Which Animal Was Native To The Old World?

The Columbian Exchange: Plants, Animals, and Disease between the Quondam and New Worlds Alfred W. Crosby, Professor Emeritus, University of Texas at Austin © National Humanities Centre

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	Giesslev, 1804 Library of Congress Plants cultivated past Native Americans and introduced to Europe afterwards 1492 epitome enlargement

The contrast between the two sets of organisms, Old Globe and New Earth, those closely associated with humanity—crop plants, domesticated animals, germs, and weeds—was very sharp. The departure between the two lists of crops was, with the possible exception of cotton, absolute. (I am omitting dozens of not quite so important crops in these lists.)

	New World crops maize (corn) white potatoes sweetness potatoes manioc peanuts tomatoes squash (incl. pumpkin) pineapples papaya avocados		Quondam World crops rice wheat barley oats rye turnips onions cabbage lettuce peaches pears sugar
"Ananas cosmosus" [pineapple], in Oviedo, La historia general de las Indias, 1535 Library of Congress				"Lactuca capitata. Cabbage Lettuce," in Gerard, The herball, 1633 SCETI

The difference betwixt the two lists of domesticated animals is even more amazing. They differ not but in content merely in length.

"Allocamelus" [llama], in Topsell, The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes and Serpents and Insects, 1658

New World domesticated animals dogs llamas guinea pigs fowl (a few species)

Sometime World domesticated animals dogs horses donkeys pigs cattle goats sheep barnyard fowl

Horse, in Ruini, Dell'anotomia et dell'infirmità del cavallo, 1598 Library of Congress

de Bry, "The Towne Secota," in Hariot, A Briefe and Truthful Report of the New Constitute Land of Virginia, 1590 Library of Congress Corn, pumpkins, tobacco, and sunflowers grown by Algonquian Indians near the 1585 English colony on Roanoke Island

The achievements of Amerindian farmers were as impressive as those of Onetime World farmers, especially if you have into account the fact that the Amerindians' lands were smaller in area and they had fewer species of plants to work with than the Former World farmers, only the achievements of Amerindian livestockmen were clearly inferior to their Sometime World reverse numbers. Perhaps the Americas just had fewer species of large mammals that could exist tamed. There were, for example, no wild horses or cattle in the Americas to tame. What about North American buffalo? They resisted and still resist domestication. The Amerindians did domesticate the llama, the humpless camel of the Andes, but it cannot carry more than virtually two hundred pounds at most, cannot be ridden, and is annihilation but an amiable beast of brunt.

. . . an epidemic broke out, a sickness of pustules. It began in Tepeilhuitl. Large bumps spread on people; some were entirely covered. . . .[The victims] could no longer walk about, merely lay in their dwellings and sleeping places, . . . And when they made a motion, they called out loudly. The pustules that covered people acquired great desolation; very many people died of them, and many merely starved to decease; starvation reigned, and no ane took care of others whatever longer. Excerpt and illustration from Sahagún, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, c. 1575-1580; ed., tr., James Lockhart, We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest United mexican states (Univ. of California Press, 1993)

More astonishing than the divergence between the length of the lists of Old World'due south and New World's domesticated animals is the difference between the lengths of the lists of infectious diseases native to the two. The New World had only a few, possibly because humans had been present there and had lived in dense populations, cities, for a short time compared to the Former. Possibly of greater importance is the relative lack of domesticated herd animals in America, one of our richest sources of disease micro-organisms. (For case, nosotros share flu with pigs and other barnyard animals).

At that place were infections in the New Earth before 1492 that were not present in the Onetime (Chargas' disease, for instance). At that place were those it shared with the Old World, certainly 1 or more of the treponematoses (a category including syphilis) and possibly tuberculosis; but the listing is short, very short. When we listing the infections brought to the New World from the Old, withal, we detect most of humanity'southward worst afflictions, among them smallpox, malaria, yellow fever, measles, cholera, typhoid, and bubonic plague.

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