Social And Cultural Changes During The Columbian Exchange

The Columbian Exchange is the period of time when there were cultural and biological changes from the Old World to the New World. This would go on to completely change the Europeans and Native Americans way of life. It all started when Columbus set sail to the west for new trade routes to India in 1492 and lasted throughout the years of exploration. The exchange impacted both sides of the Atlantic socially and culturally. This exchange included technology, diseases, animals, and plants. Technology was something that impacted the Native Americans more than the Europeans because the Europeans were already more technologically advanced. However, Europeans still benefitted from Native American ideas and cultures. Some of the more notable advances
The diseases that transferred from the Old World in to the New World were very horrible. With Europeans came all of the common diseases they had already dealt with in the past such as smallpox, measles, malaria, yellow fever, influenza, and chicken pox. These diseases transferred to the Natives almost immediately and their population was devastated by them. This was because they had no prior exposure, their immune systems were not ready because before the Europeans they lived in an isolated environment, and the diseases that they did bring spread very easily. The Natives also had their common diseases such as polio, hepatitis, encephalitis, and syphilis. The worst being the syphilis, this disease was spread through sexual contact and managed to make its way back to Europe and became an epidemic
In the Americas there were an abundance of new plants like beans, squash, peanuts, tomatoes, avocados, and pineapple and these are just a few common examples. The plants that made the biggest impact out of any of the crops were maize. Maize was able to be stored for practically forever before it went bad. It was such a robust plant that it was successfully transported back to Europe where it had quite the affect on the economy. Another very successful crop was potatoes which still are today. They become a part of everyone’s diet especially once it made it back to Europe because of how cheap they were. The Columbian Exchange has affected every single American out there and is one of the most important things that have happened throughout American history. I could not imagine a world where this exchange did not take place. It was crucial to our society impacting not only our social and cultural ways of life but also the technologies and education we have