The Yogi who met Socrates

Death of Socrates by Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825)

In the 5th century BCE, the contacts between India and Greece became sporadic. The reason for this was the defeat of the Persian army in two wars. In 490 BCE, the Persian army, which included Indian cavalry, was defeated by the Athenians at the Battle of Marathon. The Persians were also defeated in 480 BCE at the Battle of Plataea which followed the Battle of Thermopylae (remember 300?). Since the relation between the Persians and Greeks broke down, it in turn affected the Indo-Greek relations.
That said, there is evidence that Indian ascetics traveled to Greece along a trade route that went through Oxus river, Caspian Sea, Kyros river and Black Sea. These ascetics influenced Diogenes of Sinope (412 – 323 BCE) who then introduced Indian ascetic practices into Greek traditions. But much before Diogenes, there is a mention of an Indian yogi who met Socrates and had a conversation.
According to Aristoxenus, a disciple of Aristotle, this Indian met Socrates in Athens and asked him what he studying. Socrates replied that he was studying human life. The Indian at this point laughed and asked him how could he study human life without studying the divine. The quote is as follows

‘Now Aristoxenus the Musician says that this argument comes from the Indians: for a certain man of that nation fell in with Socrates at Athens, and presently asked him, what he was doing in philosophy: and when he said, that he was studying human life, the Indian laughed at him, and said that no one could comprehend things human, if he were ignorant of things divine [Eusebius of Caesarea: Praeparatio Evangelica (Preparation for the Gospel). Tr. E.H. Gifford (1903) — Book 11]

It is not sure if Socrates changed his mind, but his student Plato was influenced. Plato who previously argued that human and divine affairs were the same, started distinguishing between the two. According to Plato there was one kind of study concerning nature, another concerning humans and a third concerning dialectic.

‘But he maintained that we could not take a clear view of human affairs, unless the divine were previously discerned: for just as physicians, when treating any parts of the body, attend first to the state of the whole, so the man who is to take a clear view of things here on earth must first know the nature of the universe; and man, he said, was a part of the world; and good was of two kinds, our own good and that of the whole, and the good of the whole was the more important, because the other was for its sake.[Eusebius of Caesarea: Praeparatio Evangelica (Preparation for the Gospel). Tr. E.H. Gifford (1903) — Book 11]

Unfortunately, we don’t know the name of this Indian teacher and to what tradition he belongs to or any other detail.

Reference

Mcevilley, Thomas C. The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies. 1st ed. Allworth Press, 2001.
Caesarea, Eusebius of. Eusebius of Caesarea: Praeparatio Evangelica, 2010.

Briefly Noted: Lincoln (2012)

It could have been made as a war movie, but it was not. The movie is about the politics behind the passing of the 13th amendment and it shows Lincoln the visionary as well as Lincoln the ruthless politician. Even though the Emancipation proclamation was passed, Lincoln knew it could be overturned after the war. He needed a law, but did not have enough votes in the House (The Senate had passed the bill). So he and his Secretary of State Seward employ the services of three lobbyists who manage to get the required votes through some unsavory means.
Even though the film is dialogue based and mostly shot indoors it makes for gripping viewing. Like the last over in Lagaan, there is tension is in the air as the votes are counted on the fateful day. Daniel Day-Lewis simply becomes Lincoln as if the photographs we had seen just came to life. His dialogue delivery is amazing, whether it is narrating a funny anecdote in the Cabinet meeting or explaining Euclid’s philosophy to telegraph operators at 4 am. It is his movie and his performance just mesmerizes you. Apparently he first did not want to act in this movie and later he turned around. It would be hard to imagine anyone else in this role.
Another interesting aspect of the movie is the debate in the House over the bill. The Democrats wonder what will be next after the 13th Amendment. Will Lincoln or the abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens consider Blacks equal to Whites? Or will they go so far as to give voting rights to colored people and women?
The amount of attention paid to details is also amazing. In an interview with NPR, Tony Kushner explained how he made sure that the words used in the movie were words used during that period by consulting the Oxford English dictionary.

“My main concern was to make it playable — that it had to be language that wouldn’t get in the way either of what the actors needed to do with it, or the audience hearing it. That it rang true. And for that, 19th-century novels were an enormous help — also newspaper accounts and even transcripts of some conversations that are available. And I used the Oxford dictionary, and I checked every single word through all 10 million pages that I wrote. If any word struck me as possibly post-1865, the OED is great, because it’s a word museum. And it will tell you when every word, as far as we know, first appeared in the English language.”[Kushner’s ‘Lincoln’ Is Strange, But Also Savvy]

The sound editing team made sure that the sounds were as accurate as possible.

