What Animals Were Brought From The New World To The Old World

When Christopher Columbus and his crew arrived in the New Earth, two biologically distinct worlds were brought into contact. The brute, plant, and bacterial life of these 2 worlds began to mix in a procedure called the Columbian Exchange. The results of this substitution recast the biology of both regions and altered the history of the world.

Geologists believe that between 280 million and 225 million years agone, the earth's previously dissever land areas became welded into a landmass chosen Pangaea. About 120 million years ago, they believe, this landmass began to separate. Every bit this happened, the Atlantic Ocean formed, dividing the Americas from Africa and Eurasia. Over the course of the adjacent several million years in both the Americas and in Afro-Eurasia, biological evolution followed individual paths, creating two primarily divide biological worlds. Nevertheless, when Christopher Columbus and his coiffure made country in the Bahamas in Oct 1492, these two long-separated worlds were reunited. Columbus' voyage, along with the many voyages that followed, disrupted much of the biological segregation brought virtually by continental drift.

After Columbus' arrival in the Americas, the fauna, plant, and bacterial life of these two worlds began to mix. This procedure, commencement studied comprehensively by American historian Alfred Crosby, was called the Columbian Exchange. By reuniting formerly biologically singled-out land masses, the Columbian Exchange had dramatic and lasting effects on the world. New diseases were introduced to American populations that had no prior experience of them. The results were devastating. These populations also were introduced to new weeds and pests, livestock, and pets. New food and fiber crops were introduced to Eurasia and Africa, improving diets and fomenting trade there. In improver, the Columbian Substitution vastly expanded the scope of production of some popular drugs, bringing the pleasures — and consequences — of coffee, sugar, and tobacco employ to many millions of people. The results of this exchange recast the biology of both regions and altered the history of the world.

The menses from e to west: Disease

By far the most dramatic and devastating impact of the Columbian Commutation followed the introduction of new diseases into the Americas. When the first inhabitants of the Americas arrived across the Bering state bridge between 20,000 and 12,000 years ago, they brought few diseases with them. Why? For one reason, they had no domesticated animals, the original source of human being diseases such equally smallpox and measles. In addition, every bit they passed from Siberia to Northward America, the kickoff Americans had spent many years in extreme common cold, which eliminated many of the illness-causing agents that might have traveled with them. As a result, the start Americans and their descendants, maybe xl million to threescore one thousand thousand stiff by 1492, enjoyed freedom from most of the infectious diseases that plagued populations in Afro-Eurasia for millennia. Meanwhile, in Asia and Africa, the domestication of herd animals brought new diseases spread by cattle, sheep, pigs, and fowl.

Soon after 1492, sailors inadvertently introduced these diseases — including smallpox, measles, mumps, whooping cough, influenza, craven pox, and typhus — to the Americas. People who lived in Afro-Eurasia had developed some immunities to these diseases because they had long existed among most Afro-Eurasian populations. However, the Native Americans had no such immunities. Adults and children alike were stricken by wave after wave of epidemic, which produced catastrophic mortality throughout the Americas. In the larger centers of highland Mexico and Peru, many millions of people died. On some Caribbean islands, the Native American population died out completely. In all, betwixt 1492 and 1650, maybe 90 percentage of the first Americans had died.

This loss is considered among the largest demographic disasters in human history. By stripping the Americas of much of the homo population, the Columbian Exchange rocked the region's ecological and economic balance. Ecosystems were in tumult equally forests regrew and previously hunted animals increased in number. Economically, the population decrease brought by the Columbian Exchange indirectly caused a drastic labor shortage throughout the Americas, which somewhen contributed to the institution of African slavery on a vast scale in the Americas. By 1650, the slave trade had brought new diseases, such as malaria and yellow fever, which farther plagued Native Americans.

