America Before Columbus – Full Documentary – National Geographic

America before columbus was a very beautiful and abundant place, full of sustenance and resources.

Summer 1492 after three months at sea the Santa Maria Pinta and anemia anchor off the Bahamas. Europe has found the Americas.

Next comes conquest and colonization by settlers who remake America in their image. They seek and destroy. But there is another story about the animals and plants they bring here and the natural treasures they find here and how the Americans are completely transformed.

It all began 500 years ago – America before columbus.

It’s 1491 a year from now Christopher Columbus will set foot on this quiet beach. What’s here before he arrives is a world of unbelievable natural to vast continents steaming with life.

More than 600,000 miles of coastline are surrounded by pristine waters. Shoals so dense they said to slow the passage of ships, countless species number in the tens of millions.

Inland from the Atlantic Shores great forests stretch in every direction. This new world is a land of stark contrasts from the lush jungles of South America, to the glaciers of the Arctic north, and the Great Plains of the Midwest…….. where gigantic herds Thunder across North America there is room for many animals, bison and the giant grizzly.

In the sky above flocks of birds that nearly block out the Sun. Millions of pigeons, ducks, and geese cover the horizon. No one in Europe has dared imagined the magnificent bounty that exists in America before columbus.

On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean in 1491 Christopher Columbus stands on the coast of Spain looking West. He dreams of leading an expedition to find a new trade routes to Asia.

Success will mean glory and riches for himself and the Spanish monarchy. In Europe the nobles have grown wealthy by trading with the East. Spices and gold gemstones and silk are the most lucrative goods.

Europeans have lost Silk Road to the Turks and foreign trade is in decline the wealth of kings is endangered.

Isabella, Queen of Spain is desperate to find new routes to India, and she has a plan.

Isabella is the most powerful woman in Europe. A continent of expanding horizons filled with competitive and inventive souls. For 500 years they have been building castles palaces and centers of trade.

Kings and Pope’s have raised armies to fight each other and their enemies on Europe’s borders outside of America before columbus.

Nowhere else are rivalries so intense, gold fever so widespread as in Europe in 1491.

Ideas are moving forward curiosity and the thirst for power pushes Europe’s limits. Europe is a busy and crowded continent trying to feed a growing population of 100 million people. Natural resources are already exploited as land becomes scarce and overworked.

Most of the peasants are farmers working land that belongs to someone else.

Owned by the nobles or the church. their main diet is bread and porridge both made from harvesting grains. They plant rye or wheat in winter. Oats or barley in the spring. Every third year the field lies fallow to regenerate.

They’ve learned to harness water and wind for power. It is hard work but good for producing higher yields in smaller spaces. This agricultural revolution allows the European population to grow.

With the help of one more important element

Domesticated animals. | America before columbus

Horses pull plows. Cattle provide meat, fur, and hides. The pig is a main source of meat and leather. Sheep and mules can also pull a cart. Cows also give the milk butter, and cheese outside of America before columbus.

It is not only people that domesticate horses, cattle, goats, pigs, and sheep, that domesticate the European landscape.

They contribute to Europe’s overcrowded conditions.

In 1491, the Americas too are a crowded and prosperous place but in a very different way. The Andes cradled a vast empire ruled by powerful god kings.

Mesoamerica is densely populated and home to the most impressive civilizations on the continent.

The Atlantic coast is filled with smaller villages and fields and along the great rivers. Great cities are built around monumental plazas in America before columbus.

It is an ancient world inhabited by 100 million people. Hunters and gatherers, fishermen and farmers, Kings, slave’s and soldiers.

Down among the trees where the Missouri Illinois and Mississippi rivers merge, lies one of the largest civilizations on the continent.

The native Mississippians are mound builders. They occupy a vast region from the Great Lakes in the north to Florida in the south.  

The first explorers thought these great mounds were natural carved by retreating glaciers. Now we know that they are the centrepieces of cities. Cities like Cahokia. busy trading posts of earth and wood with populations of up to thousands of people.

No one knows what they called themselves or what language they spoke, but we know why they were successful. These Mississippians are farmers, their staple crop is fuel for the ever growing population.

The Power of Corn | America before columbus

It is a plant native to the Americas unknown to the rest of the world. Corn is not a blessing from nature, or a gift of the Gods, this crop is the outcome of Man’s first feat of genetic engineering. 

Once they learned how to grow it they could stay in one place. This simple diet translated straight into the energy to build a civilization.  

The cultivation of corn is a key to flourishing cultures in the Americas before Columbus.

