“Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492” ring a bell? Columbus explored land on the different side of the Atlantic everyone was located on which sparked many voyages to the other side. The biological encounter between the two sides of the Atlantic was known as the Columbian Exchange. The exchange involved food animals and most importantly disease spreading all over from Europe, America, and Spain.
When disease crossed the Atlantic many were clueless of what it exactly was. The Spanish explorers who were exploring and looking for new land traveled diseases with them that could wipe out and entire species. The Spanish on the island of Hispaniola, present day Haiti, 95% of the natives died within 25 years. When the Spanish conquistadores