How did the world changed because of the interaction between the Native Americans and Europeans?

Question

can you help me identify and evaluate How did the world changed because of the interaction between the Native Americans and Europeans?

Answer 1

Food-much of the world's foods from potato to tomato were fromWest Hemisphere

Metals- American Gold,silver,iron etc shook up the economies of Europe

Disease-Up to 90% of aboriginal Americans in many places died of Eurasian diseases

Wars-in and over the "New World"

Mestizos-much of Latin America is mixed Indian/Caucasian with many levels of cultural interchang e and change

African diaspora-Africans shipped to Western Hemisphere have changed the world culturally and genetically and the slave trade ravaged and changed Africa

Animals-Beasts of burden brought to the Western Hemisphere and the extinction or near extinction of many native species

Answer 2

The earlier response is accurate, particularly regarding disease.

Things that benefitted the Indigenous Americans
Metals, Metallurgy was virtually unknown in the Americas, with the exception of some uses in ornamentation, as in gold and copper.
Transportation, The horse, though native to the Americas was hunted to extinction before the beginning of the last millennium. Horses were a major boon to the plains people in particular. Wheeled vehicles were introduced and benefitted some native populations, though less than the horse.
Firearms, This may belong in another category of "Iffy benefits" but it did have an impact in native warfare, both between nations and with the Europeans.

Iffy benefits to Indigenous Americans
Religion, They all had a faith structure in place, and while Christianity may be my choice, it isn't necessarily a benefit to all others, though the missionary societies of the 19th century would disagree.
Firearms, as mentioned, did as much harm as good. Hunting was easier, but the weapons could also be turned against the natives by Europeans, other natives, even friends.
Metals, metal spear and arrow points are better for hunting and war, but again, this can be turned against their beneficiary.

Negative impacts on indigenous Americans
Disease, these people hadn't even been exposed to as much as the common cold, much less smallpox, measles, influenza, various herpes strains, like chicken pox, and bubonic plague, which still turns up a few cases in the US each year. Guess where, in the southern Rockies, where there are a surprising number of reservations, so they have that to contend with along with the Hanta virus,
Alcohol. This was recognized very early by native leaders as a scourge on their people. It still is a difficult problem on the reservations.

Benefits to the Europeans
Land, This allowed the expansion of European culture in its American forms.
Mineral wealth, from the gold of Georgia in the 1830s to the North Slope oil deposits, this is still being exploited.

Negative impacts on the Europeans.
Established independently minded populations in the Americas, costing blood and treasure in their efforts to free themselves.
Disease, the syphillis story is questioned today, but there is an interesting coincidence that an epidemic of the disease spread through Europe in the period the Americas were being explored.

The only thing that I could add would be a kind of Noble Sauvage concept that we inherited from Rousseau and the Romantics. The late Charlotte Black Elk, a brilliant and beautiful lady of the Lakota nation, pointed out "we were human beings" and there were things they did that they weren't proud of, just as there are things whites are not proud of. There are archeological sites where there are hundreds of buffalo piled up at the bottom of a cliff, where they had been driven by their human pursuers. The efficiency of hunting with better weapons had a positive effect on the indigenous people as well, with a rifle, they could kill enough buffalo in a hunt to supply their camps, they didn't need the mass slaughter their stone age ancestors had depended on.

The biggest trouble with putting a group of people on a pedestal is that one event, shameful as it is, can cause the entire pedestal to crumble. There is so much of a mixture in humanity, there is good and bad in everyone (and now I'll stop since I've started quoting "Ebony and Ivory").

Answer 3

world changed interaction native americans europeans

Answer 4

I've always wondered that about humans in general. I would love to go back in time and just witness the looks on people's faces. I'm sure whites initially probably looked pretty sickly to most other people in the world! lol