The staple crop in North America was corn. 6,000 years ago years of corn were only about as long as a person’s thumb and they were barely edible.

It took thousands of years to develop a more nourishing, and larger hybrid. Also a hybrid that could grow in cooler climates outside of Mesoamerica. It wasn’t until about eleven hundred years ago the corn reached the Mississippi River Valley.

Corn is the result of the domestication of the wild teosinte grass. Early Americans started with this spindly stock and over the centuries.

They developed it into today’s giant Kong in America before columbus.

Archeologists and biologists are still debating how corn was achieved out of the tiny grass. Corn is one of the keys to understanding American civilization.

Wherever it flourishes, so do great cultures. yet the greatest American Empire of them all is found where corn cannot grow.

Inca Empire

High in the Andes the Inca Empire stretches nearly 2,500 miles down the west coast of South America. Inca build palaces storehouses and castles in the tall mountains. In their realm of six million people, they rely on manpower to transport stones without animals or the wheel.

The energy for that is provided by another amazing food source. They are famed for their gold but their true treasure is less glamorous.

A Tuber, native to the Americas, and unknown in Europe cultivated here some 8,000 years ago in the region around Lake Titicaca in today’s Peru and Bolivia 12,500 feet up.

What is now a staple food in Europe was an American invention.

By the Year 1491 the Inca growth thousands of variety domesticated from wild ancestors. Some poisonous some even carnivorous, They preserved the tuber by mashing them into a substance called Cuyo.

After harvest, potatoes are spread on straw and left out to freeze at night. During the day they are exposed to the Sun, trampling them eliminates water and allows them to dry. Chuño can be stored for 10 years providing excellent insurance against possible crop failures.

The Inca carved stepped like terraces into the mountainside to stop the soil from eroding and create a flat surface for their crops.

Terraces absorb more sunlight than steep slopes, so potatoes can grow at the highest altitudes.

All this is achieved by manpower alone using wooden tools in America before columbus.

In North and South America, in 1491, farmers grow corn and potatoes to feed their people. They have none of the domesticated animals that benefit Europe.

The Llama

For Inca farmers in the Andes, their chief source of meat and transporting goods is the llama. This is the biggest domestic mammal in the America. The llamas also offer done for the soil and hides for clothes.

They can’t milk or ride them and the animals can’t pull a plow. So they are no good for farming or for travel in America before columbus.

Their wool is a true blessing. it is warmer and lighter than sheep’s wool and produces a greater yield. The second principle domesticated animal of the Americas is much smaller.

For the Aztecs the turkey is vital.

Even today for their descendants in Mexico and Guatemala, the turkey is so important that they dedicate to religious festivals to it.  

Native Americans in 1491

Native Americans have such few domesticated animals because the biggest native mammals in the Americas died out long ago.

At the end of the last ice age the megafauna in Americas, the giant bison and the mastodons went extinct.

The reasons that are probably twofold.

First of all as the Ice Age was ending the climate became much hotter and drier and has killed the vegetation that these very large animals dependent.

Secondly the arrival of hunters into North America crossed over the Bering Strait land bridge from Asia, coincided with the extinction of these animals.

It’s very likely these hunters went after these large animals who were slowed and had a lot of meat.

What this left in North America were animals such as bison, deer, and antelope. These animals were not suited to domestication in America before columbus.

In 1491 Native American tribes hunt wild animals to survive.

The village dwellers in the forests of the Northeast and nomads on the plains developed methods to guarantee their meat supply.

They can’t domesticate these animals, so they find a way of making their prey come to them.

Burning of Grass in Fields and Open Plains | Native American

In the years before Columbus, Native Americans noticed that grass grows better after being burned by lightning strikes.

They start to burn the prairies and claims themselves. many tribes use this technique including the Sioux, Cheyenne Comanches ,Shoshone, and the Blackfeet.

American 1492 was not a pristine wilderness that’s a romantic myth it was in many ways managed landscape. Natives regularly burned the forests and the Prairie in order to attract gain.

Not only does burning create blush grassland, it keeps the forest open, and makes hunting easier in America before columbus.  

The new rich pastures lure and increase the numbers of herbivores, as well as the Predators the feed on them. They domesticate the land in order to attract wild animals.

The Great Buffalo

Nomadic central plane Indians are able to lure the biggest mammals in the Americans, the Bison.

Wherever they roam, bison are the main source of food and clothing and of tools made from their bone.

But still the Bison thrive, by 1491 North America is home to perhaps 30 million.

