The Columbian Exchange

Before 1492 Two very different ecosystems Two different disease pools Two sets of flora and fauna Two sets of culturally diverse peoples

“...all the trees were as different from ours as day from night, and so the fruits, the herbage, the rocks, and all things.” -- Christopher Columbus

Two biological ecosystems interchanged to create a new world ecology.

The Exchange of Plants and Animals Originally from the Western Hemisphere Potato Maize (corn) Manioc (cassava, tapioca) Sweet potato Tomato Cacao (chocolate) Squash Chili peppers Pumpkin Papaya Guava Tobacco Avocado Pineapple Beans (most varieties, including phaseolus vulgaris) Peanuts Certain cottons Rubber Turkeys Originally from the Eastern Hemisphere Sugar Olive oil Various grains (Wheat, rice, rye, barley, oats) Grapes Coffee Horses Cattle Pigs Goats Sheep Chickens Various fruit trees (pear, apple, peach, orange, lemon, pomegranate, fig, banana) Chick peas Melons Radishes A wide variety of weeds and grasses Cauliflower Cabbage

The Columbian Exchange

Columbian Exchange According to historian Alfred Crosby, the exchange of plants, animals and pathogens between the two hemispheres was biologically “the most spectacular thing that has ever happened to humans," and he coined the phenomenon the Columbian Exchange.

An Exchange of Pathogens The smallpox virus

A Demographic Collapse In Mexico alone, the native population fell from roughly 30 million in 1519 to only 3 million in Aztecs afflicted with Smallpox Modern-day victims of smallpox

The greatest impact of the Columbian Exchange was the exchange of different food crops. Sweet Potatos Cassava Potatos

An Increase in Food Supply Helped Populations to Rise

The effects of the columbian exchange are still with us today. Bit by bit, we are becoming more homogenized, and the world is becoming smaller.

Is the world growing more the same?