The Europeans’ so-called discovery of the so-called New World goes down in history as one of the most important and earth-shattering moments in human history, ranking right up there with the advent of agriculture, the domestication of animals, and the discovery of the use of fire. Although the Vikings made it to Newfoundland around the year 1000, they apparently decided that Greenland would make for a much better colony and scrammed, leaving the Spanish with all the glory almost five centuries later. The ensuing exchange of plants, animals, people, and diseases has since been named the "Columbian Exchange" after the charismatic Christopher Columbus, who bumped into the Bahamas thinking he’d made it to India.

Over the next few centuries, different groups of European explorers brought crops such as corn, potatoes, cassava, tomatoes, peppers, cocoa, peanuts, strawberries, and tobacco back to the Old World from the Americas – meaning that the potato is no more Irish than the tomato is Italian, the pepper is Spanish, or the cigarette is French. In particular, carb-rich corn and potatoes helped ease the killer food shortages that were all-too common in Europe; Ireland’s population alone swelled 800 percent in 200 years – only to be devastated by the potato blight in the mid-1840’s. So much for putting all your potatoes in one basket.

Of course, it wouldn’t be called the Columbian Exchange if the process hadn’t gone both ways. Picture the Plains Indians, then subtract the horses. Picture a Central American banana republic, then subtract the bananas. Picture a Columbian donkey carrying a load of coffee beans, then subtract both the donkey and the coffee beans. Picture a spread of Mexican food, then subtract the rice, cheese, lettuce, black olives, onion, chicken, pork, and beef. Or picture a handful of far-flung, arid, completely impoverished Indian Reservations, then subtract the smallpox, influenza, typhoid, cholera, tuberculosis, measles, scarlet fever, yellow fever, and malaria. These were just a few of the things that Europeans brought with them during the early years of interaction with the New World.

The New World was a pretty healthy place before the Columbian Exchange, which is why Old World diseases had such an easy time decimating the indigenous populations. Think Jim and Dwight talking health insurance on The Office. Dwight: "Don't need it. Never been sick. Perfect immune system." Jim: "Okay, well, if you've never been sick, then you don't have any antibodies." Having already spent centuries suffering continuous outbreaks of some thoroughly nasty diseases, Old Worlders had built up quite the array of antibodies by the time they reached the Americas. In fact, many of the animals they brought to the New World – those aforementioned chickens, pigs, and cows, for example – were a major reason that Europeans were so sick all the time. Turns out, sleeping in the same one-room house as your livestock can do some wicked damage to your health, especially at a time when bathing once a week made you a real dandy.

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