They rain on the prairies from Montana to Texas, pushed east by Native Americans along a path of fire.

Opening up the forest into virgin land.  

The Bison gained a new habitat far beyond their original range.

Native Americans have no guns or horses, they hunt on foot.

They dress in hides to get as close as possible and hunt with the bow and arrow or Spears. Everything is made of wood and leather bone and stone.  

Hunting the Bison is essential for their survival in America before columbus.

How Fish Shaped History

In Europe hunting is no longer about survival, noblemen hunts for sport, for pleasure, and prestige.

Only the nobles are allowed to hunt, if ever they catch a peasant hunting you will be punished for poaching.

Unlike in America, there’s no room here for an abundance of wildlife for endless herds.  

In Europe the land is man-made, agriculture and cities push the wildlife back.

Untamed land is now a rarity. They have one other major food source…..fish have long been cheap and abundant for every social class.

Christianity the common religion all over Europe in 1491 approves a fish. eating meat is banned on more than 100 days a year.

The demand for fish is huge.  but intensive agriculture is damaging the fish suppliers.

Once unlimited supplies, in Europe are dwindling fast. what happened to the fish stocks in Europe.

Ss people started to grow crops and cut back the wild woods. This released huge amounts of sediment into the water.

Which changed them from being fast clear flowing rivers and streams into slow turbid rivers and streams outside of America before columbus.

They the the freshwater fish found a problem with it particularly migratory species that came up from the sea to spawn in rivers ,animals like salmon and sturgeon.

There was another factor which also cut down the supplies of these migratory fish. People started to build dams along rivers and when that happened the migration runs were blocked and the populations declined.

When supplies of fish dwindle in their polluted lakes and rivers, they turned to the sea.

For the first time they said have large-scale sea fishing. they find abundance on scale never seen before. and they exploited it.

COD and herring from the North Sea are the first to be fished. every five years catches double.

By 1300, thousands of tons of dried fish are exported from Norway to Britain alone, but this is 1491.

Europe’s rivers and lakes are now dirty and empty, and surrounding seas are fast becoming depleted.

In the America before Columbus, fishing is not an industry. they don’t need it, fish are for the taking.

Their rivers are not used for power, and are not affected by farming.  

Native Americans transport their fish far away from the coasts and waterways.

Into the interior high up into the mountains the Incas high in the Andes enjoy fish from the Pacific.

The Mississippians trade with communities as far away as the Great Lakes to the north, and the Gulf Coast to the south. they even eat fish and seafood from the Atlanta.

Here to there is space for abundance.

The waters team was fished shed with whales, dolphins, the manatees in America before columbus. 

Wherever Native Americans go, they find a bounty of thousands of different species.

Man Hayden channel catfish, and she Peg. They never have to take more than nature can replace.  

Northern South America appear to be a primitive untamed paradise, but looks can be deceiving.

The greatest numbers of freshwater fish live in the Amazon the largest river in the Americas, and the most voluminous in the world.

To our eyes, the Amazon rainforest is an almost untouched Garden of Eden.

It was once a very different place than what we know today.

When the jungle was cleared in the 20th century for agricultural purposes, people found the remains of a sophisticated civilization, that once managed this landscape.

In 1491 this area is home to thousands of people. they tend orchards with all kinds of fruits, papaya, mango, cocoa, nuts and palms.

They speak many different languages and live in many different social systems.

They’re tightly-packed settlements cover an area of over 46,000 square miles. they are linked by raised cosway’s bridges and canals.

Much of this is natural savanna created by annual flooding, but they have expanded the grasslands regularly setting huge areas on fire in America before columbus.

by 1491 they had created an ecosystem of plant species adapted by fire that cannot exist in nature.

Eventually the jungle will reclaim it.

Chaco Canyon

Further north in what is now New Mexico, another grand civilization has already come and gone.

It flourished in a place that today looks like no humans could ever have lived there. the Chaco Canyon.

There is almost no vegetation no water, and no animals to be seen. Astonishingly itt was already like this in 1491.

Once this area looked completely different.

This is the story of a civilization that developed as far as it could. It used the resources as well as it could, and still declined in America before columbus.

Chaco Canyon was once covered with lush vegetation and forests of pine and juniper. the Fertile area was home to the Anasazi.

From the years 700 on the Anasazi built the highest and largest buildings in North America. one is several stories high and has 600 rooms that overlook the majestic Canyon.

One thousand people lived here, they had no animals to transport materials thousands of felled trees were dragged down to the Chaco Canyon on men’s bare backs.

