CityReads | How the Columbian Exchange changed America?
397
The Columbian Exchange continues.
Jared Diamond. 2005. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, 2nd edition. New York: Norton.
Cristina Trebbi. 2009. America Before Columbus, National Geographic.
Alfred W. Crosby, Jr. 2003. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. 30th Anniversary Edition. Praeger.
Source:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1552976/
https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/history/america-before-columbus-2009-transcript/
In his book "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies," Jared Diamond argues that after human beings migrating out of Africa and to the different continents of the world, human beings living on different continents diverged 13,000 years ago: the invention or non-invention of agriculture on each continent and the differences in agricultural development eventually led to the different fates of human societies on each continent, with societies that used metal tools and invented writing conquering or eliminating other societies without metal tools.
Diamond's analysis of the conditions for the invention and development of agriculture is fascinating: not all continents had the conditions for the development of agriculture, and the distribution of potential wild plant and animal species for domestication that were essential to the rise of agriculture was extremely uneven across continents, leading to wide differences in the crops and animals domesticated by people on different continents. In terms of biological species, Eurasia is the most endowed, Africa the second, America the next, and Australia the bottom.
There are places where agriculture has not been able to be invented, but because of the proximity to places where it has been invented, agricultural technology has gradually spread and agriculture has developed; factors affecting the rate of crops and livestock spread fastest in Eurasia — east-west major axis and relatively modest ecological and geographic barriers, slower in Africa, and in America is particularly slow, due to the north-south major axis and geographic and ecological barriers. There are places where agriculture was not invented and blocked by mountains or oceans, isolating them from agricultural centers, so far the development of agriculture is limited and gathering and hunting remains the ways of living.
The ease of agriculture spread between continents varies, with the easiest being from Eurasia to sub-Saharan Africa, where most of Africa's livestock is obtained. However, the spread between the eastern and western hemispheres has not contributed to the complex societies of the Americas.
In 1491, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were almost impassable barriers. America might as well have been on another planet from Europe and Asia. But Columbus's arrival in the Caribbean the following year changed everything. His journey prompted the exchange of not only information but also food, animals, insects, plants and viruses between the continents. After Columbus, ecosystems that had been separate for eons suddenly met and mixed in a process Crosby called, "the Columbian Exchange." To ecologists, the Columbian Exchange is arguably the most important event since the death of the dinosaurs.
How did the ecological exchange between Europe and America occur? How did the Columbian Exchange completely change America? Crosby discussed these questions in his 1972 book The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Documentary, America Before Columbus, vividly portraits the changes in America before and after 1492.
The Contrasts
Before 1492, America and Europe have developed different civilizations, farmed and domesticated different plants and animals.
The domesticated crops in America include maize, potatoes, sweet potatoes, beans, manioc, pumpkins, cacao, and peppers. Of these, maize and potatoes are the most important staples.
The confluence of the Missouri, Illinois, and Mississippi rivers is what is today the state of Illinois. It's home to the largest civilizations in the continent. The Mississippians flourished in the year 1150. They are farmers. Their stable crop is fuel for ever-growing population.
Corn is the result of the domestication of the wild teosinte grass. Early Americans started with this spindly stalk, and over centuries they developed into today's giant cob. Corn is one of the keys to understanding American civilization. Wherever it flourishes, so do great cultures.
The Inca Empire is located on the west coast of South America. Incas built palaces, storehouses and castles in the towering mountains. They relied on manpower to transport stones. And the energy for that was provided by another amazing food stuff — potato. Potatoes were cultivated here 8000 years ago in the region around Lake Titicaca in today's Peru and Bolivia at an altitude of 4000 meters. By the year 1491, the Inca grew hundreds of varieties domesticated from wild ancestors.
They preserved the tubers by mashing them into a substance called "chuño". After harvest, potatoes are spread on straw and left out to freeze at night. During the day, they are exposed to the sun. Trampling them eliminates water and allows them to dry. Chuño can be stored for 10 years. It's an excellent insurance against possible crop failures.
