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Columbian Exchange Catastrophes

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The Columbian Exchange, was the exchange of food crops, ideas, and populations between the Old (Eastern Hemisphere) and the New World (Northern Hemisphere). Though food and ideas sound like great trades, it comes with a price, as the Columbian Exchange also brought germs and diseases to North America. Europeans brought many deadly viruses, Harvard states "the major killers include smallpox, measles, whooping cough.." along with influenza that the Native Americans had no immunity to. Thus creating one of the greatest population catastrophes in history with, according to the National Library of Medicine, 95 percent (20 million) of indigenous people falling ill and dying. It wasn't any better for the people who survived these diseases, for they

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