There is no written account of their lives or of their disappearance. but environmental historians can tell us what happened by counting tree rings and analyzing rat nests.  

Nathan English of the University of Arizona spends much time in the canyon looking for traces of the ancient nests.

“our interest in Chaco Canyon is to learn more about how the ancestral Puebloans live and there’s a number of ways we can do that.

we can do that through traditional archaeology where we dig up ruins insights, or we can also look at what the environment was like around the ancestral prevalence.

The way we do that is look by looking at packrat mins and each packrat mitten is like a little snapshot in time of the area around the midden itself.

So you could think of its like a picture and the middens can be up to 40 thousand years old in some places ,and what the midden is is it’s the the packrat makes a nest and it poops in that nest and then it only gets its water from eating plant vegetation, so it’s urine is very thick and viscous.

That urine seeps into the pile of poop essentially and solidifies almost like an bur.

In the meantime the pack rat is also collecting things for the plants around it also pot shards sometimes even corn or seeds of squash, and those macro fossils are incorporated into the midden.

So we go out we collect them in and then we examine the macro fossils. In that mitten to look at what the ecology around that midden was like at that time.”

Not only direct middens hold information, trees do too.

Scientists count the rings of ancient logs to give the exact date when the very last tree was cut down.

The Anasazi used juniper and pine for their timber and fire. too much of it something.

With the trees goes the soil the forests cannot recover, because of erosion water drains down creating gullies on the way.

Irrigation and agriculture are no longer possible. this large population cannot feed itself anymore outside of America before columbus.

Did they destroy the forests or did the forests leave them?

we are on the edge of this pinyon-juniper woodland and so it’s really possible that just natural climate change would have caused it to move back but it’s also we know that the people were harvesting wood for fuel and for timber and so it’s likely that a combination of the two things are what led to the to the loss of forests in this area.

The year 1130 rolls around it is one of the driest of years.

The Anasazi have survived previous droughts but the population has increased greatly, and there is no suitable territory to expand into.

Without rain it’s impossible to grow enough food to support the population. no agriculture, means no culture…..the Chaco Canyon is abandoned.

These ancient Americans cut down the last tree, and move on.

Forestry Shaping The New World

Over in Europe in 1491 they are cutting down the forest rapidly. Their growing population needs more food, and more space in which to grow it, and they badly need the wood. They have the tools, they had the means to transport it, and they have the energy.

But they’re beginning to run out of space, and time. only wood can help them to move forward.

Ss Mitarai d’Ivoire the Middle Ages were the era of wood and find it wherever you look wood was the most important material building me for making tons of furniture and from burning.

It was the only feeling there was hardly any coal but an abundance in America before columbus.

It is an era of competition and Wars use up forests to. whole armies are equipped with bows made from yew wood, the yew tree is almost exterminated in Europe.

Armies need iron weapons and smelting ovens burn day and night.

At the same time whole forests are used to satisfy another European craving, for magnificent buildings. The cathedrals in the cities are made of stone, yet they require millions of logs for their bases and frames.  

Larches are needed for roof supports.

Solid logs of oak alder and elm are sunk into the ground to create foundations.

Wood is indispensable for pillars and ceilings, posts, and roof panels, ax handles, and Kadri.  European castles, cathedrals, monasteries, and churche,s consume entire forests in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and England.

No wonder that all the great social economic struggles in the Middle Ages are fought in the forests, around the forest, and about the forests.

In this competition for timber those who have money make the rules and the money is now in the cities. perhaps the richest city of all is Venice.  

It’s built on wood. Literally, piles sunk into the mud to create the platform on which the great stone facades can float.

Behind all this is Commerce and a great maritime Republic.

The goods that are bought and sold are transported in wooden galleons. Venice has denuded the forests all around them to build its fleet.

The city’s demand is insatiable, and they start to deplete the Alps.

Spruce for masts, large for planking, Elm for captain’s walnut for rudders, and most importantly oak for holes.

When that is not enough they cut a swath across Europe all the way to the Baltic.

The Europeans have exploited their natural resources, leaving a continent where there are few fish in their rivers, and less and less timber in their forests.

Their towns are crowded with people, and they don’t know what to do with them outside of America before columbus.

Christopher Columbus and Trying to Find Route to Asia

Rivalries between princes and kings have grown intense. religious fervor curiosity and greed are widespread in 1491.

There is a constant hunger for new ideas. the printing press is invented, books and ideas spread, but where do they go from here.  

Where can all this raw energy be channeled. 

This is the time when European kings and queens send explorers beyond the horizon, to expand and enhance their power.

