How two worlds became one. In this audiobook, you will understand how Christopher Columbus proposed something new: reaching the riches of the East Indies by sailing west from Europe. The rulers of Spain agreed to support his risky venture, and he sailed off in 1492. He unexpectedly ran into two continents nobody in Europe knew about. He didn't discover the continents; that had been done centuries before. Discover how the Old World of Eurasia and Africa began a monumentally important exchange of people, ideas, crops, animals, and diseases that changed history and humanity forever. This extended stitching together of the two hemispheres is called the Columbian Exchange. You'll be fascinated by how Europeans did not know if the fifty million indigenous Americans were human and how a pope issued a proclamation in 1534 that the American native peoples actually had souls. You'll learn how the initial contacts led to one of the greatest catastrophes in all of human history and how smallpox enabled Cortes and the Spanish to conquer the Aztec Empire, which was bigger than Spain. In this captivating audiobook, you will learn about the following: Be sure to click the "add to cart" button so you can start learning about this world-shaking event in history!