Answer:
Step-by-step explanation:
The Columbian exchange is a term coined by Alfred Crosby Jr. in 1972 that is traditionally defined as the transfer of plants, animals, and diseases between the Old World of Europe and Africa and the New World of the Americas. The exchange began in the aftermath of Christopher Columbus' voyages in 1492, later accelerating with the European colonization of the Americas.
Columbus' Arrival
The Americas had been isolated and cut off from Asia at the end of the last Ice Age approximately 12,000 years ago. Apart from occasional contact with Vikings in eastern Canada 500 years prior to Columbus and Polynesian voyages to the Pacific Ocean coastline of South America around 1200, there was no regular or substantial contact between the world's peoples. By the 1400s, due to rising tension in the Middle East, Europeans began the search for new trade routes led by Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal (1394-1460), who sailed southward along the west coast of Africa, establishing trading posts. The Portuguese goal was to sail around the southern tip of Africa into the Indian Ocean to directly access the markets of India, China, and Japan.
THE BIOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF EUROPEAN EXPLORATION & SETTLEMENT WERE THE MOST SIGNIFICANT IMPACTS OF THE INTERACTION.
An Italian explorer, Christopher Columbus (l. 1451-1506), sailing under the flag of Spain on behalf of Ferdinand II of Aragon and his wife Isabella of Castile, proceeded westward across the Atlantic Ocean in search of direct routes with the same markets in Asia. Columbus and his ships departed Spain on 3 August 1492, making a brief stop in the Canary Islands for provisions and ship repairs, before commencing the 5-week voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. On 12 October, Columbus and his crew made landfall in what is now the Bahamas on an island that the native people called Guanahani, which Columbus renamed San Salvador. Following Columbus' first journey, the Spanish, and later other Europeans, began settlements in which they attempted to recreate their Old World lifestyles and cultures in the Americas.
On Columbus' second voyage (1493-1496) domesticated animals – horses, cattle, pigs, chickens – were introduced to the New World for purposes of