Some explorers go around Africa to find the sea route to India.

One has the vision to sail west to arrive in the east.

He’s a seaman from Genoa Italy. A fervent amateur who has the crazy idea of sailing into the unknown to reach India.

Christopher Columbus has spent five years trying to gain royal support to finance his voyage.

Isabella Queen of Spain, finally agrees what does the Spanish crown have to lose. it doesn’t cost much to finance three ships.

Spain has so much to gain from a shortcut to India. Treasures, trad,e and land.

At first no one wants to board his ship.  children finally he drags together a motley crew of 87.

Men many are illiterate, petty criminals,, even murderers who choose probable death at sea, in preference to the gallows. many are soldiers with nothing to do since Spain expelled the Moors just months before.

Now they are soldiers of fortune. With his band of desperados, Christopher Columbus set sail from the port of Seville.

It was the summer 1492.

He promises the Queen that his expedition will be a success and in a matter of weeks it would change the course of history.

It is October 12 1492 when Columbus sights land.

I saw neither sheep no ghosts nor any other beasts, all the trees were as different from ours as day from night, and soda herbage the rocks and all things.

Three Spanish ships sail west the three-month research of India.

Then finally they arrived 87 men among them computadoras, pig farmers, murderers.

But this is not Asia, it is an island in the Caribbean they have no idea that they have come to a new world.

The air is hot, the water is warm, they have survived the voyage and have found land for the Spanish crown, and in the name of God.  

He was probably exhausted, tired, but thankful.

What land is this, where are the ports, as citie’s the ships and traders they expected.   The natives have seen many people arrive from the sea ,other tribes but no-one like this.  

They will both soon discover that this is just the beginning.

Columbus and his men stay for three months in the Bahamas and have no idea that they’re on the edge of two great continents, about ten times bigger in Europe.

From the tropical seas, to the arid deserts, this is Vast, and dare use space. with room for every possible landscape, stretching from the northernmost to almost the southernmost points of the globe.

Spain’s royal monarchy made Columbus’s voyage possible it is 1493 and they’ve waited eagerly for seven months to learn of his discoveries. upon his return he delivers the news in a report to Queen Isabella. 

In a few pages, Columbus describes the paradise he is found in her name. Land to conquer, converts for Christianity, riches to exploit, and gold.  

In Europe no news stays local for long. Traders, armies,, and pilgrims carry news across the continent in weeks. Columbus’s letter is translated, copied and becomes a best-seller. Now many Europeans are aching for their share of the treasures.

A few months later, in Spain men are moving towards the ports of the Atlantic ,and the Mediterranean. men who have no land, and no work. 

They crossed the Barrens Spanish regions that offer little to live off. Desperados with nothing to lose men in need of a job and the Queen needs them.

Anyone can come along, anyone can be a conquistador, even a pig farmer can win glory and riches in faraway lands.

In 1493, 17 ships arrived in the new world on an island in the Caribbean Sea, carrying 1200 Spaniards. Columbus’s second voyage begins a stampede of Spanish exploration and conquest.

Some will go south, some to the Andes, some along the Mississippi it is the conquest of the Americas. Driven by greed ,carrying weapons, and with one animal that does not exist on this continent.

With the force the Spanish are able to annihilate whole empires, in just a few decades.

Within 40 years the Inca in the Andes all to Pizarro. and the Aztecs in Central America to Cortez.

Where there were towns and cities inhabited by millions of people, the Spaniards leave only ruins and no one to manage the land.

The Horse | America before columbus

Spanish explorers invade the Americas, and bring with them the horce, first brought to the Caribbean islands.

These animals reproduce and spread in the new world as fast as the wind. horses have not been seen here since the Ice Age.

Now they’re back. It’s as though the landscape has been waiting for them. Once ashore a few horses run wild, a new breed default which soon takes over North America.

The Mustang, within 300 years they have reached central plains and the Rocky Mountains.

At the end of the 18th century, the Mustang makes it as far as Canada.

150 years later there may be 7 million wild horses in North America. for the nomadic tribes like the Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Sioux, and Comanche, and Central Plains these wild horses are a blessing.  

What they used to do on foot, fighting, hunting, traveling, they can now do on the backs of wild horses.

It transforms their lives. 

This old-world animal becomes a symbol of their native culture, although the horse once came from across the Atlantic, it is now an image of nomadic America.

As soon as the conquistadors have conquered South and Central America, one of them heads north.

