The European plants like wheat, rice, sugarcane and barley and animals like cattle, horses, sheep, swine and chickens affected the native environment. No other person, Mann suggests, changed the face of the Earth as radically as Columbus did. A diverse population of farmers, fishermen and investors were introduced to the Mid-Atlantic. Tobacco cultivation later formed the basis for the first English colonies in the New World. People throughout the world continuously grow, process, export and carry food. Fig. Environmental Effects Of The Columbian Exchange On Native Americans Watch this BRI Homework Help video on the Columbian Exchange for a review of the main ideas in this essay. Indeed, wheat remains an important staple in North and South America. However the explorers werent the sole transmitters these diseases. What were the goals of Spanish colonization? The Impact of The Columbian Exchange on Europe and America Discoveries of new supplies of metals are perhaps the biggest. Mestizos took pride in both their pre-Columbian and their Spanish heritage and created images such as the Virgin of Guadalupe a brown-skinned, Latin American Mary who differed from her lighter-skinned European predecessors. The Columbian Exchange refers to the monumental transfer of goods such as: ideas, foods, animals, religions, cultures, and even diseases between Afroeurasia and the Americas after Christopher Columbus voyage in 1492. The Columbian Exchange is one of the more spectacular ecological events of the past millennium. Tapped from the bark of the rubber tree, natural rubber was shipped across the Atlantic in ever greater quantities. Today, these imported crops from the Andes form a considerable part of the diet of China's billion-plus population. European priests and friars preached Christianity to the Native Americans, who in turn adopted and adapted its beliefs.