July 27, 2015
Coach Boider
APUSH
Columbian Exchange Essay A giant continent both formed and broken apart millennia ago, Pangaea connected the world together in a way that was and will mostly likely never been seen again. With one giant super continent connecting people of completely different backgrounds and ethnicities, Pangea allowed for the flow of ideas and resources across on open sourced area. However, after the breaking of Pangaea, the continents would not come in contact again for hundreds of years and even longer when separated into different hemispheres. However, the Columbian Exchange, a “period” of time around 1400-1600, was the first time (excluding the possible migration of Norwegian settlers into America in the earlier years) that Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas and been connected in any form of fashion in years. The changes brought about were monstrous, but also familiar in some ways, just as historian Alfred Crosby believed. Some of the things being exchanged back and forth were great things that improved the lives of everyone. However, some of these were detrimental to some areas. Alfred Crosby, the historian mentioned earlier, argues an incredibly valid point. Since Pangaea did exist in an earlier time, it’s important to know that the areas that are now hours away on a 200mph plane were once reachable in a two hour rowboat ride. However, this had not been possible for centuries and millennia. By now, any contact had before Pangea broke apart was long forgotten. The continents have, at this point in time, been isolated for periods beyond recollection of time. But with Christopher Columbus’ discovery of the new world and the curiosity of new explorers, exchange soon began to take place. Resources that hadn’t been shared for ten, twenty, thirty generations were now being exchanged once again. As Crosby said, the “seams of Pangaea” began to be re-knitted, because connections through ideas, religion, and resources were at last