The discovery is the earliest evidence of humans taking and cultivating banana in to what was the last area of the planet to be colonised.
In an article published this week in Nature Human Behaviour, Dr Monica Tromp, Senior Laboratory Analyst at the University of Otago’s Southern Pacific Archaeological Research (SPAR), found microscopic particles of banana and other plants trapped in calcified dental plaque of the first settlers of Vanuatu.
The finds came from 3000-year-old skeletons at the Teouma site on Vanuatu’s Efate Island.
