•The cultigens are the
cultivated Musaceae, taro or ‘old’ cocoyam
(Colocasia esculenta) and the water-yam (Dioscorea alata). These three crops seem to have been well established in West Africa by the time of the first
European contacts with the coast.
•It was proposed that
they diffused across the centre of the continent via the Central African rain-forest. Simmonds (1962:137; 1976:213) confidently shows a thick black arrow sweeping across the centre of the continent from East to West schematically representing the diffusion of
plantains and bananas.
•Nevertheless, exactly
how and when elements of the ‘tropical
food kit’ were introduced to West Africa remains problematic