Since sound recording was not widely available until Edison’s phonograph was invented in the 1870s, Lincoln’s sound team got creative. After a long period of negotiations, they were able to venture into the White House with handheld recorders to capture the noise of the opening and closing of period doors and the ticking of the clock that had been in Lincoln’s office during the Civil War. Indeed, the sounds of the various clocks around the White House feature prominently in the film, perhaps to emphasize that Lincoln’s effort to pass the 13th Amendment is, in its own way, a race against the clock.[How Lincoln Recorded the Sounds of History]

Visually rich and technically perfect, this movie was quite fascinating for me because it showed a human Lincoln and not the deified version.

The King who cried Wolf

Francis Barlow's illustration of the fable, 1687 — Francis Barlow’s illustration of the fable, 1687

Aesop’s Fable of the boy who cried wolf is well known, but less known is a story from Chinese history which parallels this.
It happened during the reign of King You of the Zhou dynasty in the 8th century BCE. He had a concubine named Bao Si whom he loved more than the queen. The queen and her son were demoted and Bao Si and her son took the place. Everything looked good, except for one thing: Bao Si would not smile. This “no-laughing-matter” bothered the king and he pondered over various solutions.
The Zhou dynasty was established in the 11th century BCE and ruled by what is known as the Mandate of Heaven. According to this theory, the heaven would react based on the character of the king. If the king had bad character and did not govern properly, the heaven would send messages to correct him. The king had to govern with fairness and provide justice. In other words, he had to govern based on dharma. Confucius would be born into during the reign of this dynasty, but centuries later.
The king had around 148 vassals and they were kept happy and loyal. Once the beacon fire which is lit to summon the vassals in case of an emergency was accidentaly lit. Various armies reached the capital only to find that it was a false alarm. But Bao Si was very happy seeing the military parade. Seeing her smiley face, King You lit the beacons again and again and after a few times, the feudal lords said, “You, this is not funny!”
Then one day the real wolf showed up: the steppe people attacked and the beacons were lit again. This time the vassals ignored the king’s summons. The steppe people took over the capital in the Wei valley, killed the king and captured Bao Si. That was the end of the Western Zhou.
Is there any truth to this story? What is known is that the Western Zhou was attacked and the king was killed at this point. Regarding Bao Si, it loos like the story was made up by Chinese historians to either drum up the point that kings (or CIA directors) should not fall under the spell of women or to illustrate how a woman could cause the fall of a dynasty.
Reference

MMW 11, Lecture 14 by Prof. Matthew Herbst at UC San Diego
Tanner, Harold Miles. China: A History. Hackett Publishing, 2009.
Feng, Li. Landscape and Power in Early China: The Crisis and Fall of the Western Zhou 1045-771 BC. Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Causes and Processes of European conquests of the Americas

The above image shows a globe made by Martin Behaim in 1492. Filled with inaccuracies, it also does not depict the Americas because Columbus had not yet gone for the conquest of paradise and Americas were not part of the Eurasian trading system. But all that changed in a span of a century as large and wealthy empires fell to the Spanish.
Following the fall of Constantinople, Europeans were forced to look for new trading paths to the East. This was essential to procure spices from India and silk from China by cutting out the middlemen. The two options they had at this point were warfare and exploration. Following the devastation inflicted by the Black Death, Europe was not in a powerful position in attacking the Muslims, though they were quite successful in expelling Muslims from the Iberian peninsula. But success on the East, where it mattered most, was almost impossible. Also, they lacked the wealth — gold and silver — for a massive war.
Thus exploration became an option of necessity and few things lined up for them. First, there were advances in building ships like the caravel which helped them navigate longer distances. Second, they gained expertise in using the astrolabe and the compass as opposed to solely relying on the stars. Third, they discovered ocean currents and trade winds which helped them move across the Atlantic. Finally, they also figured out how to mount canons on ships and that changed the nature of maritime commerce.

