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The rise of agriculture ushered in an era of increasing innovation in communication and transportation that led different parts of the world to connect in entirely new ways. The voyages of Christopher Columbus extended this exchange from Afro-Eurasia to the Americas, which saw a massive movement of ideas, people, diseases, plants, and animals between the two hemispheres. The results of these exchanges were dramatic. Potatoes and corn, first cultivated in the Americas, quickly became crucial in the diets of people across Eurasia. Horses and cattle, unknown in the New World in 1492, quickly took on crucial roles in many societies in the Americas. The linking of the different world zones in this period and the exchanges that this linking made possible, transformed the lifeways of the people and civilizations involved – and laid the foundation for modern exchange routes and the global balance of power.

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