History
The Impact of the Columbian Exchange on Indigenous Agriculture
Quick fact
Within a century of Columbus's arrival, wheat, barley, and cattle were being raised on lands that had previously been farmed with maize and beans, and the horse—extinct in the Americas for 10,000 years—returned to transform Indigenous hunting and transportation.
Why this is interesting
Imagine your dinner plate without tomatoes, potatoes, or corn—hard to picture, right? But after 1492, the crops that fed entire civilizations across the Americas were suddenly replaced by new ones from Europe, changing how Native people farmed forever.