My next big due date happens to be this coming thursday, when I have some kind of test on The Columbian Exchange by Alfred W. Crosby, a book assigned to be read by this Thursday for World Civilization II. But unlike most other history books required for reading, the one is actually quite interesting as it discusses the biological effects of what America was to what it is today.
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When the Europeans landed in America in 1492, the bridge between the two sides of the globe was formed and what the Europeans saw in America completely shocked them. They had never before seen an iguana, an alligator, a rattlesnake, a monkey that swung from branches with its tail, nor bison and buffalo. Before this time, horses, cattle, chickens, pigs, donkeys and such were exclusive only to the old world.
The biggest domesticated quadaped in the new world was the dog. Since the new world had never seen horses, or anything else before, the Native Americans were shocked and frightened to see such beasts being ridden by man. And when the settlers finally did attack and masacare the Native Americans, such fear felt by the Native Americans would be the same as if the planet Earth were attacked by an alien race of superior technology. It's as if our America as we live in today, is the result of an alien invasion over 500 years ago that completely raped and wiped out the previous life, settled, and grew with no regard for the previous inhabitants.
The book gives an example of Orson Well's War of the Worlds as being a close similarity to the fights. The settlers had superior defenses and offenses, superior weaponry, and the settlers also brought with them highly infectious viruses they already knew about, but the native Americans had never seen before in their lives. I think we know how that went.
Back when the settlers returned to America, they brought with them horses, cattle, swine, and so forth. The land was so vast and "untouched" that it was perfect for these animals, who in America had no real predator, to roam free and multiply at unheard numbers. Some ranches that lost 30-40 of their cattle, would later find the cattle in pastures had multiplied to about 400 in only a matter of a few decades.
Passing by ships through the tropic islands between North and South America would simply drop off a few dozens pigs on some of the islands, then return in a few decade to their heards' exponential growth. Who knows how much plantlife had gone extinct at this time, when these animals devoured every plant that was edible.
So many of the animals brought over to the Americas escaped free to nature. Cats and goats, as well. Later on in the 19th century, Charles Darwin toured the Americas and saw that the more docile and domesticated species in Europe were now furociously transformed and deadly to survive and live on their own for the past 300 years in the Americas. How the sweet cute cat when found later in the mountains of South America had grown in overall size, bore greater fangs, and hunted its prey more stealthlike. How the very docile goat in the mountains grew larger horns, and attacked trespassers.
This brought about more discussion of evolution and survival, ontop of the already conversial and debated theories of where all the species of Native America could have come from. Like, if Noah had 2 of every animal on his ark, which was in Jeruselum, how did all these unheard of species exist on the other side of the world, if they had no way to get there, and God flooded the entire earth? Many debates were constructed about the bering land bridge, or that the flood didn't flood as far as America.
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Anyways, I'm over halfway through the book, but the author retells the details over and over again. The repetition is a little annoying, but it helps for memorization and emphasis.