How the Columbian exchange changed our world forever

Products, like potatoes, tomatoes, chocolate and tobacco, have become part of our everyday life. But only since the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus these products had been brought to our regions. After this discovery, the Columbian exchange started: products were transported from the New World to the Old World and vice versa. It must be said that this exchange had an enormous the world: without the Columbian exchange, the world would have looked quite different. In his essay, Charles C. Mann (2007) stated “It is arguably the most important event in the history of life since the death of the dinosaurs.” Firstly, the Columbian exchange transformed the American ecological environment dramatically. Charles C. Man (2007) explained that due to the success of Rolfe’s tobacco plantation in Jamestown English earthworms had been transported from the Old World to the New World. As these worms were extinct in the American continent, these insects provoked a lot of damage when they ate the litter beneath the trees. When it rained, all the nutrients required by the trees to survive were leased away. Consequently, many trees died and the landscape became more open than it had been before. However, the worms were not the only ones who were responsible for the drastic change in the American landscape. Additionally, the colonists themselves transformed the genuine landscape, shipping their domestic animals, which were fully unknown for the Native Americans, to the New World. Before the arrival of the colonists, the American environment consisted of large cleared tracts of land because the Indians used to burn the bush to keep the land open. When the colonists arrived with their cattle, they started to build fences to make the area more civilized, however, many animals succeeded in eating the Indian crops. Thirdly, the European honey bee had also an impact on the