Columbian+exchange

The Columbian Exchange
The Columbian exchange is the interchange of plants, animals, and diseases between the Old World and the Americas following Columbus's arrival in the Caribbean in 1492. []

The ecological and demographic consequences of the Great Global Convergence were huge, especially the “Great Dying” of much of the indigenous population of the Americas. Europeans benefited from this disaster by peopling the Western Hemisphere with new immigrants, both free European settlers and Africans slaves. Europeans also gained access to important new sources of food and fiber. These included, among many others, maize (corn), tobacco, and the potato, which were American crops, and sugar and cotton, which came from Afroeurasia but thrived in American soil. []

When a new variable like the columbian exchange is introduced to an environment, one is almost guaranteed to exhibit some sort of effect or even change inflicted upon said environment. Just as the human body reacts to a foreign invader by either changing to accept it, destroying it, or even being destroyed by it, so too does any other type of living environment, such as that of the Americas. When the very first settlers crossed the Bering Strait into American lands, they had an impact on the flora and fauna of the regions they inhabited; they were, in fact, the primary reason for the extinction of native woolly big game and large flora. Over time, the environment accepted its new inhabitants and the two learned to adapt to one another. After the Bering Strait melted and the continent was surrounded by ocean, the North American environment remained relatively stable and unchanging. It would not be until the Spanish and the Portuguese, with their Moorish ship technology, discovered the land and began colonising it that the environment would experience another wave of new variables and drastic changes; this time, it would not only be the environment affected, but its human inhabitants. This series of changes was to be known as the Columbian Exchange. []