Pizarro meets with the Inca emperor Atahualpa, 1532

The mission to the Americas depended on various partners; it was similar to funding a startup. There were Venture Capitalists (kings and rich merchants), Business Team (explorers and exploiters like Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus, Hernan Cortes and Pizzaro) and employees (or slaves and low wage earners in this case). The explorers were motivated by wealth, fame and religion. While the first two are obvious, the last one requires an explanation. Europeans saw that they had to civilize the natives of the countries they conquered and thus found lot of support from the religious authorities.
While those were the causes, the process of conquest had many components as well. The most common answer is “Guns, Germs and Steel”, but the process of the European conquest of the Americas had multiple components to it. The Americas, it is true, did not have guns or steel. They also did not use animals for fighting. They had their conflicts, but it was mostly never about conquest or exploitation, but about conquering people.The Europeans came with a much different mentality and weapons that the Americas could not win against. The task left incomplete by guns and steel, were finished off by the pathogens. The Americans were not immune to the European diseases and it decimated them. Thus the spread of small pox helped the Spanish kill more Americans than was possible using the sword.

The largest Aztec market near Tenochtitlan

A less mentioned aspect of the Spanish conquest is the help they received from the insiders. For example, Cortes had a mistress named Donna Marina who helped them in uncovering Aztec plots against the Spaniards and served as his translator. They also made alliances with the enemies of the people whom they were trying to conquer. As we saw in the lessons from Peru, some facts were conveniently left out in the European narratives. Thus with the case of the Aztecs, the Tlaxcalans and other Mesoamericans helped the Spaniards and with the Incas they were able to take advantage of a civil war. How else could few hundred Spaniards win a war in which tens of thousands of people fought?
Once the Aztec and the Inca empires were conquered, the Spaniards had to find a way to keep it under their control as a colony. The Spaniards were a few and the empires they conquered, besides being wealthy, had a large population. The way they found was to attack the ruling class, decapitate the indigenous structure and replace the ruling elites with Spaniards. As money flowed up the native tribute-paying pyramid system, it reached the hands of the Spanish elites. During their early exploration phase, they had experimented with setting up colonies, importing slaves and cultivating crops for exports in the Azores and the Canary Islands. Now they were able to implement a large scale version of those laboratory experiments and Americas for the first time started growing things for the consumption of others.
(From my assignment for A History of the World since 1300 at Princeton)
Reference

Tignor, Robert, Jeremy Adelman, Stephen Aron, Stephen Kotkin, Suzanne Marchand, Gyan Prakash, and Michael Tsin. Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A History of the World: From 1000 CE to the Present (Third Edition). Third ed. W. W. Norton & Company
Lectures by Prof. Jeremy Adelman

Mexican Silver in England

In a previous post I had explained how the Spaniards ended up with a mother lode of wealth when they conquered the Americas. They were able to mine silver from places like Potosi from where silver was extracted and sent back to Spain. Between 1560 and 1685 CE, Spanish America sent between 25,000 to 35, 000 tons of silver to Spain and in the century following that the amount doubled causing an inflation in Europe. But if you analyze the English coins during that period, you see traces of Mexican silver, but not Potosi silver. Today there is an explanation.

Geography may explain this, she says: It was easier to ship Mexican silver eastward to Europe than to get Potosí silver across the breadth of Brazil. Instead, Potosí silver went west, from Lima to Acapulco and onward to markets in China. Scholars have known of this westward trade route before, which probably didn’t become really important until the early 17th century, says John Munro, an economist at the University of Toronto.[Mexican silver made it into English coins]

The Mystery of Prehistoric Venus Figurines

All the above pictures show what is known as “Venus figurines.” They are statuettes of women created by people who lived around 25,000 years back in Europe. The interesting thing about them is that such figurines were found from Western Europe to Ukraine and so one has to ask the academic question, “What’s the deal?.” Why did prehistoric people create such anatomically exaggerated statuettes? Obviously it meant something to them and they created and reproduced this art form many times. But why?
Prehistoric art gives us insight into the world of people who lived in caves and were ignorant about farming. Even though their life was different, they too indulged in art like creating such figurines and by painting on rock like the one seen in Chauvet caves.There are few theories about these European Venus figurines

They represent powerful fertile women and represent goddess worship in a matriarchal society.
This is stone age pornography. They were made by men to touch and fondle. (Yes, it is a theory)
These are self portraits
These are stone age dolls
They are related to fertility – either as a talisman or to give solace to women giving birth.

We don’t know which one is true. Each of these theories may reflect our thinking than the real motivation behind the figurines. Since these belong to the prehistoric period, guessing is what we can do. But as we move to India, many millenia later, we can eliminate some possibilities.

