Blog #12

I read a text about European colonization to America. They believe that the first people to ever reach the "Americas" were the Vikings, who made several colonies in Greenland. Then in 1492, the Spanish explorer we all know and thank for America today, Christopher Columbus set sail and reached the Americas, after which European exploration and colonization quickly expanded. Soon later, almost the entire Western Hemisphere would be controlled by the Europeans and all of their aspects, such as population, landscape, plant and animal life, and customs would be dominated by the Europeans. In the 19th century, about 50 million people left Europe to be in the "Americas". When they first got to the "Americas" the Europeans lived in close proximity with animals such as cows, pigs, sheep, goats, etc. which caused epidemic diseases unknown the Europeans. Some of these diseases included smallpox, influenza, and the measles. This killed between 10 million and 20 million of the population.The cultural and political instability appears to have been of the efforts to seize great wealth in land and resources. This calamity of diseases and losing lives was just a little bit of the events that happened when the Europeans discovered a new world.