Digital History>eXplorations>The World Before 1492

Exploration 1: Check Your Knowledge

Take a few minutes and check how many answers you know for the following questions about innovations....

1. Who invented writing?
2. Who were the first farmers?
3. Who were the first city dwellers?
4. Who invented paper?
5. Who invented the axle, the drill, and the chisel?
6. Who invented the compass and the abacus?
7. Who invented the wheel?
8. Who invented metalworking?
9. Who invented the watermill and the windmill?
10. Who invented cement, porcelain, and enamel?
11. Who first bred potatoes, beans, strawberries, tomatoes, chocolate beans, and corn?
12. Who bred tea?
13. Who bred coffee?
14. Who developed modern textile making techniques?
15. Who invented animal-drawn two and four wheeled carts and ocean going ships?
16. Who were the first people to organize food growing using irrigation and drainage systems?
17. Who invented pottery?
18. Who were the first to use chariots and long range bows?
19. Who invented the concept of zero and the placement of number of tens, hundreds, and thousands?
20. Who invented geometry and trigonometry?
21. Who invented gunpowder?
22. Who invented the gun?
23. Who built the most extensive empire in world history?

Answers will open in a new window; close that window to return to this page.

The previous questions illustrate the point that innovation and inventiveness were not the monopoly of a single culture.