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The Columbian Exchange

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The Columbian Exchange The Columbian Exchange is non-fiction book written by Alfred W. Crosby JR. It illustrates the important events that transpired when Columbus came to America in 1492. I initially chose this this book because I wanted to know more about Europe's effects on America, and how Columbus altered the flora and fauna of America for better and for worse. As I started to read further into the book I immediately was captivated by all the information that was hidden within the text. The book started out by contrasting the Columbian Exchange to the early human migrations and early land bridges. I believe this is especially important because, it gave e a better understanding of how early humans developed a pattern and a need to explore new lands. This quote states, “The connection between the Old and New Worlds, which for more than ten millennia had been no more than a tenuous thing of Viking voyages, drifting fishermen, and shadowy contacts via Polynesia, became on the twelfth day of October 1492 a bond as significant as the Bering land bridge had once been”(Crosby 3). This is a particularly important sentence in the book because it gave me a tie between mankind's migrations throughout the earth. The Bering land bridge was used as a rout for human migrations from Asia to the Americas about 20,000 years ago. Knowing this gave me a sense of what the book was about. When Columbus came to America one of the big effects that occurred was disease. As Crosby explains,

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