Q 01/05

Hammurabi, famous for his law code, was king of which ancient city?

A) Carthage

B) Athens

C) Babylon

D) Thebes

Answer · why

C) Babylon

Hammurabi ruled Babylon as the sixth king of its Amorite dynasty; the stele carrying his code shows him receiving the laws from Shamash, the sun god a...

Q 02/05

The Silk Road took its name from a luxury textile produced mainly in which country?

A) Persia

B) India

C) Egypt

D) China

Answer · why

D) China

The term itself was only popularised in 1877, by the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen.

Q 03/05

Roughly what share of Europe's population is estimated to have died in the Black Death of 1346-1353?

A) 30% to 60%

B) 5% to 10%

C) 15% to 20%

D) 20% to 25%

Answer · why

A) 30% to 60%

Estimates put the Black Death's toll at 30% to 60% of Europe's population; the disease, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, spread mainly through...

Q 04/05

From which besieged Crimean port did Genoese ships carry the Black Death toward Europe?

A) Caffa

B) Odessa

C) Trebizond

D) Sevastopol

Answer · why

A) Caffa

Caffa, a Genoese colony in Crimea, was besieged by Jani Beg's Golden Horde army in 1346; plague spread into the port, and Genoese ships carried it to ...

Q 05/05

The Renaissance was first centred in which Italian city?

A) Florence

B) Milan

C) Venice

D) Rome

Answer · why

A) Florence

Florence, ruled by the banker Medici family, paid for much of the early Renaissance art, and Byzantine scholars fleeing Constantinople's fall in 1453 ...