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The Great Biological exchange

The Great Biological exchange. Mr. Beward HIS 108. Beginnings. European contacts with the New World began a diffusion of cultures unlike any known in the world Beyond culture, it was a diffusion of distinctive biological systems

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The Great Biological exchange

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  1. The Great Biological exchange Mr. Beward HIS 108

  2. Beginnings • European contacts with the New World began a diffusion of cultures unlike any known in the world • Beyond culture, it was a diffusion of distinctive biological systems • Both Europeans and Natives saws plants and animals radically different from anything they has seen

  3. What Europeans Saw • Iguana • Flying squirrels • Fish with whiskers like cats • Rattlesnakes • Bison • Anacondas • Vampire bats • Turkeys • Guinea Pigs • Llamas

  4. What Natives Saw • Horses • Cattle • Pigs—overran the Caribbean with 50 years of introduction • Sheep • Goats

  5. Exchange of Plant Life • Age of Discovery introduces three new foods to the Old World—maize, potatoes (sweet and white), and beans (snap, kidney, lima, etc.) • Other New World foods included peanuts, squash, peppers, tomatoes, pumpkins, chocolates, pineapples, sassafras and chicle among others • Europeans introduced rice, wheat, barley, oats, wine grapes, melons, coffee, olives, “Kentucky” bluegrass, daisies and dandelions

  6. Interesting Facts • Food plants were more complimentary than competitive • Maize could grow in any climate • End of the 1500s maize and sweet potatoes were staple crops in China • Green revolution brought on a worldwide population explosion • Plants domesticated by North Americans now make up one-third of the world’s food plants

  7. Changes by Europeans • Europeans adopted many Native American devices: canoes, snowshoes, mocassins, hammocks ponchos, dogsleds • Rubber ball and the game of lacrosse had Indian origins • New words entered the English vocabulary: wigwam, teepee, hickory, warpath, pecan, medicine man, paleface

  8. New World Contributions • Tobacco • Coca (cocaine and novocaine) • Curare (muscle relaxant) • Cinchona bark (quinine) • Enema tube

  9. Other Issues • Europeans exposed New World inhabitants to diseases that they could not handle: • Measles • Smallpox • Typhus • In central Mexico alone, diseases killed over 8 million people (about 1/3rd of the population) within a decade of Spanish arrival • In Texas, one Spaniard noted that “half of the natives died from a disease of the bowels and blamed us.”

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