Your arguments seem misleading - the existence of anatomically modern humans goes back roughly 200,000 years, but human history, i.e. the era with documented evidence starts with widespread writing that comes much, much later; first samples of writing is from ~5000 BC, but they're sparse enough to not be informative about social practices.
The very first documented law codes (2100–2050 BCE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Ur-Nammu ) already mention slavery. We can't know how long slavery existed before that, since those are literally prehistoric times and archeological evidence is not sufficient to determine these relationships, however, as the current evidence shows that slavery existed for as long as we have documented form of anything, there's absolutely no reason to assume that for the 200,000 years slavery didn't exist and good reason to assume that it did exist for at least part (or even all) of that undocumented time, as in the absence of any other evidence it would be prudent to assume that civilization at 10,000 BC had similar practices as it did in 2000 BC instead of being significantly different for no good reason from all other documented human history - we have no historical evidence at all of a time in early human history without slavery.
It appears that you have an extremely poor understanding of the history of slavery - limited the US only.
It's universally understood that slavery was happening over 10,000 years before the US was even discovered.
The term "slave" even predates the discovery of the US by hundreds of years.
Slavery has manifested itself in many ways throughout history, I'm sure one could make an argument that this is some kind of modern day voluntary slavery.
What's remarkable is that slavery was the norm since the beginning of human culture. It's even mentioned in the Holy Bible and the most Nobel Quran. What's even more remarkable is that it was only prohibited in the west as recently as 1833.
But slavery and monarchy are only the norm of recorded history, not most of humanity's actual history, since most of it predates civilization, and thus the impetus for such institutions.
Practices can change, and it's nice to think that once we realized it was possible for "owning people" to not be a thing, we simply made it not a thing, but in fact mindsets can be the slowest to change.
Eradication of an evil social practice is not like invention of a science or technology. We invent the car or the computer, and 25 years later it's in every country on the planet. The Father of History mentions the ills of slavery, and 2500 years later we still haven't quite got this thing licked.
You're only proving my point, really. The only things you can think of are Confederate flags and the trans-Atlantic slave trade, when slavery as an institution is as old as human civilization itself (and continues on well to this day).
Incidentally, filicide is also ancient and ongoing.
This is utter bullshit. There have people making political stands against slavery for centuries. In the US, there were laws being brought in in 1777, right after independence. In England, there was a 16th century case where a slave brought from Russia would not be recognised under English law. Slavery in France was prohibited early in the 14th century.
Slavery has a long tradition of people opposing it. Even 'thousands of years before that', there were societies where slavery was explicitly forbidden. The Achaemenid Empire (500-300BC) banned slavery due to its Zoroastrian religion.
Agree. One comment though: a 30 year gap between uk and USA outlawing slavery doesn’t seem very significant on the 200k year timescale of human existence.
The institution of slavery didn't exist until they came to the New World. The medieval practice of serfdom was pretty brutal, but serfs were at least considered human.
Slavery was introduced in the New World and not in Europe, because that's where the non-Europeans were. When the native Americans proved poor slaves (among other things, dying in droves from disease and being better able to escape due to knowing the area), they imported slaves from Africa.
The Africans had been practicing slavery all along, but the Europeans had considered it barbaric until then. They still didn't tolerate it within Europe, but only safely out of sight in the New World. The institution of slavery only came into existence after colonizing places inhabited by people of other races.
The very first documented law codes (2100–2050 BCE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Ur-Nammu ) already mention slavery. We can't know how long slavery existed before that, since those are literally prehistoric times and archeological evidence is not sufficient to determine these relationships, however, as the current evidence shows that slavery existed for as long as we have documented form of anything, there's absolutely no reason to assume that for the 200,000 years slavery didn't exist and good reason to assume that it did exist for at least part (or even all) of that undocumented time, as in the absence of any other evidence it would be prudent to assume that civilization at 10,000 BC had similar practices as it did in 2000 BC instead of being significantly different for no good reason from all other documented human history - we have no historical evidence at all of a time in early human history without slavery.
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