What Are The Benefits Of The Columbian Exchange

The Columbian Exchange was the widespread transfer of plants, animals, and bacterial life between new world and old world, following the voyage to the Americas by Christopher Columbus in 1492 and lasting throughout the years of expansion and discovery. The Columbian Exchange not only brought gains, but also losses and it had dramatic and lasting effects on the world.

The plants involved in the Columbian exchange changed both the economy and the culture of the new and old worlds. In addition to discovering New World plants, many plants were brought from the Old World and became hugely successful in the Americas. Among the plant brought from the Old World the sugarcane was the most popular. There were plenty of new plants discovered in the Americas, but the two most important were the potato and maize. Maize was possibly the most important of all the New World crops involved in the Columbian Exchange.Maize originated in America, but because of its flexible nature, it was able to be transported to Europe and successfully grow in different regions. It offered an alternate choice to wheat, because it grew quickly in places wheat could not.The potato is an amazing example of a

Soon after 1492, sailors unknowingly introduced diseases into the New World, such as smallpox, measles, mumps, whooping cough, influenza, chicken pox, and typhus to the Americas. People who lived in Afro-Eurasia had developed some immunities to these diseases because they had long existed among most Afro-Eurasian populations. However these new diseases were introduced to American populations that had no prior experience of them and had no such immunities to them.On their return home, European sailors brought syphilis to Europe. Although less deadly, the disease was known to have caused great social disruption throughout the Old