Among life’s Tower-of-Babel puzzlements: why do so many words exist in different languages for the same thing? The website Open Culture answers one very narrow version of this question by taking on the reasons why tea is called something like tea in certain places, and something more like cha in many others.

In this case the answer relates to Silk Road trade routes established millennia ago, and more recent European trading dating to the 1500s. Find out more here.