It might be time to stop honoring Columbus

[csziggy]

31. Rather than honor the man, educate about the Columbian Exchange

That disrupted the ecology, technology, economy, and population of most of the world. The exchange of diseases decimated the native population of the Americas, resulting in 90-95% loss of population. That was why European invaders could so quickly control two continents that may have had a population larger than all of Europe of the time.

The exchange of plants, insects, and animals altered the ecology of most of the world. Old World species such as grasses, horses, cows, and grains invaded the Americas as quickly as American maize (corn), potatoes, turkeys, and other crops were spread across the rest of the world. The great deaths of Native Americans changed the ecology of the American continents since they had managed the land in ways that are only becoming understood.

One theory is that the Little Ice Age of the 1600s may have been a reverse greenhouse effect - American Indians regularly burned off forests and undergrowth in order to create open areas for crops or to encourage better foraging for animals to hunt. The concept is that when the cultures of the Americas collapsed due to huge losses of populations, that regular burning stopped, lowering the greenhouse effect of the carbon pumped into the atmosphere, and causing cooling of the planet until the Industrial Revolution began pumping ever more vast amounts of greenhouse gases to create our current global warming crisis.

Recently I read 1491 by Charles Mann which covered the conditions in the Americas prior to and at the point of Columbus' first voyage. Now I am reading Mann's 1493 which is very much about the Columbian Exchange and the globalization that followed that first voyage. I'm just now reading his discussion of the economic impact of the vast quantities of silver taken from South America and how it impacted the European continent and trade with China through contacts in the Philippines.

The Columbian Exchange today would be decried because of the ecological impact it had - but it is a done thing and the long term impact should be studied and understood. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/american-indians/essays/columbian-exchange