Bananas, as a species, have been around for roughly 7,000 to 10,000 years.
While pinpointing an exact age is challenging, archaeological and genetic evidence suggests that bananas originated in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific around 8,000 to 5,000 BCE. From this region, particularly areas like New Guinea and the Philippines, they gradually spread across the tropics. The cultivated banana we know today is derived from the hybridization of two wild species, Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana. The exact timing and location of this domestication process remains a subject of ongoing research, but the evidence strongly supports a history spanning thousands of years.