The Swine Infestation | America before columbus

Hernando de Soto travels from Florida up the Mississippi River looking for gold. the Spaniards leave death in their wake, and something else they bring along to keep them alive.

As they journey through unknown jungles, the pigs help them survive. they are a perfect source of food, they don’t take up much space to the boats, they look after themselves, and they eat everything they can in this new continent.

They’re prolific little beasts, a healthy sow can give birth to ten piglets at a time.

When the conquistadors leave some behind they will have an ever-growing food supply for those who come after them, the pigs are key to their survival. but to Native Americans they’re a curse.  

In North America natives do not sense their field and their staple crop of corn is irresistible.

There is no evidence that Native Americans know how to fight this plague of pigs.

Soon European swine are eating the seeds and young shoots. only a few generations after running wild, the animal becomes very different from the typical farm cage.

It grows tusks and gets bigger and aggressive, what began with a few pigs becomes a daily nightmare for the Native Americans.

In addition to horses, Columbus brought eight pigs to America on his second voyage. within 20 years there are 30,000 pigs on the island of Cuba alone.

They multiply conquering the Andes, the Amazon, and North America.

The Spaniard, his horse, and his Pig, would never have been so successful in the conquest of the new world without a hidden passenger.

It is when the old and new worlds touch, that the native-american meets his worst enemy.

A very black dose for the continent

Small Pox and Disease | America before columbus

A Spanish missionary reports an epidemic broke out a sickness of small pox. Large bumps spread on people, some were entirely covered on the face, the head, the chest, they lay in their dwelling’s and sleeping places, no longer able to move or stir.

The pustules caused great desolation very many people died of them and many starved to death.

No one took care of others any longer.  

Deadly diseases contaminate both continents of the Americas.

For the natives, Writes a chronicler, they are near all dead at the smallpox. so the Lord had cleared our title to what we possess.

To this day scientists are still working to identify these diseases, to trace their paths, and count the dead.

smallpox was accidentally introduced the Americas in 16th century, the smallpox virus is very Hardy in blankets that are used by smallpox victims, the scabs can live for weeks carrying the virus. and smallpox can also pass from host to host on board a transatlantic vessel until it reaches the Americas. and of course one smallpox reached the Americas, it was introduced to millions of new hosts, human hosts who had no acquired communities to these diseases. and so smallpox together with measles and influenza had a devastating impact on Native American populations, no one knows exactly what the mortality. was conservative estimates are about 50% it was probably closer to 90% or even higher.

Through trade between native peoples diseases spread through the whole continent many natives died of foreign diseases without ever seeing a European.

Microbes move faster than the conquistadors who brought.

Then some fifty years after Columbus first sets foot in the Americas.

Conquistadors and explorers find neither towns nor people, no one stands in their way. most of the people are dead, and nature reclaims the land.

Everything that they now find is pure wilderness, a Garden of Eden, without humans.

A thousand different kinds of birds and beasts of the forest, which have never been known neither in shape or name.

And where of there is no mention made, neither among the Latins nor Greeks, or any other nations of the world, reports a Spanish missionary.

It may be God has made a new creation of Beast.

Explorers send exotic plants and animals, evidence of God’s second creation, on the ship’s back to Spain.Corn, Chile and pumpkins domesticated in the new world unknown in Europe. tomatoes and potatoes.  

There is an unwelcome passenger on board, an unintentional gift from the natives. it will lead to death in Europe.

It was spread in the brothels, in the ports, and cities,. of the old world it will be painful it drives its victims mad, and it could take a long long time to kill.  

This is the French box ,for the Spanish sickness, syphilis.  

Europeans have no idea that this disease came from America, where more, and more, are aching to go.

In the 17th century a new wave of people heads to the new world, the settlers England has defeated Spain to become a new European superpower.

James Town Colony | America before columbus

The English crown sets out to claim its share. In 1607 the British started colony on the east coast of North America in what is now Virginia.  They named it Jamestown after their king.

This will become their new world. Their job is to make money for the British trading companies that sent them here.

The land they seized, seems to be the right place to exploit.

Forests and rivers, coasts and lakes, owned by no one.

But not all Native Americans succumbed to European diseases, and this land is neither empty, nor uninhabited.

It is the land of the Powhatan. More than 14,000 people living in small communities, around 200 villages, on the coast, and along rivers in, large houses, surrounded by cleared forests and mix fields of squash, beans, and corn.

These are farmers and hunters.

There is no gold, no silver, that settlers dream of, just the land and its people.

For a while the settlers and the natives managed to coexist.

