Africa
Even though it is the largest hot desert in the world, filling nearly all of northern Africa, trade intensified across this vast region with the emergence of Iron Age civilizations during the 1st century BCE.
What is the Sahara?
This ancient city of the Middle East is considered a holy city to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
What is Jerusalem?
Spain and Portugal share this peninsula, whose name derives from its ancient inhabitants.
What is the Iberian Peninsula?
Spanish conquistadors founded this city in 1521 atop the razed island-capital of Tenochtitlán, the cultural and political center of the Aztec (Mexica) empire.
What is Mexico City?
This mountain system covers a distance of some 5,500 miles—from the southern tip of South America to the continent’s northernmost coast on the Caribbean—and was home to the Inca, among other ancient civilizations.
What are the Andes Mountains?
This Malian city was a trading center for several ancient empires, as well as a center of Islamic culture from about 1400 to 1600.
What is Timbuktu?
Long before the larger Atlantic and Pacific oceans had been well-explored, this body of salt water surrounded by Asia to the north, Antarctica to the south, Africa to the west, and Australia to the east was a bustling region of travel and trade.
What is the Indian Ocean?
What is Venice?
This country in the Caribbean Sea, whose population is almost entirely descended from enslaved African people, won independence from France in 1804.
What is Haiti?
What is Brazil?
Nigeria’s largest city and one of the largest in sub-Saharan Africa, this chief port was the country's federal capital until 1991.
What is Lagos?
This largest city and principal seaport of Turkey, formerly known as Constantinople, was the capital of both the Byzantine Empire and the Ottoman Empire.
What is Istanbul?
People of letters, painters, architects, and craftspeople from this Tuscan city of central Italy began the period known as the Renaissance.
What is Florence?
This self-governing island commonwealth of the West Indies is neither an independent country nor a U.S. sate, but its citizens share an intermingled Spanish, U.S., and Afro-Caribbean culture.
What is Puerto Rico?
This island group of the eastern Pacific Ocean became internationally famous as a result of their being visited in 1835 by the English naturalist Charles Darwin; their unusual fauna contributed to the groundbreaking theories on natural selection presented in his On the Origin of Species (1859).
What are the Galapagos Islands?
This country on the southwestern coast of Africa became an independent country in 1975 after almost 500 years of Portuguese rule.
What is Angola?
This island country lying in the Indian Ocean is separated from peninsular India by the Palk Strait.
What is Sri Lanka?
In 1707, this country that occupies the northern part of the island of Great Britain was joined to England, and the entire island became a single kingdom, the United Kingdom of Great Britain.
What is Scotland?
This capital, major port, and leading commercial center of Cuba is the largest city in the Caribbean region and has one of the great treasuries of historic colonial preserves in the Western Hemisphere.
What is Havana?
This country located in the northeastern corner of South America is part of the Commonwealth, an association of former colonies who have chosen to maintain ties of friendship and cooperation with the United Kingdom.
What is Guyana?
This small island just south of Cape Verde Peninsula, Senegal, was active in the Atlantic slave trade from 1536 until 1848 and is home to the "Door of No Return."
What is Gorée Island?
Rising over 12,000 feet near the Pacific Ocean coast, this is the highest mountain in Japan.
What is Mount Fuji?
Many of Paris’s most famous monuments are located along the banks of this river, the second longest in France.
What is the Seine River?
This land link extending east-west about 400 miles from the border of Costa Rica to the border of Colombia connects North America and South America and separates the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
What is the Isthmus of Panama?
This city of southern Bolivia came into existence after the discovery of silver there in 1545 and quickly became famous for its wealth.
What is Potosí?