Q 01/05

Potatoes were first domesticated by indigenous farmers around a high-altitude lake in which mountain range?

A) Andes

B) Alps

C) Rockies

D) Himalayas

Answer · why

A) Andes

Andes farmers in what is now southern Peru and northwestern Bolivia domesticated the potato thousands of years ago; Spanish colonisers carried it to E...

Q 02/05

Wild Coffea arabica is endemic to the highlands of which African country?

A) Ethiopia

B) South Africa

C) Tanzania

D) Egypt

Answer · why

A) Ethiopia

Coffea arabica is endemic to Ethiopia's southwestern highlands, but the habit of roasting and brewing the beans first took hold across the Red Sea in ...

Q 03/05

On which continent were cacao trees first domesticated, at least 5,300 years ago?

A) Asia

B) Africa

C) Europe

D) South America

Answer · why

D) South America

The earliest domestication is traced to the Santa Ana-La Florida site in southeast Ecuador, at least 5,300 years ago, probably to make a fermented dri...

Q 04/05

Modern pizza evolved from local flatbread dishes in the 18th or early 19th century in which Italian city?

A) Rome

B) Florence

C) Venice

D) Naples

Answer · why

D) Naples

Naples turned its topped flatbreads into pizza; the famous tale that Raffaele Esposito invented the modern version for a royal visit in 1889 is now do...

Q 05/05

From which wild grass, native to southern Mexico, was modern corn (maize) domesticated?

A) Wheatgrass

B) Teosinte

C) Sugarcane

D) Sorghum

Answer · why

B) Teosinte

Teosinte, a wild grass of southern Mexico's Balsas River valley, was bred into maize about 9,000 years ago; generations of selection turned its few ha...