Carl Ernst Otto Kuntze

“ Now, a cultivated plant which does not possess seeds must have been under culture for a very long period—we have not in Europe a single exclusively seedless, berry-bearing, cultivated plant—and hence it is perhaps fair to infer that these plants were cultivated as early as the beginning of the middle of the diluvial period. Moreover, the hypothesis of an immigration of the Indians via a still tropical Northern Asia and North America is confirmed by their going naked. ”

“ But the plantain does not grow wild, though in tropical America it finds the same conditions of vegetation as in its native country, and hence thrives there. The wild plantain in India has small stony seeds, and is distributed widely by monkeys, bats, and insects. which like the fruit but cannot destroy the seeds. In Asia wild, seed-bearing plantains are usually found growing in groups. In America, which has a much greater area of wilderness, the plantain must have spread far and wide, seeing that it has persisted in the wild state in the far more densely-inhabited East Indies. ”

“ I HAVE spent some years as a botanist in the tropics of both hemispheres, and in the mean time have studied pretty thoroughly the tropical domesticated plants. In America and in Asia the principal domesticated tropical plants are represented by the same species ”

“ Therefore, it appears that in America the plantain has always been a seedless, cultivated plant, which can only have been introduced from Asia in preglacial times, through northern zones, for in that way alone was the immigration at all possible.—Ausland. ”

“ In the summer the plantain might live in the temperate zone. It can hardly be doubted that long before Columbus's time the junks of those peoples may have been wrecked on the Pacific coast of America. ”

“ If we make the very bold supposition—for a waste of water 80° wide, or twelve hundred geographical miles, has to be crossed, or two thousand geographical miles from the Moluccas—that such immigration is possible, then Polynesian and not Mongolian races would inhabit America, which is contrary to the facts of the case. ”

“ Further, it must be observed that the American Indians generally are bad seamen, attempting only coastwise voyages; and this fact also renders the supposition of an oceanic immigration improbable. Whether man was the earliest cultivator of plants is doubtful, for we know of one or two species of ants which also regularly cultivate certain plants. ”