Medieval food: A man ladles porridge from a large pot over a fire Poor people's food was boring! In the Middle Ages in Europe, what people ate depended a lot on how rich they were. Poor people (which was almost everybody) ate mainly barley, or in some places oats. What's barley like? All about the history of [...]
Medieval economy: A carpenter works in his shop. Collapse of trade After the fall of Rome, people in Europe used money less than they had before. Instead they mostly lived on what they could produce themselves. Rich people lived on what they could make other people give them because they were landlords or landladies. Money and silk [...]
These punch-marked silver coins might be from the time of Chandragupta I Alexander went back to Babylon in 324 BC. Then a man named Chandragupta overthrew the old Vedic kingdom of Nanda and formed a big new empire. He ruled all of northern India and into Afghanistan. Greek historians said that Chandragupta got the idea from Alexander. But it [...]
Cinnamon history: Cinnamon sticks The best kind of cinnamon comes originally from an island south-east of India called Sri Lanka. It's the inner bark of a small tree that grows there. There's a more common kind, that most people think isn't quite as good, that grows wild all over China and other parts of East Asia (it's [...]
An Indian man selling mangoes When people first came to India, about 60,000 BC, they found some plants that they already knew about, like figs and onions. There were also a lot of new plants, and people soon began to experiment with these new foods. One new food was sugar cane, which you chewed to get the soft [...]
Ancient India trade: Indian herbal medicines Most people in ancient India, as in other parts of Asia and Europe at this time, were farmers. In India, farmers mainly grew wheat and rice, and cotton for cloth. They grew opium for medicine too. On the coast, people produced salt in big evaporation flats, and in Sri Lanka they dove for pearls. Indian traders shipped teak wood to [...]
Japanese painting of Portuguese bringing Indian cargo to Japan (1500s AD) Under the Mughal Empire, India continued to make a lot of money by trading things back and forth between East Africa and West Asia to their west, and South-East Asia and China to their east. Mostly Indian traders sold medicine and pepper and cinnamon and other spices to West Asia. They sold glass beads and cotton cloth to [...]
Sweet potato pie You can make a sweet potato pie at home, to find out more about sweet potatoes. Start by peeling 3 medium-sized red garnet sweet potatoes (they might call them yams at the store). Use a very sharp knife to cut up the sweet potatoes into smaller chunks (quarters or eighths). [...]
Baked apples Apples are delicious, and you can eat them lots of different ways. The easiest way is just to eat a raw apple in your hand (or, if you have braces, slice it up into sections!). But it's also very easy to make baked apples in the microwave. Just cut an apple [...]
Mongol herdsman Hunting wild animals The first people moved into Central Asia about 50,000 BC. They were probably following the big animals that they hunted for food and leather skins - the wild aurochs and the wild horse. The great grasslands of Central Asia were a good place for aurochs and horses, because [...]
