Who Should We Blame For Slavery?

The issue of slavery has been in the news a good deal recently. Whether it's about the various statues,The 1619 Project,Reparations etc. This got me wondering if there's any particular group that can be "blamed" for slavery?

We often hear of slavery as far as European involvement but those Europeans often got slaves from African slave traders who caught many of those slaves. So do we blame Europeans or Africans?

Found an interesting article about that African involvement:

"The arrival of European merchants offering guns, mirrors, gin, and other exotic goods in exchange for humans massively increased demand, leading people to kidnap others and sell them."

'My Nigerian great-grandfather sold slaves'

 

Greedy humans

 

Slavery and servitude followed colonization as sure as night follows day around the world. Sorry, but the “enlightened “ Europeans don’t get a pass on this one. It’s how capitalism effected economic development; certainly not unique, but nonetheless essential.

 

How about we stop worrying about who to "blame"? Seems as if we have plenty of things that need fixing without looking to stir up the ashes of old resentments. Perhaps if we put our energies towards making things work better, instead of pointing fingers, things might actually improve.

 

the roman empire, and even some of its predecessors.

i suppose ancient egypt too,
although there it was used as an answer of what to do with those pesky monotheists,
and the reason they were persona non grata, was because the whole reason there was an ancient egypt was to regulate water rights,
to attempt to bring something resembling peace to the process,
and for that it was dependent upon a polytheistic priesthood.

how it came about in u.s. history, was the europian invasion that began with columbus, and actually the movement of slaves in the other direction, from the western hemisphere back to europe.

 

Japan ..

 

ancient Greeks had slaves. slaves going way back to Civilizsations beginnings. Meso potamia. how do you think those ancient monuments were built? Differences is that they could go home at night. whatever a free slave is. fuck it.

 

haven't you been paying any attention? obviously, this is 100% trump's fault.

unless you're a trump fan, then it's probably either hillary or obama that set the whole thing up.

 

Anunnaki.

 

It's a nice idea often thought of by the people at the top of the pyramid. It's usually the white guy who has never had trouble with the police who is the most offended for example. HIS experience would be everyone if only they listened to him.

America can not move on until the accept the past creates the present.

Well he is probably the most powerful racist in the last 100 years in America so kind of. But not 100%

 

Slavery is not really something you can "blame" one culture on. What you can blame is the individual cultures that still follow it and the cultures that worship it as an important part of their identity. Looking at you America but thousands of years before us it was done.

 

Slavery existed a loooong time before the era of European colonization. Heck, even a long time before ancient Rome.

A typically inane comment from you about "capitalism". I suppose it can be said that slavery can, and has, co-existed with capitalism, but it is not an inherent part of it. Quite the contrary, the relationship between slave and master is in stark contrast to that of capitalist (or corporation) and employee. The essential difference being, of course, that the employee is free to leave.

You might note that it was the capitalist North in the USA that stood in opposition to slavery in the USA, while the semi-feudal Confederacy was where the "peculiar institution" thrived.

 

As neanderthal man sat peacefully looking down at the ground, he couldn't help but notice these little insects traveling back to back calmly in long rows called ants.

Neanderthal watched and studied these ants day after day after day, in their long busy lines going to and fro. All day long these ants would leave their hive and bring back little larvae and youngins of different color and races from other warrior ant tribes.

Unbeknownst to the neanderthal these were slave-making Polyergus brevicpts ants who were very good slave masters.

During the Pangea summers, Polyergus ants conducted raids on Formica colonies.
During the raids, the Polyergus workers from the slave-making species in masses would leave the colony and attempt to steal Formica pupae. The attacked adults did their darndest to defend themselves and the ant babies. Some of the enslaved ants put up a vigorous fight to try and repel the slave-makers when their colonies were being raided.

Once stolen and abducted, the victim babies are brought back to the Polyergus colony. The attackers then continue to raid different Formica colonies, creating a highly diverse group of victims conquered. As they grow older, the victim ants perform many acts of slavery, i.e. nest maintenance, brood care and foraging for their slaveholders, not even realizing their predicament and bondage.

Over a short time, the victim ants have no idea that they are enslaved and raised to believe that they are in their home colony just following orders. Slavery dramatically changes both the chemical and genetic context in which the kidnapped victims develop being in such proximity of the attacker ants' secretions.

Neanderthal man got a good life lesson from the ants he watched with intrigue day after day, so he woke up one sunny morning, organized his tribe and went off do the exact same to a peaceful neighboring tribe.

Some bees, wasps, beetles, crickets and other creatures also either enslave or trick their like species to do their work, showing that slave-making behavior persists in nature.

History has shown us to this very day, that neanderthal man was successful at being a very attentive student of Polyergus brevicpts slave master ants as teachers.

I blame the ants for slavery, whom were here before neanderthal man

I guess the next thread should be, who taught the ants?

 

How has history shown that? Neanderthals were prehistoric, and there's no evidence at all that they owned slaves. Slavery appears first in stratified societies, and is rare among hunter-gatherers. H. Wanzola (2012), Rediscoverng the Hidden World. Rediscovering the Hidden World.
It's highly unlikely that humans got the idea from insects. It probably developed after the Neolithic agricultural revolution and became prominent as a result of the phenomenon we call civilization, when labor was in great demand.

 

hadn't thought of the ants, but i'm sure they were doing it long before anything human.

 

My point exactly, thanks for simplifying it

I blame the insect

 

Neanderthals, just like humans stole shit.

Fire
Food
Shelter
Women

I'm sure they stole other Neanderthal men and women from other tribes to use for slave labor.

 

Did they, really? Did anybody see them? Neanderthals may have developed art, music, morality and religion (although there's some debate about the latter). There is some evidence of this. But when it comes to stealing--including women women) no evidence of that, although hominids being what they are, I wouldn't put it past them. Neanderthals didn't need to steal fire, since they could make it themselves (at least the French Neanderthals could. https://www.history.com/news/neanderthals-fire-evidence-archaeology



We have little knowledge of the social life of pre-human hominids. We might make inferences from the behavior of primates, but were they more like aggressive chimps or hippie bonobos? As for slave labor (other than rape)--very unlikely that hunter gatherers would be doing that.

Think about it. The slaves would be competing with their masters for scarce food, and would have to be watched to keep them from escaping. And there would be no institutional structure for catching and returning them. Present-day hunter-gatherer societies don't have slaves, although settled agricultural societies do. The social organization of ants (along with honeybees) is the most complex in the insect world. The social organization of Neanderthals was--not so much.