This piece is a follow-on to “Slavery - The Whole Story” and will go a bit deeper, covering the timeline and atrocities of slavery pre-Atlantic slave trade. Why? Because, as I’ve stated before, everyone knows about the atrocities from the Atlantic Slave trade period but not much history from before. I’m not sure why that is the case unless it doesn’t fit the narrative for the progressives trying to blame all slavery on America. But that is not so, and we are told a one-sided story when there were blacks selling blacks, and Islam was fully in on slavery, which never seems to be discussed. That is wrong, so I’m doing this piece to inform.
I am not here to gaslight or pick on a religion or group of people. All I want is for people to understand the dark side of slavery that always seems to be glossed over in favor of only telling part of the story, specifically the Atlantic Slave Trade. It is time to stop playing games as if slavery is an American-only problem; it is not, and the story is not being told that slavery has been around for all of mankind. In fact, slavery is still going on in various nations, but that seems to never be discussed. Doesn’t it matter? Where are the progressives? The numbers are massive, as you can see by the graphic below.
Before I go on, let me state once again that all I’m doing is informing the public of history that seems to be lost and not talked about. Over time, I’ve noticed that many narratives aren't covered by our media or even in our schools, so everyone thinks the U.S. is the leader of slavery that needs to be held accountable and pay reparations. Meanwhile, history tells another story. And where is the story that the U.S. freed the slaves? That seems like an important part of history, but it's been forgotten.
I started my research by gathering a summary of all the examples that many of you may have forgotten or were never told. The following image is a great timeline of slavery, and as you can see, it has been around forever. But the U.S. seems to get blamed for a small piece of history. That seems a bit one-sided to me, so here's the other side of the story. To inform what hasn’t been taught.
So the first thing you will notice is that slavery was going on for thousands of years in unbelievable numbers, and by people of various colors and religions, because everyone was doing it, but history is sparse in our schools.
Slavery is still going on today, but again it seems not to be a subject of discussion, and I don’t understand why. Slavery is horrible and comes in many forms, such as labor and sex trafficking, as displayed in the image below.
A lot of people don’t know the extent of slavery as they walk freely in the best country in the world. It is time to start teaching history - real history and get away from woke BS that is giving our kids mental issues as we have never seen before. Truth matters, or at least it should.
I noticed one item that AI did not include in the images, and that is the illegals coming across our border being exploited, including kids. Seems to me this is slavery of various types, specifically the sex trade along with labor abuses. How in the world can the Democrats ignore this and put it on the back burner for another day? Do they not care, or is it all about power, while they put on blinders about the abuses to kids coming across the border? That is sick, and when will a Democrat stand up to the facts instead of promoting false information? Since it wasn’t included on the other chart, I had a new image created to display slavery today in the U.S.A. that our media refuses to report on.
The Biden Administration owns this, and how Sec Mayorkas walked away without a scratch while kids were raped and killed along the trail, then sold into the sex trade, is beyond me. He should be in jail because he knew our laws and ignored them for the progressive team. Eventually, this graphic will be included with the others from earlier in this piece as part of slavery history. Biden should be proud; he will go down in history.
Ok, just a bit more, and that is about the atrocities of slave trading pre-Atlantic era, since we know the horrors of travel across the sea in chains and with slave on top of slave, with many dying, and those who survived were sold for labor and other reasons as well. We’ve seen this story over and over again, but not the history before, so let’s go there. We cannot ever forget the Atlantic Slave trade; it was a horrible time. Back in the day, slavery was supported by Democrats, although they won’t tell you. I wonder why?
One note: most of the following is from SuperGrokX with modifications from me. I do this because it makes it faster to get this piece out.
The earlier trades lasted longer, with different demographic patterns (more women, systematic castration) and different transport methods with their own lethal costs. Estimates for the Islamic trades remain debated because of a lack of records, but their existence, duration, and documented cruelties across caravan and market systems are not. As with most slavery, all these systems involved capture, family destruction, sexual exploitation, forced labor and ritual killing.
Slavery long predates the Atlantic trade and appears in the earliest written records of Mesopotamia and Egypt, flourished across African kingdoms, was supported by Viking and Slavic markets, and existed among Aztec, Maya, and other American societies. The Arab-Islamic trade across the Sahara, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean began in the 7th century—centuries before Portuguese ships reached West Africa—and continued for more than a millennium. Slavery has been around forever, but it doesn't seem to be common knowledge. Maybe because countries don’t want the story told.
Egyptian New Kingdom pharaohs raided Nubia and the south for prisoners used in construction, agriculture, and households.
Classical Athens at its height held an estimated 80,000–100,000 slaves—roughly one-third of the population. Many worked the Laurion silver mines in tunnels too low to stand in, under torchlight, with high death rates.
Rome scaled this up. By the late Republic, slaves may have made up 30–40 percent of Italy’s population. Conquest produced floods of captives. They worked on latifundia, in mines, on galleys, and in households; some were trained as gladiators. Remember the movie, Spartacus? A lot of it is true, especially the horrors.
The Arab-Islamic trade (7th century onward) was the longest-running large-scale export trade out of sub-Saharan Africa before the Atlantic era. After the Arab conquests, demand for slaves in the Middle East, North Africa, and later the Ottoman world grew. Islamic law permitted enslavement of non-Muslims; millions of slaves were taken during this period. The numbers are questionable, but what isn’t is that it occurred, and it was in the millions; we just don’t know how many millions.
Let me end this with an overview of the atrocities from pre Atlantic Slave trading.
