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Columbian Exchange: Difference between revisions
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== Background == | == Background == | ||
Having been populated by hunter-gatherers starting 14-20,000 years before Christ and almost no contact, or none with any degree of continuity, with the rest of the world until Columbus' first visit to the Caribbean in 1492, the peoples of the Americans populated the Americas and developed their societies independently of the rest of the world. | |||
Columbus | In other words, the societies of the Americas evolved independently of the rest of the world and with distinct environmental conditions. While developing agriculture across the Americas, and urbanized population centers with complex governments in some areas, by the time of Columbus' arrival, the peoples of the Americas had not developed technologies that had long before spread across Eurasia and Africa, especially writing and metallurgy. | ||
Additionally, with the geographic axis of the Americas as largely north-south, and with the geographic barriers separating north and south America (and within each), these societies did not as extensively interact with one another as societies had across Eurasia and north Africa. Trade was extensive, but in the absence of geographic facilitators of exchange and the horse, which had gone extinct in the Americas from ice sheet climate change and human hunting. | |||
== Columbus == | |||
[[File:GGS-ultimate-proximate-factors p87 w-Americas-added 2.jpg|alt=|thumb|Ultimate & proximate factors analysis for Eurasia and Americas]] | [[File:GGS-ultimate-proximate-factors p87 w-Americas-added 2.jpg|alt=|thumb|Ultimate & proximate factors analysis for Eurasia and Americas]] | ||