The period from east to west: Crops and animals

Eurasians sent much more than disease westward. The introduction of new crops and domesticated animals to the Americas did near as much to upset the region's biological, economic, and social residuum as the introduction of disease had. Columbus had wanted to establish new fields of plenty in the Americas. On his subsequently voyages he brought many crops he hoped might flourish there. He and his followers brought the familiar food grains of Europe: wheat, barley, and rye. They also brought Mediterranean plantation crops such every bit sugar, bananas, and citrus fruits, which all had originated in S or Southeast Asia. At starting time, many of these crops fared poorly; but somewhen they all flourished. After 1640, saccharide became the mainstay of the Caribbean and Brazilian economies, becoming the foundation for some of the largest slave societies ever known. The production of rice and cotton fiber, both imported in the Columbian Exchange, together with tobacco, formed the basis of slave society in the Usa. Wheat, which thrived in the temperate latitudes of North and South America and in the highlands of United mexican states, eventually became a fundamental nutrient crop for tens of millions of people in the Americas. Indeed, by the late 20th century, wheat exports from Canada, the The states, and Argentine republic were feeding millions of people outside the Americas. It is true that the spread of these crops drastically changed the economy of the Americas. However, these new crops supported the European settler societies and their African slave systems. The Native Americans preferred their own foods.

When it came to animals, nevertheless, the Native Americans borrowed eagerly from the Eurasian stables. The Columbian Exchange brought horses, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and a collection of other useful species to the Americas. Before Columbus, Native American societies in the high Andes had domesticated llamas and alpacas, only no other animals weighing more than 45 kg (100 lbs). And for skilful reason: none of the other 23 big mammal species present in the Americas before the arrival of Columbus were suitable for domestication. In dissimilarity, Eurasia had 72 large animal species, of which 13 were suitable for domestication. So, while Native Americans had plenty of practiced nutrient crops available before 1492, they had few domesticated animals. The chief ones, bated from llamas and alpacas, were dogs, turkeys, and guinea pigs.

Of all the animals introduced by the Europeans, the horse held particular allure. Native Americans showtime encountered information technology as a fearsome state of war beast ridden past Spanish conquistadors. Even so, they shortly learned to ride and raise horses themselves. In the N American great plains, the inflow of the equus caballus revolutionized Native American life, permitting tribes to hunt the buffalo far more effectively. Several Native American groups left farming to become buffalo-hunting nomads and, incidentally, the most formidable enemies of European expansion in the Americas.

Cattle, sheep, pigs, and goats also proved popular in the Americas. Within 100 years after Columbus, huge herds of wild cattle roamed many of the natural grasslands of the Americas. Wild cattle, and, to a lesser degree, sheep and goats, menaced the food crops of Native Americans, notably in United mexican states. Eventually ranching economies emerged, based variously on cattle, goats, or sheep. The largest ranches emerged in the grasslands of Venezuela and Argentina, and on the wide body of water of grass that stretched from northern United mexican states to the Canadian prairies. Native Americans used the livestock for meat, tallow, hides, transportation, and hauling. Altogether, the suite of domesticated animals from Eurasia brought a biological, economic, and social revolution to the Americas.

The flow from due west to eastward: Disease

In terms of diseases, the Columbian Exchange was a wildly diff affair, and the Americas got the worst of it. The flow of disease from the Americas eastward into Eurasia and Africa was either trivial or consisted of a unmarried important infection. Much less is known about pre-Columbian diseases in the Americas than what is known about those in Eurasia. Based on their report of skeletal remains, anthropologists believe that Native Americans certainly suffered from arthritis. They too had some other disease, probably a form of tuberculosis that may or may not have been similar to the pulmonary tuberculosis common in the modern world. Native Americans also apparently suffered from a group of illnesses that included 2 forms of syphilis. One controversial theory asserts that the venereal syphilis epidemic that swept much of Europe start in 1494 came from the Americas; withal, the available evidence remains inconclusive.

The flow from westward to east: Crops and cuisine

America's vast contribution to Afro-Eurasia in terms of new plant species and cuisine, however, transformed life in places every bit far apart every bit Republic of ireland, South Africa, and China. Before Columbus, the Americas had plenty of domesticated plants. By the time Columbus had arrived, dozens of plants were in regular employ, the about of import of which were maize (corn), potatoes, cassava, and various beans and squashes. Lesser crops included sweet potato, papaya, pineapple, love apple, avocado, guava, peanuts, chili peppers, and cacao, the raw form of cocoa. Within 20 years of Columbus' last voyage, maize had established itself in North Africa and mayhap in Spain. It spread to Egypt, where it became a staple in the Nile Delta, and from in that location to the Ottoman Empire, especially the Balkans. Past 1800, maize was the major grain in large parts of what is at present Romania and Serbia, and was also important in Hungary, Ukraine, Italy, and southern France. Information technology was ofttimes used as animal feed, but people ate it too, usually in a porridge or bread. Maize appeared in China in the 16th century and somewhen supplied about one-10th of the grain supply there. In the 19th century it became an important crop in Bharat. Maize probably played its greatest role, however, in southern Africa. There maize arrived in the 16th century in the context of the slave trade. Southern African environmental conditions, across what is now Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and eastern South Africa, suited maize amply. Over the centuries, maize became the master peasant food in much of southern Africa. In belatedly 20th-century South Africa, for example, maize grew in 2-thirds to three-quarters of the region'southward cropland.

Despite maize's success, the humble tater probably had a stronger impact in improving the food supply and in promoting population growth in Eurasia. The white potato had fiddling affect in Africa, where weather did not adapt it. But in northern Europe the white potato thrived. It had the most significant result on Ireland, where it promoted a rapid population increase until a irish potato blight ravaged the ingather in 1845, bringing widespread famine to the area. After 1750, Scandinavia, the Depression Countries, Federal republic of germany, Poland, and Russian federation also gradually accepted the potato, which helped bulldoze a general population explosion in Europe. This population explosion may accept laid the foundation for world-shaking developments such as the Industrial Revolution and modern European imperialism. The spud also fed mountain populations effectually the world, notably in Communist china, where information technology encouraged settlement of mountainous regions.

While maize and potatoes had the greatest globe historical importance of the American crops, lesser crops made their marks too. In Due west Africa, peanuts and cassava provided new foodstuffs. Cassava, a tropical shrub native to Brazil, has starchy roots that will grow in nearly any soil. In the leached soils of West and Central Africa, cassava became an indispensable crop. Today some 200 one thousand thousand Africans rely on it as their primary source of nutrition. Cacao and rubber, two other Due south American crops, became important export items in W Africa in the 20th century. The sweet spud, which was introduced into China in the 1560s, became China's tertiary most important crop afterward rice and wheat. Information technology proved a useful supplement to diets throughout the monsoon lands of Asia. Indeed, almost everywhere in the world, 1 or another American nutrient crops caught on, complementing existing crops or, more rarely, replacing them. By the late 20th century, about one-3rd of the world'southward nutrient supply came from plants first cultivate in the Americas. The modern rise of population surely would accept been slower without them.

In contrast, the animals of the Americas have had very little bear on on the rest of the earth, unless one considers its earliest migrants. The camel and the horse actually originated in North America and migrated westward across the Bering land bridge to Asia, where they evolved into the forms familiar today. By the fourth dimension of the Columbian Commutation, these animals were long extinct in the Americas, and the majority of America's domesticated animals would accept little more than a tiny impact on Afro-Eurasia. One domesticated creature that did have an effect was the turkey. Wild animals of the Americas accept washed only a lilliputian amend. Probably after the 19th century, Northward American muskrats and squirrels successfully colonized large areas of Europe. Deliberate introductions of American animals, such as raccoons fancied for their fur and imported to Germany in the 1920s, occasionally led to escapes and the institution of feral animal communities. However, no species introduced from the Americas revolutionized human affairs or fauna ecology anywhere in Afro-Eurasia. In terms of animal populations every bit with illness, the Americas contributed trivial that could flourish in the conditions of Europe, Africa, or Asia.

The Columbian Exchange in the modernistic world

Equally the late dates of the introduction of muskrats and raccoons to Europe advise, the Columbian Exchange continues into the present. Indeed, it will surely continue into the future as modern transportation continues the blueprint begun past Columbus. Recently, for example, zebra mussels from the Black Sea, stowed away in the ballast water of ships, invaded North American waters. There they blocked the water intakes of factories, nuclear power plants, and municipal filtration plants throughout the Dandy Lakes region. Just as the arrival of Christopher Columbus's ships in America in the 15th century resulted in the worldwide exchange of disease, crops, and animals, the 20th-century practise of ships using water as ballast helped unite the formerly diverse flora and animate being of the world's harbors and estuaries. Similarly, air transport allows the spread of insects and diseases that would not easily survive longer, slower trips. Modernistic ship carries on in the tradition of Columbus by promoting a homogenization of the globe'southward plants and animals. To date, however, the globe historical importance of mod exchanges pales beside that which took place in the original Columbian Exchange.

Source: https://www.ncpedia.org/anchor/columbian-exchange

Posted by: smithloond1969.blogspot.com

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