The Columbian Exchange has been one of the most significant events in the history of world agriculture, and culture. The term is used to describe the huge widespread exchange of plants, animals, foods, human populations including slaves, diseases, and ideas between the Eastern and Western hemispheres that occurred after 1492. Many new and different goods were exchanged between the two hemispheres of the Earth, and it began a new revolution in the Americas and in Europe. In 1492 Christopher Columbus first voyage launched an era of large-scale contact between the old and the New world that resulted in this ecological revolution: hence the name "Columbian" Exchange.
The Columbian Exchange greatly affected almost every society on earth, bringing destructive diseases that depopulated many cultures, and also circulating a wide variety of new crops and livestock that, in the long term, increased rather than diminished the world human population. Maize and potatoes became very important crops in Eurasia by the 1700s.