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How Columbus changed the world


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Columbus' arrival in the Americas sparked the globalization of animals, plants and microbes. A recent book takes a closer look at how items from the New World, such as potatoes, guano and rubber, quickly and radically transformed the rest of the planet.

Tobacco, potatoes and turkeys came to Europe from America. In exchange, Europeans brought wheat, measles and horses. But who ever thinks about earthworms? Yet they, too, were brought to America by Europeans, and hardly with fewer consequences than those of other, more famous immigrants.

Extinct in large parts of North America since the Ice Age, earthworms began spreading there once again following Christopher Columbus' voyage. Wherever this species appeared in American forests, it changed the landscape, aerating the soil, breaking down fallen foliage and accelerating erosion and nutrient exchange. Earthworms make it easier for some plants to grow, while robbing others of habitat. They take away living space from other bugs, while providing a new source of food for some birds.

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Columbus and later conquistadors brought small pox and other diseases to America and took syphillis back to Europe.

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Racism was alive and well in NA long before Columbus. ;)

How was racism alive and well before Columbus. All native Americans were the same race :yes:
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How was racism alive and well before Columbus. All native Americans were the same race :yes:

You can have racism toward people of your own race.

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You can have racism toward people of your own race.

Yeah it's widely accepted that the tribes of "Indians" living here were at war with each other long before the white man came. I mean, there has always been tribal warfare the world over so why delude ourselves into believing North America was some sort of utopian paradise before Columbus?

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1000+ years ago, N.A. was just a "less technologically advanced" version of Europe. With micro-states and clans and tribes warring occasionally over resources and land. The scale was just (usually) much smaller, but the principle the same.

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Yup he after he brought the white people here we killed off the Indians and took there land.

But people where here way before Columbus from all over Europe

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