslexical reconstructionSoutheast Asian cropssugarcaneWest-Coastal BantuThe Introduction of Sugarcane in West-Central Africa: Insights from Comparative Bantu Word HistoriesjournalArticleinfo:eu-repo/semantics/articleinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion