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The Columbian Exchange

The Columbian Exchange. Before 1492. Two very different ecosystems. Two sets of culturally diverse peoples. Two sets of flora and fauna. Two different disease pools. “ ...all the trees were as different from ours as day from night, and so the fruits, the herbage, the rocks, and all things. ”

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The Columbian Exchange

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  1. The Columbian Exchange

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

  3. “...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

  4. Two biological ecosystems interchanged to create a new world ecology.

  5. 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 Exchange of Plants and Animals

  6. The Columbian Exchange

  7. 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.

  8. An Exchange of Pathogens The smallpox virus

  9. A Demographic Collapse In Mexico alone, the native population fell from roughly 30 million in 1519 to only 3 million in 1568. Aztecs afflicted with Smallpox Modern-day victims of smallpox

  10. Livestock

  11. A Plague of Sheep

  12. Chickens and Eggs

  13. Vaquero Gaucho The Cowboys of the Americas Llanero Cowboy

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

  15. An Increase in Food Supply Helped Populations to Rise

  16. Some Tropical Plants from the Old World Some Tropical Plants from the New World

  17. Maize/Corn

  18. Sugar, Tobacco and Slavery

  19. Africans lament the loss of their fellow countrymen.

  20. MAP 26.2 The Atlantic slave trade, 1500-1800.

  21. The Potato The potato grows well in the temperate climate of northern Europe and produces threetimes as much food per unit of land as wheat or any other grain. The Poor Person’s Food

  22. Between 1781 and 1845, the Irish population doubled from four to eight million. Probably half of this population depended on the potato for survival.

  23. The Great Irish FamineOver one million died of starvation and disease, and almost two million emigrated to the United States and Britain.

  24. 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.

  25. Is the world growing more the same?

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