Elbows off the table was ... point of all manners is two-fold; they stop you from making a spectacle of yourself, and they allow you to avoid discomforting the people around you.” ...

Click or scroll through our gallery to discover our top 30 most surprising dining customs around the world – including tipping culture, culinary quirks and how to behave at the table.

This story appears in the March/April 2017 issue of National Geographic History magazine. The 16th century was an age of exploration in all senses of the term, a period when colossal advances in ...