America has developed to the point that European call it the New World. However, according to Native Americans, it was not a new world because people have been living and working toward making it a better place for years. However, the global exchange has not only reduced the geographic distance but also has led to an increase in violence and terror and revolutionized the world. Native Americans have passed their stories to the next generations in written, oral or via art, which involved stories of their origin and their migration stories.
Some scholars believe that America was an entirely new world for the Native Americans as well. In the past, the ice sheets were miles thick, and people were migrating to different places. About fourteen thousand years ago, the glacial sheets shrank, leading to warmer climates. The process of agriculture became popular around nine thousand years ago, and because of agriculture, different social changes occurred, but the negative impact was that it led to a decline in the health of the people involved in agriculture. However, in spite of all this, Native Americans have a diverse culture, language and communication ways. The diversity was in living styles, language differences, and also in occupations. Europe was linked with knowledge and power as well as wealth. Prior to European arrival, America had an extremely rich and diverse culture. However, the Native Americans were not prepared for the arrival of Europeans and the diseases they brought along. Native Americans were not immune to the diseases that European brought with them, such as measles, smallpox, typhus, diphtheria, influenza, and hepatitis. Because of these diseases, the mortality rates increased among people and within first of European arrival, 90% of the people died (Locke and Wright). The native Americans tried the resist the change by resisting violence, colonialism, and even the living style for several years after the European first arrival, but the Europeans kept coming back.
The European arrival was a curse in terms of the disease epidemic, but they also brought along food transformation. The food that European people consumed was different from the Native American diet. The Spanish conquest was also part of the transformation of the new world, and their aim was wealth, land and titles. In other words, disease and violence were the most terrifying and deadliest exchanges in the Columbian exchange because the other exchanges, such as trade and people, were fairly positive. There was a global exchange of food and diets, which led to an increase in association between different geographic locations. For example, the food exchange was from basic foods such as beans and rice to luxurious foods such as cocoa, gold, and chocolates. There was also an exchange of animals, such as horses and pigs, which were introduced by the Europeans to the new world. The exchange of goods not only enhanced the relationships between different nations but also introduced the new world. During the trade, other than food, languages and cultures were also exchanged, ensuring that the new world had a mix of everything and was not separated at any level. The arrival of Europeans to the Native Americans can be detrimental in some aspects, such as disease and violence, but their arrival has fully transformed both Americans and Europeans in a way that can be said “the new world” and would never be similar to the past.
Work Cited
Locke, Joseph, and Ben Wright, editors. “The New World.” The American Yawp, 2017, http://www.americanyawp.com/text/01-the-new-world/.
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