Figurines found at Inamgaon (via HD Sankalia)

In India, we don’t see figurines dating to 25,000 years Before Present. Similar looking female figurines of clay were found at Inamgaon and Nevasa near Pune dating to around 1400 – 1000 BCE. They were found buried under a house floor and probably was a goddess connected with fertility, childbirth or the welfare of children. It is the fact that they were found buried under a house that gives a clue that it was connected with an important household ritual.
Reference:

Lecture 3 by Prof. Matthew Herbst at UCSD for MMW 11
Singh, Upinder. A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century. 1st ed. Prentice Hall, 2009.

Indian History Carnival – 59: Diana Eck, Asoka, Bamiyan,Harihareshvara temple, Zheng He

Asoka's inscription in Greek and Aramaic — Asoka’s inscription in Greek and Aramaic

While reading Diana Eck’s India: A Sacred Geography, Sunil Deepak has questions like why our ancient traditions are not taught in schools. He argues that we need to break out of the cultural colonization of the mind

I feel that we have a kind of cultural colonization of our minds, where we pretend that only western linear-rational way of thinking exists, and world needs to be understood exclusively according to this logic. The non-linear and apparently contradictory thinking pervades our cultures, but we pretend that it does not merit acknowledgement or understanding.
We need to break free of this cultural colonization and learn to look at our ancient myths, stories and traditions as living paradigms that influence and shape us even today

Why did Asoka write some his edicts in Aramaic? Fëanor investigates

Why Aramaic? Well, that was the main language of communication across the Near East and the erstwhile Persian empire. (Recall it had fallen less than a century earlier.) Rather unchauvinistically, the Achaemenid rules of Iran didn’t impose their own lingo on their subjects. The Greek bit is slightly more comprehensible – there were Greek-speaking peoples dotting the sundry Alexandrias set up by that maniac eponymous conqueror all the way from Greece to the Hindu Kush. According to Carratelli (the translator above) it appears that the Seleucid rulers of the area were in the process of establishing Greek as official bureaucratic language, but because it’s unlikely that Ashoka was propagandising outside his empire, he must have been aiming his bilingual texts for Greeks living within it. (Why is it unlikely?)

Judith Weingarten writes about the history of Bamiyan and the various travelers who wrote about their visits.

Visitors of an entirely different kind arrived in Bamiyan in the 19th century, adventurers and spies heading to or from British India. The antiquarian Charles Masson (actually a deserter from the British army) arrived in 1832. An early excavator of Buddhist sites, he also worked surreptitiously for the British as their ‘Agent in Cabul for communicating intelligence of the state of affairs in that quarter on a salary of Rs. 250 per annum.’ It didn’t take long for Afghan authorities to realize — correctly — that English archaeologists was just another way of saying English spies.

Indian History and Architecture blog has a post about the Harihareshvara temple and the author goes over various inscriptions found in the town.

No 82, Inscriptions of the Chalukyas of Badami – Language Sanskrit, script Early Kannada – dated Saka 616 (694-95 CE) – The purpose of the record was to register the grant of the village Kirukagamasi in Edevolal-vishaya in Vanavasi-mandala to Ishanasharma of Vatsya-gotra who was the son of Marasharma and grandson of Shrisharma, who had performed the Soma sacrifice. The donee was an adept in Vedas and Vedangas. The grant was given at the request of illustrious Aluvaraja when the king Vinayaditya was in his victorious camp at Karanjapatra in the neighborhood of Hareshpura. Given also were cultivated and uncultivated fields on the west of village Pergamasi. In the connection with the boundaries of these fields are mentioned certain villages, viz., Pulivutu near Sirigodu, Karvasurigola, Perbutu, Algire, Algola, Nittakala, Nerilgire, Kurupakere and Arakatta. The record was written by mahasandhivigrahika Sri-Ramapunyavallabha.

Calicut Heritage attended a discussion in Singapore in which the topic was if Zheng He‘s voyages were part of China’s imperialist designs?

In sum, Calicut cannot subscribe to the theory that the Zheng He fleet was out to conquer and colonise. That was not the experience of medieval Calicut, at least. They did nothing to dominate or control the ports or maritime trade routes of either Quilon or Calicut. Perhaps, as in the case of Vasco da Gama ( who thought that the ruler and people of Calicut were Christian because he mistook the temple of Devi in Puthoor for a Church of Mother Mary), the Chinese mistook the polite exchange of gifts by the Calicut ruler for a tacit recognition of Chinese sovereignty! But, proto-colonialism – sorry, we do not share the view point.

