Remains of First African Slaves Found

An anonymous reader writes to tell us LiveScience is reporting that Archaeologists may have found the oldest remains of slaves brought from Africa to the New World. From the article: "The African origin of the slaves was determined by studying a chemical in their tooth enamel that reveals plant and rock types of their native land. The chemical enters the body through the food chain as nutrients pass from bedrock through soil and water to plants and animals. It is an indelible signature of birthplace, the researchers said, because it can be directly linked to the bedrock of specific locales."

Comments

Or about 50 years after the Spanish started coming

[Wyatt Earp]

The city was founded in 1540 by Spanish conquistadores as San Francisco de Campeche atop the preexisting Maya city of Canpech or Kimpech.

Now we know that the Cortes expedition had some African slaves in it. Here is a question on the subject, while research is done on the many aspects of European Slavery, how much research is done on inter-African slavery or Islamic slavery in regards to Africa? I know we hear a bunch about slavery in the United States, but how about the United Kingdom or French slavery?

Heck, what about trans-tribal slavery in the Americas? While working on a paper about the Cortes expedition there were references in many texts and documents about the Aztecs having slaves, but much more time and space devoted to the few slaves the expedition had with them.

Re:Or about 50 years after the Spanish started com

[aktzin]

...the Aztecs *mysteriously* disappeared...

Did they? My understanding was that Hernán Cortés had the ruling family and other people with power tortured and/or killed. Of the general population, those who didn't die in the violence of the Spanish invasion were forced to flee and probably ended up mixing with other tribes.

And then there was the smallpox epidemic (and other diseases) that the Spanish brought from Europe and for which the native population had no defenses. In fact, Cuitláhuac died of smallpox and his nephew Cuauhtémoc then became the last Aztec emperor. The Spanish captured him, tortured him, kept him prisoner a few years and then hanged him.

But even though the Aztec population was significantly reduced and scattered, their descendants are still around. There's been just a bit of foreign immigration to Mexico the last 484 years, mostly from Spain. Want to guess why modern Mexicans look a bit different than Aztecs and other locals did? : ) And finally, their language (Náhuatl) is still spoken in several states in central Mexico.

Full disclosure: most of my ancestry comes from the Totonacs. This was one of many tribes enslaved by the Aztecs and all too glad to help the Spanish overthrow the evil overlords. Talk about the devil you know, huh?

Re:Aztec colonies

[j_f_chamblee]

This post may seem a little off-topic, but so does its parent, and I feel the insert a few hard facts.

I have worked as an archaeologist in the Desert Southwest and southern Mexico for eight years and I am aware of no firm evidence whatsoever for Aztecs encroaching directly into the traditional lands of the Navajo. There is some evidence that people living at the site of Paquime traded copper and exotic birds with groups from Mesoamerica, but these folks probably lived on or near the Pacific Coast, in what are now the states of Sinaloa and Nayarit. A chronology of Navajo settlement in the Southwest mentions the Aztec, but under a separate timeline. Finally, a curriculum guide from a comparative civilizations class designed to be taught in Navajo schools makes no mention of these alleged Aztec slavers.

From all I have read (and I apologize for not having time to re-create the bibliography here), there were forms of slavery among many Native American groups in North America, including the Aztecs. However, slavery, as conceived by Native Americans, was very different from that imposed by Europeans. Most of the time, war captives were involved. In some cases, as was observed among the 18th century Creek of present-day Georgia, slaves ended up being treated more as outcasts than outright slaves. Some were even adopted into the families of the men who captured them. A similar observation was made regarding indigenous Afreican slavery.

As for celestial observation towers, etc., yes, they were everywhere, among many cultures. But again turning to archaeological evidence, it seems that most were developed indepently by different groups for different purposes.

While there is nothing wrong with being impressed by the accomplishments of Native Americans prior to European colonization for their own sake, don't make the mistake of superimposing models of European civilizational development on these societies. Prehistoric native groups in North America followed very different paths and we owe it to their descendents to appreciate their history on its own terms. We sell everyone short if we have to impose false parallels with European history in order to be impressed.

Re:So they know they were African...

[iocat]

Not necessarily. One of the reasons the US economy has boomed and others (Mexico, say) haven't, is because of the strong middle class in the US. The North, where slavery was never a major factor in the economy, drove the economic boom of the 19th century (and the nascent middle class and urbanization were all factors in that economic boom), while the slave owning South was mired in a stagnant agrarian (sp?) economy that wasn't growing at nearly the rate of that in the North.

Cribbing liberally from "bonecrusher's" post on this topic at metafilter , According to many economists, slave-owning is an example of "rent" "a market distortion that reduces the overall productive capacity of the economy. A functioning labor market should do a better job of directing labor to where it is most productive than guys with whips and dogs." (previous text in quotes is by bonecrusher, who explained it much more concisely than I could).

Basically, when you have oligarchs or slave-owners running things, you may end up with a situation which is better for them, personally, but it hurts the economy overall. In the slave-owning scenario, it hurts the slaves most of all (duh!), but it also wrecks things for what would be the middle class, if the oligarchs weren't hogging everything for themselves. So a few people are better off, but the vast majority are either totally fscked, or partially fscked. So, slave owners totally ruined the South's economy and made it unable to grow well.

Whether or not the US profited by exploiting other people and countries is beyond the scope of this post, which is just about how retarded slavery is from an economic standpoint (to say *nothing* of how retarded it is from a moral, social, or ethical standpoint!).