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.
📍 West Africa (Gulf of Guinea coast)
The oil palm is native to West and Central Africa, from Gambia down to Angola, where people have used it for millennia. Only much later was it planted in Malaysia and Indonesia, now home to huge plantations.
📍 Western USA (California to the Rockies)
Despite its name, the Aussie was developed by ranchers in the western United States in the 1800s, probably named after collies that came with sheep from Australia. A rodeo performer's trick dogs made it famous in the mid-1900s.
📍 Mainland Southeast Asia
Chickens descend mainly from the red junglefowl of Southeast Asia. The oldest known chicken bones, roughly 3,500 years old, come from Ban Non Wat in northeast Thailand, where wild birds were likely drawn to farmers' rice fields.
📍 North coast of Peru (Huanchaco to Pimentel)
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.
📍 Sinú & San Jorge valleys (Córdoba & Sucre), Colombia
The black-and-white sombrero vueltiao comes from the Zenú people of Colombia's Sinú and San Jorge valleys. It is braided from caña flecha cane, its name refers to the braid being turned round and round, and in 2004 it became a national symbol.
📍 Lake Titicaca, Peru–Bolivia
Quinoa isn't a true grain but the seed of a plant related to spinach. It was domesticated thousands of years ago around Lake Titicaca, high in the Andes, and the Incas nicknamed it the 'mother of all grains'.