The next edition will be the 60th edition of the Carnival which completes 5 years. It should be up on the 15th of December. Please send your nominations to varnam.blog @gmail

Tamil-Brahmi in Oman

2nd century BCE potsherd with Tamil-Brahmi writing found in Tissamaharama, Sri Lanka

While we are trying to figure out if Harappans wrote in proto-Brahmi, here is a interesting story about something that was written in Tamil using Brahmi script. An Italian archaeological mission to Oman found a potsherd in 2006 in the Khor Rori area, but they could not make out what was written on it. They displayed it at a workshop in Kerala and our folks were able to read what was written on it.

The script “nantai kiran,” signifying a personal name, has two components, Dr. Rajan said. The first part “[n] antai” is an honorific suffix to the name of an elderly person. For instance, “kulantai-campan,” “antai asutan,” “korrantai” and so on found in Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions could be cited. The second component “Kiran” also stands for a personal name. More than 20 poets of the Tamil Sangam age [circa third century BCE to third century CE] have “kiran” as part of their personal names. “Thus, the broken piece of the pot carries the personal name of an important trader who commanded a high regard in the trading community,” Dr. Rajan argued. [Potsherd with Tamil-Brahmi script found in Oman]

The potsherd is dated to around the first century CE. Previously Tamil-Brahmi texts have been found in Berenike and Quseir al-Qadim in Egypt and this is the first time such text has been found in the Arabian peninsula. This discovery of the text itself is not shocking for there exists enough historical evidence for trade for Indian Ocean trade dating to that period.
While there is still controversy over how old Tamil-Brahmi is, texts have been found in various places in South India, like Adichanallur. It also has been found as far away as Thailand

Did Harappans write in proto-Brahmi?

One of the biggest mysteries of ancient India is regarding the language spoken by the Harappans. This is a hard problem compared to the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphics and cuneiform because both the script and the language are unknown. This has not prevented researchers from making educated and sometimes politically motivated guesses. While most decipherments favor Dravidian or proto-Dravidian as the language, there have been few who have suggested that the language was Indo-European.
And now there is some exciting news

A palm leaf manuscript discovered from Harappan site in Afghanistan has strengthened the belief of existence of a proto Brahmi script, which was used by Indus Valley people. This discussion was raised by Dr DP Sharma, Harappan archaeologist and director, Bharat Kala Bhawan, Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in the International Conference on Harappan Archaeology held recently in Chandigarh.[Harappan people used an older form of Brahmi script: Expert]

This is not a new hypothesis; the relationship between the Harappan script and Brahmi has been suggested since 1934. Let me quote from one of my earlier posts

In 1934, G. R Hunter concluded that Brahmi was derived from Indus script. According to Hunter even scripts like Sabaean and Phonecian were derived from the Indus. John E Mitchiner looked at the one particular feature of the Indus script — the case endings — and concluded that it could not be Elamite or Dravidian, but only Indo-European[6].
Taking this further, Subhash Kak did a mathematical analysis of the Indus script and the oldest Indian script – Brahmi. When a table containing the ten most commonly occurring Sanskrit phonemes (from ten thousand words), was compared to the ten most commonly occurring Indus symbols and there was a convincing similarity, even though Brahmi was a millennium after the Indus script. Surprisingly some of the characters, like the fish, looked similar too[6].
There are three possibilities here: (a) the similarity is random (b) scribes who used Brahmi used Indus signs without knowing how they read and (c) Brahmi was derived consciously from the Indus script. But when the probability of this happening by chance was computed, it was found to be quite low. Also among the ten most common signs of Indus and Brahmi there is striking similarity between four of five signs[6][The Indus Script – Decipherments]

Another interesting aspect of the Harappan script is the direction in which it is written. What we have seen so far is this

Most of the seals were written from right to left; there is a crowding of letters in the left when the writer ran out of space or wide space when the scribe did not have enough to write[1]. In fact 83% of the seals are written from right to left and only 7% were found which indicate a left to right writing[8]. There are also some samples which are boustrophedonic (left to right followed by right to left)[1]. One theory suggests that texts which were written for the local population, like the sign board found in Dholavira, were written from left to right, while trade seals were written from right to left to be in sync with the writing in Sumer and Akkad[8] [The Indus Script – Introduction]

While earlier theories suggest that the direction of writing changed based on the destination, this article suggests that a century before the decline of the civilization, the direction changed permanently.