The Indian as farmer was as impressive as any in the world, but he was very unimpressive as a domesticator of animals. In 1492 he had only a few animal servants: the dog, two kinds of South American camel (the llama and alpaca), the guinea pig, and several kinds of fowl (the turkey, the Muscovy duck, and, possibly, a type of chicken). He had no animal that he rode. Most of his meat and leather came from wild game. He had no beast of burden to be compared to the horse, ass, or ox. Except in the areas where the llama lived, and except for the minor assistance of the travois-pulling dog, the Indian wanting to move a load moved it himself, no matter how heavy the load or how far it had to be moved.
For Inca farmers, their chief source of transport and meat is the llama. This is the biggest mammal in the Americas. The llamas also offer dung for the soil and hides for clothes. The locals use bronze knives to sheer them. But they can't milk, pull a plow or be rode.
The second principal domesticated animal is turkey. For the Aztecz — in today's Mexico and Guatemala — the turkey is so important that they dedicated two religious festivals to it.
Native Americas have so few domesticated animals because the biggest native mammals in the Americas — the giant bison and the mastodons have long since died out. What was left in the North Americas were animals such as bison, deer and antelope that are not suited to domestication.
Diamond proposed the Anna Karenina principle of animal domestication: domesticated animals are domesticable, and undomesticated animals have their own undomesticable characteristics. Reasons for domestication failure include the animal's daily diet, growth rate, mating habits, disposition, tendency to panic, and several distinct features of social organization.
For the locals can't domesticate these animals, so they find a way of making their prey come to them. In 1491, they domesticated the land to attract wild animals. Natives burnt the forests and prairie in order to attract game. With this technique, nomadic Central Plains Indians even lured the biggest mammal in the Americas — bison. Bison are a major source of food and clothing, and their bones are used to make tools.
For native Americas have neither guns nor horses, they have to hunt on foot. They dress in hides, and hunt with bow and arrow or the spear, all made of wood and leather, bone and stone.
Compared to America, Europe has a much larger variety and number of plants and animals available for domestication. Of the 148 species of large wild mammalian terrestrial herbivores or omnivores that serve as domestication candidates worldwide, only 14 have been domesticated. The ancestors of these 14 mammal species are unevenly distributed across the planet. South America has only 1 species, llama and alpaca; North America, Australia, and sub-Saharan Africa have none; and Eurasia happens to have far more domesticated large wild mammalian herbivores than any other continent, with ancestors of 13 species, including the 5 most important domestic animals: cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and horses.
Europe is a busy and crowded continent. In 1491, Europe was filled with fields owned by the nobles or the church, tilled by peasants. Their main diet was bread and porridge, both made from grains. They planted rye or wheat in winter, oats or barley in the spring. And every third year the field lied fallow to regenerate.
European agriculture originated in a combination of farming and raising livestock. That gave European agriculture a great advantage. First, the fertility of the soil was renewed through cow dung. Second, the livestock needed pastures that protected ecological reserves. European horses are beasts of burden, they can pull ploughs. Cattle provide meat fur and hides. The domestic pig is a chief source of meat and leather. The sheep need no stable and can find its own food. A mule can pull a car. Cows give them milk, butter and cheese.
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 became on the twelfth day of October 1492 a bond as significant as the Bering land bridge had once been.
The two worlds, which God had cast asunder, were reunited, and the two worlds, which were so very different, began on that day to become alike. That trend toward biological homogeneity is one of the most important aspects of the history of life on this planet since the retreat of the continental glaciers.
Not only did Europeans take resources away from the Americas, but they also change the continent by what they brought with them. By bringing domesticated livestock and metal tools to the Americas, European wheat, barley, oats, rye, and weeds grew in this foreign soil. They replaced the felled American trees by planting European trees such as peach, pear, plum, etc. Soon, European fruits and vegetables spread throughout the New World. The arrival of Old World plants in the Americas doubled and even tripled the number of cultivatable food plants in the New World. And the native animals of the Americas began to be replaced. Horses, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, and huge herds of cattle took over North and South America, changing the American landscape forever.
