Paige+Lyman

 Good-bye Milk Without the Columbus exchange our lives would not be the same. No more of our favorite foods or drinks, not to mention even our favorite activities. Most of what we know and love in this world is from Columbus. It’s all thanks to Columbus’s accidental discovering of America. While colonizing, Spain and other European countries brought a profound transfer of goods, foods, ideas, and social organization. This transfer from the Eastern Hemisphere to the Western Hemisphere erased the centuries of separation and started the process of regular transnational communication. Few people from different cultures knew what to expect from their first encounters with one another, but all sides continually adjusted to their new realities. Some of these adjustments were incremental and only slowly affected daily activities, while others were jarring, violent, and even devastating. Meeting new peoples who had different ways of exploiting their environments and shaping their cultures could be both strange and exciting. For example, Columbus’s first trip to the Americas, he brought cargoes of cattle and horses which ensured not only a supply of meat, but also animal power for cartage and construction. For the Indians who had no experience with the new animals the scale of work and ease transportation made possible by the Europeans cattle and horses changed village life immensely. If there had never been a Columbian Exchange we wouldn’t have the lifestyle that we are used to in today’s life. We would still be in danger of catching deadly diseases, with no cure. None of the foods we all know and love. But most important, no more cows, which means no more milk! I couldn’t live life that way, so I believe that the Columbian exchange was a great thing for America.