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What Were The Impact Of The Columbian Exchange

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Impact of the Columbian Exchange
The flow from east to west Disease

The biggest impact of the Columbian Exchange after the introduction of new diseases into the North and South America. When the first Native Americans arrived across the Bering land bridge (North-South America) between 20,000 and 12,000 years ago, they brought few diseases along with them.

Soon after 1492, some of the disease were introduced including smallpox, measles, mumps, whooping cough, influenza, chicken pox, and typhus to the Americas. Adults and children were affected by wave after wave of epidemic, in the larger centres of highland Mexico and Peru, many millions of people died. The Native American population died out completely, between 1492 and 1650, but 90 percent of the native Americans had died due to various diseases.

This loss is considered among the largest disasters in human history. By killing the Americas of much of the human population, the Columbian Exchange disturbed the region’s ecological and economic balance. The decline in population by Columbian Exchange directly caused a major labour shortage throughout the America, which also increased the demand of African slavery on a big scale in the America. From 1650 the slave trade had brought new diseases in America …show more content…

Recently zebra mussels from Black Sea, stowed away in ballast water ships, invaded North American waters, they blocked the water lines of factories, nuclear power plants in the regions of Great Lakes. Just after the arrival of Christopher Columbus’s ships in America in 15th century resulted in worldwide exchange of disease, crops and animals in the 20th century practice of ships using water as ballast helped to unite the formerly diverse world’s harbours. Similarly, air transport allows the spread of insects and diseases that would not easily survive

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