The first contingent of horses, dogs, pigs, cattle, chickens, sheep, and goats arrived with Columbus on the second voyage in 1493. The animals, preyed upon by few or no American predators, troubled by few or no American diseases, and left to feed freely upon the rich grasses and roots and wild fruits, reproduced rapidly. Their numbers burgeoned so rapidly, in fact, that doubtlessly they had much to do with the extinction of certain plants, animals, and even the Indians themselves, whose gardens they encroached upon.
The reaction of all types of European livestock to the Caribbean environment was similar in nearly every case: pigs, cattle, horses, goats, dogs, cats, chickens, asses grew faster, brawnier, reproduced at unheard of rates, and often went back to nature.
It is impossible to doubt that the transfer of Old World foods and livestock to the Americas had an immense impact on the Indian. the Indian was often slow to accept the new food plants, but the new domesticated animals were another matter. He could see little advantage in wheat over maize, but the Old World pig, horse, cow, chicken, dog, and goat were superior in nearly every way to anything the Americas had to offer.
Of the imported animals, the pigs adapted the quickest to the Caribbean environment. In order to survive in the Americas, the conquerors brought another animal — pigs, which was an excellent source of food. But because native Americas didn't fence their fields, and their stable crop of corn is irresistible. European swine were eating seeds and young shoots. Only a few generations after running wild, the animals grew tusks, and got bigger and aggressive. They gradually became a daily nightmare for the Native Americans.
Driven by greed, people invaded the Americas on horses, which did not exist on this continent. Horses were first brought to the Caribbean islands. These animals reproduced and spread in the new world as fast as the wind. A new breed, the mustang, evolved and quickly spread throughout the Americas, transforming the lives of the nomadic America and becoming their image.
The effect of the sheep and other European livestock on the native herds was not so delightful. The European animals doubtlessly transmitted to the native stock a devastating selection of animal diseases. The llama and alpaca populations diminished as spectacularly as the Indian population after the conquest; and the reasons were largely the same: disease and brutal exploitation.
Microbes move faster than the conquistadors who brought them. When the Old and New Worlds touch, the American Indian meets his worst enemy — smallpox. Smallpox was accidentally introduced to the Americas in the 16th century and spread throughout the continent through the trade of the natives. A Spanish missionary reports, "An epidemic broke out... Large bumps spread on people, some were entirely covered... they lay in their dwellings and sleeping places, no longer move or stir... The pustules caused great desolation".
For the New World as a whole, the Indian population decline in the century or two following Columbus's arrival is estimated to have been as large as 95 percent.
Migration of man and his maladies is the chief cause of epidemics. And when migration takes place, those creatures who have been ongest in isolation suffer most, for their genetic material has been least tempered by the variety of world diseases. Among the major divisions of the species homo sapiens, with the possible exception of the Australian aborigine, the American Indian probably had the dangerous privilege of longest isolation from the rest of mankind. Medical historians guess that few of the first rank killers among the diseases are native to the Americas.
These killers came to the New World with the explorers and the conquistadors. The fatal diseases of the Old World killed more effectively in the New, and the comparatively benign diseases of the Old World turned killer in the New.
The main killers were Old World germs to which Indians had never been exposed, and against which they therefore had neither immune nor genetic resistance. Smallpox, measles, influenza, and typhus competed for top rank among the killers. As if these had not been enough, diphtheria, malaria, mumps, pertussis, plague, tuberculosis, and yellow fever came up close behind.
After the Spanish conquest an Indian of Yucatan wrote of his people in the happier days before the advent of the European:
The Europe elite were also eager to acquire luxury products such as sugar and tobacco from the New World. For this sole purpose, some 10 million Africans were transported to America, enslaved to cultivate luxury items for Americans and Europeans.
The Columbian exchange has included man, and he has changed the Old and New Worlds sometimes inadvertently, sometimes intentionally, often brutally. It is possible that he and the plants and animals he brings with him have caused the extinction of more species of life forms in the last four hundred years than the usual processes of evolution might kill off in a million.
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