单选题
Listen to the statement and circle the appropriate letter.
单选题
In 1600s, what was used as bonus pay given to London dockworkers?
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】Those innocent spice jars sitting in your cupboard don't do much to reveal their incredible history. But did you know that nutmeg was once worth more by weight than gold? That in the 16th century, London dockworkers were paid their bonuses in cloves? That in 410 AD, when the Visigoths captured Rome, they demanded 3,000 pounds of peppercorns as ransom?
The search for a cheaper way to obtain spices from the East led to the great Age of Exploration and the discovery of the New World. European explorers began their long sea voyages to discover a sea route to the sources of spices. Christopher Columbus went westwards from Europe in 1492 to find a sea route to the lands of spices but found the Americas, in 1497 the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama discovered a sea route around the southern tip of Africa, eventually reaching Kozhikode on the southwest coast of India in 1498. Da Gama returned from his voyage with a cargo of nutmegs, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, and peppercorns.