Crash Course: The Columbian Exchange
Follow this link to the Crash Course Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQPA5oNpfM4
After viewing and analyzing the video, answer the following questions in complete sentences. 1) Why couldn’t we talk about a “world history” before 1492? We couldn't talk about a “world history” before 1492 because the world was separated into different regions. The video states, “Before 1492, we couldn't really talk about a world history at all. We could only talk about the different histories of separate regions.” Before 1492, there was no “world history” but only separate regions' histories. The video states, “I mean the first European visitors to the Americas had never seen a tomato or a catfish. Native
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The video states, “So, the Columbian Exchange led to the re-population of the New World following the disease devastation of the initial encounter.” After the diseases came, people had to move to repopulate the New World. The video states, “And better nutrition allowed the population of the Old World to grow, which in turn placed population pressure on Eurasia, which led to to more people coming to the Americas.” More nutritious food increased the population in the Old World too much, so the Old World moved some people to the New World. Therefore, nutritious food and diseases made a worldwide transfer of people …show more content…
The video states, “'… It is possible that he and the plants and animals he brings with him have caused the extinction of more species of life forms in the last four hundred years than the usual processes of evolution might kill off in a million…'” Historian Albert Crosby thought that the Columbian Exchange might have killed many species of plants and animals. The video states, “'… The Columbian exchange has left us with not a richer but a more impoverished genetic pool. We, all of the life on the planet, are the less for Columbus, and the impoverishment will increase.'” He thought that the Columbian Exchange did not help us at all and ruined people's “genetic pools.” Therefore, Historian Albert Crosby felt that the Columbian Exchange was a negative