During the mature Harappan period (2700 BC to 2000 BC) the direction of Harappan writing system was right to left and later on around 2000 to 1500 BC they started their writing system from left to right. The existence of no long manuscript had posed the difficulty in deciphering the Harappan script, however, the manuscript on palm leaves may solve this problem”.[Harappan people used an older form of Brahmi script: Expert]

All this hypothesis is based on a manuscript written on palm leaves. The article does not mention the age of the manuscript and how it survived over 5000 years without destruction; a picture of the writing would be really helpful. Another issue with the Indus script is that they are very short, but the article claims that the manuscript has longer text. To folks who have been doing mathematical analysis on the script, the longer text would be valuable. I hope the ASI makes this information public.

Impact of the Columbian Exchange on the world

The above picture shows a world map created by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in 1507 CE. If you look towards the left of the map, you will see a narrow strip where the Americas are located. This is an important development because this map was created in just two decades after Christopher Columbus reached the New World and previous maps did not contain this land. This discovery of the Americas had a major impact on global trade and the Columbian Exchange changed the balance of global forces across the world.
Few years after Columbus failed in his mission to find the Indies, Vasco da Gama reached the Malabar coast. To impress the Zamorin, he took out the gifts he had bought and the people from the court who had come to examine them burst into laughter. These trinkets, they explained, were not the gifts suitable for a rich king. Even the poor merchants from Mecca or India gave better gifts. Did the Captain-Major have any gold, they asked. According to the accounts, Gama’s face fell.
This episode symbolizes the trade equation between the East and West during the 15th century. Asia produced spices, silk, porcelain and tea which the Europeans badly wanted, but there was nothing Europe produced that the Asians needed. Asia needed gold and silver and Europe did not have sufficient quantity of it.

But with the discovery of the Americas, the Spaniards ended up with a mother-lode of wealth. The image on the side shows a 1553 CE map of the city of Potosí in Bolivia. This was one of the sites of a major silver mine which the Spaniards reached after they had done looting the native coffers. Between 1560 and 1685 CE, Spanish America sent between 25,000 to 35, 000 tons of silver to Spain and in the century following that the amount doubled. In fact around 85% of the world’s silver supplies came from the Americas. This was extracted from 30 such mines.To compare it to modern times, it was like Saudi Arabia discovering oil.
Once they had access to the wealth, the first thing that changed was the shipbuilding industry as ships became cheaper and easier to build. Using Brazilwood, the Europeans built a large number of ships which were capable of transporting both goods and people on a large scale. These ships helped in further conquests, trade and colonization.
This brings to the second point regarding how the Columbian exchange affected the balance of global forces across the world. To mine the silver and gold, large manpower was required. But there were not many natives left to mine for these precious metals. Europeans brought with them epidemics like smallpox, measles and typhoid. Around 14 such epidemics helped in wiping out the native population from 120 million to 20 million within a century of Columbus setting foot in the region.
To replace the natives, Africans were imported into Brazil, the Caribbean and the East Coast of United States. These Africans were involuntarily brought in slave ships where they were packed like sardines. Many died of diseases along the way. Colonies were established all over the New World and the slaves died due to the miserable working conditions in these colonies. Due to the Columbian exchange, the native population of the New World was decimated, the African population was displaced and there was a population explosion in Europe.

Cross section of a ship showing how slaves were packed

The Columbian Exchange also helped in altering the flora and fauna in the world. While cotton, indigo, bananas and sugar reached the New World, tomato, maize, potato and cocoa reached Europe and then the rest of the world. Horses, cattle, sheep and pigs also spread in the colonies. Sugar emerged as one of the most valuable exports from the Americas. Though sugarcane cultivation originated in India, the Americas became a major exporter of the product. Also, the tomato reached Europe for the first time; till then the Italians cooked without tomato.
Now with the silver from the mines and the goods produced by the slave population, Europeans had products which they could sell in the global trading system. With access to cheap source of food and precious metals, Europeans entered the global trading system which was dominated by the silks from China and spices from India and changed the trade imbalance. Columbian exchange gave Europe sufficient wealth and goods to become a dominant trading system. It affected the lives of people — the natives, the conquerors and the Africans — in a profound way. It also affected the foods that people ate and the animals that they used for food and warfare.
(This was one of my assignments in a history course I am doing now)
Reference

Tignor, Robert, Jeremy Adelman, Stephen Aron, Stephen Kotkin, Suzanne Marchand, Gyan Prakash, and Michael Tsin. Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A History of the World: From 1000 CE to the Present (Third Edition). Third ed. W. W. Norton & Company, 2010