Seeds of Change

The Caller-Times virtual tour of

The "Seeds of Change" Exhibit

The "Seeds of Change" exhibit is named for five agents of change, or "seeds" -- corn, potatoes, sugar, diseases and horses - which forever altered the lives of people around the world.

The exhibit, at the Corpus Christi Museum of Science and History, includes:

An entrance illustrating the mix of cultures shown in the exhibit, with an archway combining Baroque, Greek and Hispanic architectural styles.
A 12-by-16-foot mural of a 1400s-era market in Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City), the capital of the ancient Aztec empire. The empire began to decline after the arrival of European explorers. Microscopes to let visitors see viruses exchanged between the European and American worlds, suggesting the decimating effect on the American Indian population of diseases, such as smallpox, borne by Europeans.
Two life-size dioramas -- one of a Hopi Indian reservation in Arizona and one of the highlands in Peru -- with peelable Velcro corn and potato replicas. This illustrates how corn and potatoes became staple foods, and how wheat, oats, rye and barley were introduced into this hemisphere by Europeans.
A life-sized portion of a slave ship showing the conditions under which slaves were transported to work the sugar plantations, along with full-scale slave huts on stilts. This exhibit, narrated by actress Whoopi Goldberg, shows the effects of the European introduction of sugar.
A mural of the King Ranch and two life-sized horses standing before it, illustrating the effect the Spanish introduction of horses had on the development of the Americas.

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