US. The travesties and slaughter committed against massive populations of America'sindigenous people can be attributed to Columbus's discoveries which lead to American colonization.

History was primarily changed by the exchange of plants and animals between Europe and the Americas, commonly known as the Columbian Exchange. Tomatoes, Potatoes, and Corn (Maize) previously unknown in Europe became an important part of the diet of people living there. Similarly, Cattle, Sheep, and Hogs were introduced into the Americas. Sadly disease was also introduced and had a devastating effect on both societies. Entire groups of people were wiped out in the Americas by smallpox, measles, etc. while in Europe an epidemic of Syphilis, previously unknown there, took a terrible toll.

The "discovery" of the New World by Christopher Columbus changed the history of the world completely.  This is not to say that Columbus himself was that important -- he was just the first European to reach the New World in circumstances that allowed for major colonization to happen.  So it was not the "discovery" that mattered so much as the colonization.

Columbus's "discovery" allowed the period of colonization to begin.  This had a number of important effects.  From our perspective as Americans, the eventual creation of the US is probably the most important of these effects.  By "finding" the New World, Columbus started its European colonization.  This eventually ended up allowing the US to be created.  The creation of the US helped, among other things, to move much of the world towards democracy.  It also led to the development of what is now the world's only superpower.

A world without the United States is impossible to imagine today.  The existence of the US was made possible by the "discovery" of America and that is, therefore, one of the ways in which Columbus's discovery changed history.

Columbus's discovery was world-changing as it helped to establish the existence of the Americas in European awareness, and vice versa. He was not the first European to travel to the Americas, but he was the first to leave a long-lasting impact in this regard. The really significant factor in his voyage was the era which it tool place: the era that has come to be known as the Age of Discovery. This was the age when Europeans began to travel further and further afield, often with royal sanction, as in the case of Columbus who was financed by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. Spain and Portugal were the pioneering voyaging nations at this time. There were several reasons for this ever-increasing exploration abroad. A major factor was the attempt to find new routes for trade, particularly to the lucrative commercial centres of the East; this was what Columbus was attempting, and on making his first landfall in the Caribbean he thought he had reached India. Another important reason was the drive - particularly on part of the devoutly Catholic Hispanic powers - to convert heathen peoples to Christianity.

The later fifteenth century, then, was a time of great voyages by Europeans and on one level Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas was just another of these. But his turned out to be the most far-reaching one (metaphorically if not literally) because he helped open up an entire new section of the world for further investigation. At a time when geographical exploration was being actively encouraged by governing European powers, it was inevitable that many more voyages would follow along the path that Columbus established. In this way, a truly global awareness began to take shape for the first time. The cultural, material exchange between the eastern and western hemispheres became systematized, not just haphazard.

Columbus, then, paved the way for numerous other voyages from Europe  to the Americas, thus firmly establishing trans-Atlantic connections. This was the beginning of a fruitful exchange which still continues today. But it also caused problems, particularly for native American populations which often fell victim to an excess of Christianizing zeal on part of Europeans which led to the depreciation of indigenous cultures; they were also driven back before European technological superiority (and rapacity). Most of all, though, the native American peoples suffered from the influx of new diseases that Europeans unwittingly brought with them, like smallpox, to which Americans simply were not immune, and which decimated their numbers. There was much hostility between the peoples of the Old and New World, a conflict of mentality also, which often exploded into violent confrontation.

However, the very real sense of wonder and excitement on both sides of the Atlantic at the discovery of unsuspected other realms and cultures cannot be denied. Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas, then, was a true world event in every sense of the term. Its ultimate achievement  was not merely in re-shaping geographical and cultural knowledge, and establishing new routes for the exchange of goods and ideas, but in enlarging the imaginations of peoples across the world and forging a new global perspective.

Not long after Columbus set sail with his three ships in 1492, a number of other explorers, particularly from Portugal, set out on their own voyages. Spain and Portugal led the world in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in the number of explorers that each nation sponsored.

From 1497 to 1524, the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama opened up a sea route from Europe to the East after sailing around the Cape of Good Hope, at the southern end of South Africa. The cape had first been sighted by fellow Portuguese navigator Bartolomeu Dias, who led the very first expedition around the Cape of Good Hope in 1488 and opened up a sea route to Asia via the Atlantic and Indian Oceans four years before Columbus's first journey to find a direct route west from Europe to Asia.

These explorers journeyed further than Columbus did, and, unlike him, they were relatively successful in reaching their intended destinations. Columbus's discovery had less to do with his being a pioneer in navigation—arguably, he was not, given that he got lost—than with his accidental sightings of Dominica and Hispaniola. These sightings, and particularly the reports of the natives who lived on these islands, made other explorers curious about the mysterious lands west of Europe and about the mysterious people who inhabited them.

The Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci toured South America and the Caribbean under the sponsorship of the Spanish and then the Portuguese between 1499 and 1502. He is notable for being the first explorer to realize that he was on a separate continent, which is why both North and South America are named after him. In 1503, Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese navigator who sailed for Portugal, made the first circumnavigation around the world.

Succeeding explorers focused more on conquest than on exploration. These included Francisco Pizarro, who conquered the Inca Empire in Peru, and Hernan Cortes, a conqueror of Mexico's Aztec Empire and the capturer of its capital, Tenochtitlan.

One way that the voyages of Christopher Columbus changed European exploration of the world was by creating interest in further voyages of exploration. Following Columbus's voyages, and upon receiving his descriptions of the lands and people that he encountered, the monarchs of Spain sponsored further voyages, including by Columbus himself. While he never discovered the water route to Asia that he sought, his voyages were primarily significant to the process of exploration because others followed him.

Unfortunately for the people who inhabited the lands that Columbus encountered, his voyages also established a pattern of conquest that would be emulated by many future expeditions. Abetted by disease, armed with superior weapons, and cynically exploiting local rivalries and alliances, European conquerors, especially in what would become Latin America, conquered and enslaved thousands of Indian people. They exploited them for their labor and extracted silver and other precious metals as well as cash crops. This was a process that changed little in form from what Columbus had done on the island of Hispanola and in his other conquests.

The voyages of Columbus had a large impact on Europe. Although Columbus was not the first European to try and settle in the New World (vikings tried to move into Newfoundland hundreds of years earlier) he did bring it back into European consciousness. In the decades that followed, whatever European nation controlled the trade routes and commodities of the New World usually rose to regionally dominance from the wealth they generated. Spain and Portugal benefitted early on, with France, England and the Dutch joining the competition later. This competition over colonies and trade goods led to several wars between Europe's countries, created new patterns of immigration and new opportunities for European migrants.

He also started what has become known as the Columbian Exchange, a movement of different things between the new world and old. This Columbus instigated phenomenon is one of the most dramatic events in world history. Animals, ideas, technologies, foods, plants, diseases and people all switched places with dramatic effects.

The effects on Europe from this exchange were sensational. Tomatoes arrived in Italy. Potatoes arrived in Ireland. The turkey was first domesticated and brought back to mainland Europe. The Atlantic slave trade was born, changing the philosophical and economic faces of Europe forever. Although the effects of European disease on the Native Americans was far more dramatic, syphilis began being transmitted by sailors and travelers across the continent.