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Positive And Negative Impacts Of The Columbian Exchange

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When you are sitting in a fancy restaurant in Texas, tasting a delicious steak with a nice cup of coffee, do you know that before 1492, American people don’t even know what is beef and coffee. Nowadays, people’s diet is abundant. People in every part of the world can taste the food originated in other side of the world. This is due to one of the most significant ecological events in human history called the Columbian Exchange. According to Nunn Nathan and Qian Nancy, “the Columbian Exchange refers to the exchange of diseases, ideas, food crops, and populations between the New World and the Old World following the voyage to the Americas by Christopher Columbus in 1492” (Nathan and Nancy, 2010). It was so spectacular that has left both positive and negative impacts in each side of the world. Between 280 million and 225 million years ago, the earth’s previously separated land areas became welded into a landmass called Pangaea. About 120 million years ago, due to the continental drift, this landmass began to separate. It split the old world and the new world apart, which dividing North and South America from Eurasia and Africa. The separation lasted for million years that it fostered divergent evolution. The new world and the old world’s biological evolution followed individual paths, becoming two separate biological worlds. However, after 1492, human voyagers reversed this tendency. In October 1492, Christopher Columbus and his crew landed in Bahamas. After Columbus arrived in

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