ABSTRACT
Columbus’s 1492 voyage in search of a western passage to the Spice Islands began a fundamental transformation in the eating habits of all humans. The immediate biological and environmental consequences of contact between Europe and the Americas were dramatic, as exposure to Old World diseases killed more than 80 percent of the New World population within a hundred years. Aided by this unintentional germ warfare, Spanish conquistadors quickly subdued the vast Aztec, Maya, and Inca empires. European plants and animals flourished in the fields left open by demographic decline, transforming the ecology of the Americas, but the Spaniards succeeded only partially in their goal of establishing colonial replicas of their homeland. Surviving natives intermarried with European colonists and with African slaves, creating new ethnic blends. Highly productive food crops domesticated in the New World not only persisted as essential staples for both natives and newcomers alike, they were also carried back across the Atlantic and launched a demographic revolution in the Old World, helping set the stage for modern population growth.
