Change Over Time

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Recommended: Columbian exchange and its importance

The Columbian Exchange refers to a historical period of the exchange of animals, plants, diseases, and technology between the Old World (Europe, Asia, and Africa) and the New World (the Americas). It is considered one of the most significant events in the history of culture because it affected almost every society by bringing deadly diseases and expanding the variety of new crops and livestock. Today, rats can be found everywhere in the world, but they originated from Asia (commonly found in great numbers in China, Japan, and India) and eventually got to Europe through established trade routes, passing through Turkestan and a region around the Black Sea. Europeans weren't intially fond of the presence of rats because they helped spread the Bubonic Plague, which killed one-third of the Western European population. Although fleas were the primary reason for the spread of the Bubonic Plague, they fed on the blood of infected rats. Other than that, rats didn't seem to do much damage to Europe. While some people look as rats as being affectionate, intelligent rodents, others may look at them as being filthy and unappealing. During the time frame of 1450-1750, rats served as pests by spreading and eating all of the colonists' food, competing with small native animals of the New World, and today, the people of the U.S. have developed methods to avoid the presence of rats by using methods such as poison or traps. However, although rats have had a negative impact on the New World by bringing diseases, diseases have always been prevalent even before the widespread of rats throughout the world.

Rats were transported from the Old World to the New World during the Columbian Exchange across the Atlantic waters. Although the Europea...

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...ith unpleasant things, such as diseases and filth. The black and brown rat are the most common variations of rats found today, but they originated, through trade, to almost all parts of the world today.

Works Cited

http://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/american-indians/essays/columbian-exchange http://public.gettysburg.edu/~tshannon/hist106web/site19/ http://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-25-1-the-columbian-exchange http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3868189?uid=3739832&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102935431757 http://books.google.com/books?id=7yClMF7IQt8C&pg=PA97&lpg=PA97&dq=how+were+rats+involved+in+the+columbian+exchange&source=bl&ots=WYP-eGyHWv&sig=bPGAqL7e-F8cOrV8zX81G2yJ1U0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=HFuIUpbmNanPsASl74DgAQ&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=how%20were%20rats%20involved%20in%20the%20columbian%20exchange&f=false

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