This land is rich with resources that Europe lacks. in the long run, resources that are far more valuable than gold and silver, and there’s more than enough for everyone.  

Europeans wanted to travel west to the great empires of Asia. Instead, the new world they find amazes them with its natural abundance.

They discovered almost miraculous unbelievable quantities of fish, in these estuaries and rivers.

One particular kind of fish which very much impressed settlers, was the river herring or alewife as it’s otherwise called. and seasonally these were to send the rivers to spawn from the sea in their Millions.

For example in the Potomac River in near Washington DC,, during the 18th century something like 750 million alewife were caught just from that one River in one year.

It was a remarkable abundance and and people described the rivers as having more fish than water.

Whole shoals are caught in the settlers nets.

In the 18th century hundreds of thousands of tons of cod are shipped in one single year sent, from North America to England, Portugal and Spain.

Fishing boats sink under the weight of their caches and the colonies thrive.

It takes only 200 years to achieve what had taken a thousand years in Europe.

Overfishing tends to remove the biggest oldest individuals from a population and by doing this it changes the Selective pressures on the population so that fish begin to grow more slowly they reach reproductive maturity at a smaller size and earlier in life and these things all reduce the productivity of a population

Fish are sorted packed and sent home for money.  Along with them the settlers send another resource that the old world is desperate for.

It is said that there are trees as far as the eye to see. Such that a squirrel starting off at the Atlantic coast need never touch the ground till it got to Georgia.

This is so different from the Europe they left behind.

They have finally found a replacement for something that is disappearing at home. An infinite accessible source of the raw material of the age.  

The forests must fall if the settlers are to succeed.  From now on the trees are doomed.

Our settlers arrived in the new world they found forests but they have never seen in Europe endless forests with huge trees penetrating into the heart of the land was also a war against the forest the axe became the Yankee emblem at the same time forests with the great resource the land had to offer you could make plenty of money exporting timber in Europe wood had become expensive and so the greatest forest destruction in history from out of place

The clearing of forests that seemed to belong to no one and cost nothing. Goes so far that by the late 17th century, many areas of the Caribbean and Atlantic islands are completely bald.

An incredible amount of wood is really squandered in this country for fuel.

Day and night, all winter for nearly half a year, in all rooms. A fire is kept going observes a European traveler.

Wood consumption in the forests of New England just like in Europe, is out of control for fuel, for building and to clear agricultural land.

The resources in this vast cosmic seemed to be inexhaustible, but in time, fish stocks will dwindle in the Americas too.

They create this new world in the image of the one they left. | America before columbus

Europeans change America by what they take away but they changed this continent even more by what they bring with them.

To come in search of their own land something almost impossible to find in Europe, they come in search of religious freedom, in search of a better life.

They believe they are responsible for their own success and happiness.

For the first time women settlers come to, and they bring a whole way of life with them.

They bring animals and plants that are all new to the American continent.

Livestock and grains from Europe will transform the new world and make it a true New England.  

With the newly important plow, they will leave little lamb untilled.

These domesticated livestock and metal tools have never been seen on this continent, an environmental revolution takes place.

In no time their European wheat is growing in this foreign soil.

Wheat, barley, oat’s and rye, are brought to America.

But in the process some less welcome guests it’s arrived.

Weeds Brought Into America by Settlers

Europeans introduced crops such as wheat to the Americas but in the bags of seed that they brought with them to the Americas they also brought along seeds for weeds dandelions other kinds of weeds and these are everywhere in the Americas now

From the most insignificant weed, to the continents greatest mammal the Bison, nothing is untouched. America’s native flora and fauna is forever changed.

Where the Bison once rained cattle soon roam.

To the settlers delight their livestock multiplies more quickly here that it did in Europe.

In a few hundred years European cows eat away the American grass, and trampled soil deposit their excrement, and distribute the seeds of the weeds.

The invasion of European insects and animals changes the American landscape forever.

Horses, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, and huge herds of cattle take over North and South America.

The cattle alone doubles in numbers every 15 months and feed the settlers.

The new world settlers defend themselves inside sturdy forts. but there are no shortages of any kind.

Meat has become one of the cheapest foods in the Americas. they are the best fed people in the world.

Hides are in great demand in America as well as in Europe. Fur from the wild animals they shoot brings in a steady export income some like the beaver are hunted almost to extinction.  

Settlers are not forced to adapt to the landscape, they domesticate, and dominate it.

Most trees were cut down. They turned into pasture and Gardens for all kinds of vegetables. Also for root crops that we know in England grow in for fusion.

They replace the trees they have cut down with their own trees.

