Fishermen on Peru's north coast have used caballitos de totora, 'little reed horses', for about 3,000 years. They sit astride the bundled reeds, paddle out through the surf to fish, then ride the waves back to the beach.
📍 Annonay, France
Paper-makers Joseph and Étienne Montgolfier first flew their hot-air balloon publicly in their hometown of Annonay, France, in June 1783. Chinese sky lanterns came first, but theirs carried the first passengers: a sheep, a duck and a rooster.
📍 Kasai, DR Congo (Kuba Kingdom)
Kuba cloth comes from the old Kuba Kingdom in the Kasai region of DR Congo. Men weave squares from raffia palm fibre, then women embroider them and snip the stitches into a soft pile that looks and feels like velvet.
📍 Yap & Palau, western Micronesia
Yap islanders carved limestone discs up to 3.6 m wide in Palau, about 400 km away, and brought them home by canoe. The stones rarely move: ownership passes by agreement, and one that sank at sea is still traded.
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📍 South-central South America (N Argentina, Paraguay, S Bolivia)
Jacarandas grow wild in south-central South America, where the species is now listed as Vulnerable. Pretoria in South Africa has planted so many, some 60,000-70,000, that it is nicknamed the 'Jacaranda City'.
📍 Galápagos Islands, Ecuador
Early Spanish explorers named the Galápagos Islands after these giants. The tortoises can weigh over 400 kg and live for more than 100 years, and their differences from island to island fed Charles Darwin's thinking when he visited in 1835.
📍 Andes, Peru
Condor comes from kuntur in Quechua, the language of the Inca, and reached English through Spanish around 1600. With wings spanning up to 3.3 metres, the Andean condor is one of the largest flying birds in the world.