1. Columbian Exchange (1400s – today)

2. The Flat Earth Theory (c. 1492 CE)

3. Atlas Statue (c. 100 CE)

4. European Exploration
Christopher Columbus 1492
Vasco da Gama
1498
Ferdinand Magellan
1519
After 1415, European explorers made voyages across the seas towards the east and west.
By 1519, Spanish ships had circumnavigated the globe. Others set out in search of wealth and adventure.

5. The Exchange Columbus inadvertently accelerated trade around the world
Americas: turkey, pumpkin, corn or maize, chocolate, tomato, tobacco, potato, chili pepper, peanut, pineapple, beans
Afroeurasia: citrus, cotton (varieties) coffee, sugar, tea, wheat, yam, banana, rice, millet, sorghum.
Columbus inadvertently accelerated trade around the world
Columbian Exchange = The exchange of plants, animals, and pathogens between the Old World and New World which occurred after Christopher Columbus’ 1492 voyage.

7. New World  Old World
New crops like potatoes spread and improved nutrition worldwide.
Luxury products like chocolate meant new cultural habits for those with money to spend.

8. Old World  New World
Global cash crops like sugar were grown on large plantations with slave labor.
Caribbean sugar plantation
1600s
Plains woman riding a horse to hunt buffalo in the 1800s
Animals introduced to the Americas, such as the horse, changed indigenous groups’ ways of life.

9. The Great Dying
Great Dying = the collapse of Native American populations from diseases like smallpox and influenza carried by European conquerors.
Native Americans had no immunity to these diseases.
By some accounts, the population of the Americas fell from about 22 million in 1500 to less than 1 million in 1640

10. Examples of Trade

11. Compass
Navigational instrument using the four cardinal points

12. Caravel
Small Portuguese ship used off the West African coast

13. Carrack
Large Portuguese ship used for ocean travel

14. Galleon
Large Spanish ship with multiple decks used for ocean travel

15. Bullion
Bars of gold, silver, and other precious metals in bulk form