Arab-Islamic trades (Trans-Saharan, Red Sea, East African / Zanj) - Capture was normally by raiding villages. Survivors were yoked or chained. One later but representative description of the overland system (the same routes had operated for centuries) is the sheba: a forked wooden pole fixed around the neck so the prisoner had to carry the trunk while walking; men were often linked this way in files. Women and children walked “free” but under guard. Water and food went first to the traders and animals. Those who collapsed were left or killed. Contemporary and later observers put transit mortality in the desert at 20 percent in cautious scholarly estimates and far higher in some eyewitness claims. Escape into the Sahara was usually fatal.
AI-generated image: Sub-Saharan African captives chained at the ankles/wrists and yoked with wooden neck poles, marching under guard by Arab/Berber traders on camels and horses across the Sahara Desert. This reflects documented practices of the long-running Trans-Saharan slave trade.
It doesn’t stop there: the castration of boys and young men destined for palaces and harems was a core feature, not an occasional abuse.
The operation was performed in Africa (often by non-Muslim specialists because Islamic law forbade Muslims from doing it). Mortality from hemorrhage and infection was extremely high
19th-century travelers who saw the surviving trade described survival to market as limited to only a small minority of those caught. Eunuchs sold for several times the price of intact males.
Women and girls were the preferred commodity for concubinage. Children born to slave women were the master’s property; the mother’s status could improve if she bore a recognized child (umm walad), but that did not protect her from sale or the child from remaining unfree.
In southern Iraq, the Zanj (East African slaves) were used in large gangs to strip nitrous topsoil and reclaim salt marshes for agriculture. Camps held hundreds to thousands. Conditions were described as miserable even by the standards of the time; two smaller revolts had already occurred in the late 7th century. The great Zanj Rebellion (869–883) lasted fourteen years. Both sides massacred prisoners. When the rebels took Basra, contemporary accounts describe the city reduced to famine: people hid in wells, ate dogs, rats, and then the dead; the stronger killed the weaker for food. Rebel leaders who were later captured were executed and crucified. Death toll estimates for the war run from hundreds of thousands to over a million. Wikipedia is the source for this.
How many of you reading this have heard this history? Why don't we see movies or documentaries about this made for a media event? Maybe it is just me, but I never run across any media on this and have to do research to find the information.
I’m going to briefly cover a couple of other events but not all because it would turn this piece into a book. I’ll also reduce some of the detail, as people understand atrocities without some of the gruesome information. Some of this stuff makes you wonder how any human could do it, but here we are. Let’s continue
Rome: All of us remember the Romans and all their atrocities, and just like the Atlantic Slave trade, it is everywhere in movies, books and series. You have all the information on this part of slavery, but let me add a bit more.
A slave was property. The owner could beat, torture, or kill with legal impunity for most of the period.
Professional firms advertised services that included flogging with the furca (a forked beam that immobilized the victim) and crucifixion on contract.
When the prefect Pedanius Secundus was murdered by one of his slaves in AD 61, Roman custom required the execution of every slave living under the same roof—400 people, including women and children who had nothing to do with the killing.
After Spartacus’s revolt was crushed, 6,000 captured rebels were crucified along the Appian Way from Capua to Rome.
Other penalties included damnatio ad bestias (thrown to animals in the arena), condemnation to the mines (chained, often never seeing daylight again), and forced gladiatorial combat.
Greece: The Laurion silver mines used tens of thousands of slaves in tunnels too low to stand, worked in shifts by torchlight. Mortality was high enough that the mines functioned as a death sentence for many. Helots in Sparta were subject to the krypteia: young Spartans were authorized to kill helots they encountered at night as a rite of passage and a tool of control.
Egypt and Nubia - War captives from Nubia and elsewhere were put to work on royal building projects (mud-brick, stone). Early dynastic Egypt and later Nubian/Kushite kingdoms practiced retainer sacrifice: servants and officials killed and buried with the ruler. New Kingdom texts speak of “great slaughter” of Nubians, valleys filled with the flayed and transfixed. Bound Nubian figures were a standard motif of domination.
The first group I expected to encounter when researching slavery in ancient Egypt was the Israelites of the biblical Exodus—the people Moses is said to have led out of bondage. Surprisingly, Egyptian archaeology has not produced contemporary evidence identifying Moses or documenting a mass Exodus of Israelites. What the Egyptian record does document clearly is the enslavement and forced labor of Nubians, Libyans, Levantines, and other war captives.
Mesoamerica (Aztec, Maya) - Warfare was often waged specifically to obtain captives (“flower wars”). Victims—warriors, slaves bought in markets, and children—were taken to temple pyramids.
The most common method was stretching the person over a stone, cutting the chest with an obsidian blade, and extracting the still-beating heart as an offering. The body was thrown down the steps.
Children were sacrificed (sometimes by drowning in cenotes, as at Chichén Itzá, where more than 200 mostly juvenile remains have been recovered) because their tears were thought to bring rain.
Other methods included flaying (the festival Tlacaxipehualiztli), gladiatorial sacrifice in which a captive tied to a stone and given a dummy weapon faced fully armed warriors, arrow sacrifice, and burning. Some sources and bone evidence indicate ritual cannibalism of parts of the victim.
Skull Rack of the Great Temple in Mexico City
That does it for Part Two on Slavery, and I’m thinking of doing a Part Three on modern slavery because it is far-reaching if one looks, but once again not often reported.
I hope you enjoyed this short piece of history. Thanks, charley
I hope you enjoyed this brief history of slavery and add it to your memory bank. All IMO. charley