Europeans bring peaches, pears, and plums. They bring things, olives, and bananas. Their trees flourish. they never know how lucky they are.

The Honey Bee

Because the settlers also bring bees with them for their honey, the Native American bee pollinates only a few species.

The European honeybees can live almost everywhere and pollinate any plant in sight.  

Gardens turn into plantations for consumption at home and abroad. Apples thrive and become a major industry in North America. Eventually yielding a harvest of five million tons a year. all beginning with European seedlings.

This is biological imperialism, in full swing. Europe’s fruits and vegetables conquer the new world. 

It is also an exchange. It is the Columbian Exchange. European kitchens may not see native meat from America. But new world vegetables make a big impact.

Potatoes and Impact in Europe | America Before Columbus

The plant with the greatest impact on Europe needs a couple of centuries to take root in its culture.

This tuber is insipid and mealy it cannot be classed among the agreeable foodstuffs, but it furnishes abundant and rather wholesome nutrition to men who are content to be nourished.

It is justly regarded as flatulent, but what our winds to the vigorous organs of peasants and labourers. – Wrote didiro in his encyclopedia the 18th century.

Introduced into Spain potatoes slowly spread to Italy, and to northern and eastern europe.

By 1600, the potato has entered Austria Holland France, Switzerland, England and Germany. Frederick the Great himself urges its cultivation in Prussia.

But it is the Irish who adopt the potato with open arms, they have a limited food supply and grain grown here has often been destroyed or burned as the result of war.

The potato safely underground survives these hardships.

In 100 years Irish population more than doubles and towns like Berlin grow into great cities.

By 1700 there is an unprecedented population explosion in Europe. thanks to a plant from the fire.

Only one domestic animal from the New World set sport in Europe, the turkey. | America before columbus

Turkey and a few vegetables enhanced the European diet but otherwise their life is relatively unchanged.

So why was the Columbian Exchange in America before columbus.

The one-sided why did it go primarily in one direction from Europe to America with the exception of things like potatoes and potato blight why was Europe not overtaken by American plants and animals.

It’s difficult to say why something did not happen, but you have to remember that the ecological invasion was a cooperative enterprise.

Disease and plants and animals working together and Europe remained densely populated it didn’t have diseases depopulate its people, and so you didn’t have niches open up for livestock to graze, and then weeds to take over the areas that livestock had over grazed and trampled. So without that critical part it worked in one direction primarily

The European elites want more than just turkeys and potatoes from the new world. they want luxury products, sugar, and tobacco meet the requirements of the upper class.

The first British settlers quickly acquire a taste for American tobacco and export large shipments to Europe.

To satisfy such high demand, settlers build immense plantations. Growing sugar becomes a business on the same scale as tobacco. the new monocultures cover entire landscapes.

For this sole purpose, some 10 million Africans are transported to America. They used slaves to cultivate luxury items for Americans and Europeans.

because of the rapid depopulation of the Americas owing to disease Europeans faced a shortage of labour in effort to exploit the resources of the new world particularly to exploit the soil, so the Europeans first the Portuguese and the Dutch and then eventually the English imported slaves from West Africa to cultivate sugar in the Caribbean and Brazil, tobacco and Virginia, rice in South Carolina, and by the 19th century in mainland North America cotton, it’s no exaggeration to say that these cash commodities produced by slave labour were essential to the export economies of the Americas

By the 18th century the metamorphosis of much of America is complete. New Spain and New England are fully established. Nature has been transformed and is in the hands of man.  

Now pioneers are heading west.

There is still empty land in that direction, they will complete what was begun in the east.

In the creation of the new world, perhaps 90% of the Native American people died.

The people who took their place came from all over Europe. They were conquistadors, settlers’ explorers, and colonists, and they came from Africa as slaves.

It was the transfer of animals and plants from Europe to the Americas, that really made the creation of the new world possible.  

In today’s chrome and steel cities we sometimes seem so cut off from nature, that it may be difficult to believe the Columbian Exchange ever happened in America before columbus.

In the final analysis, the skyscrapers, and the melting pot of the races, all their existence not only to humans, but also to the natural world.

people came to the Americas for many reasons some came to make money some came for religious freedom some came in voluntarily as slaves but those populations took hold in the Americas because of the accident of ecology, because of the microbes that plants the animals that they brought with them that gave them an advantage over the people who are already here and the legacy of the Columbian Exchange is also still largely biological and that legacy will continue into the future

It all began 500 years ago. Columbus had a vision, and three ships set out in a quest for India and found the new world.