Setting the Record Straight: White Europeans Were Captured and Traded as Slaves for Centuries

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[–]Alienhunter 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (25 children)

I suspect you'd have mongols enslaved by whatever power was conveniently located to enslave them. There's a fairly extensive history of slave labor in China and no doubt they would have enslaved some mongols. Though I do believe the mongols also ruled China at some point. Being a nomadic people they tended to move around quite a bit.

Mongolia itself is even today a fairly undeveloped land consisting mostly of arid areas not well suited for agriculture. It's a wonder the Mongol empire grew so large in such an inhospitable environment, but I suppose the hard life of the steppes bred superior warriors.

It seems to me, if I were a medieval lord who obtained a Mongol slave, they would be better suited being in my service as a warrior than a laborer. As such I doubt many ended up as true "slaves" in our modern understanding of the word. Though I doubt many at that time were truly free. Just as true freedom eludes many today. After all he who believes he is enslaved may attempt escape but he who believes he is free won't even consider it.

[–]Canbot 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (22 children)

Mongolia itself is even today a fairly undeveloped land consisting mostly of arid areas not well suited for agriculture.

I don't buy the premis that the land determines how the people there live. Africa is also relatively undeveloped despite having the best farming conditions anywhere. Yet in gloomy, cold, high latitude england there are farms surrounded by walls of rocks that were pulled from the soil.

Some people are industrious and develop solutions, others are lazy and can't be bothered to do the bare minimum.

[–]Alienhunter 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (4 children)

I think the climate has a lot to do with that. It's no coincidence that warmer climes developed more laid back lazy cultures and colder climes produced more industrious cultures.

If you're a lazy culture in a cold climate you'll freeze to death and die in the winter. If you're an industrious culture in a hot tropical climate you'll die from heat exhaustion if you try to work during the head of the day instead of napping in the shade.

Granted the climate is far from the only factor.

Africa has a lot of geographic issues that prevent the formation of the large sophisticated cultures we see in Europe and Asia. Namely large navigable rivers and ports that don't open directly into the open ocean. The Nile is an exception to this and it's no surprise there that a large sophisticated cultures of the Egyptians formed there.

I think given enough time, Africa likely would have developed more complex civilizations, same as the west as technological progress moved forward. But on any planet the most favorably placed cultures will grow first and dominate the weaker cultures via colonisation and mercantile economic systems.

Humans are resilient and can live in practically any environment but the level of civil progress doesn't have much to do with their industrious nature. Assume dolphins more intelligent and industrious than humans, they'll never develop into a complex civilization because they live in the ocean. Lack materials needed to make complex tools and societies. And as such will never evolve into a form that allows for complex civilization and will forever be confined to a featureless realm of water in the open sea living only to eat what food they can catch.

Similar patterns of life would probably develop on the gas giants.

It seems reasonable to assume that terrestrial planets with relatively mild climates are necessary for the development of civilization. The Inuit are no less human than the Romans and spread over an extremely large area let never developed a civilization as such because all their energies needed to be devoted to survival in the harsh climate they lived in until very recently. They can't be considered to lack industrious spirits since they managed to survive in that frozen hellscape for millenia, but you can't expect such a culture to adapt to the complexities of urbanized civilization within a short period of time.

[–]Gaslov 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

This is a very strong argument. It follows as a civilization becomes advanced and generally easy, it collapses. Do we artificially make everyone miserable to obtain the best of humanity? Is engineered scarcity a necessary evil? Is this the real reason communism ultimately fails because, ironically, it truly does achieve its stated goals?

[–]Alienhunter 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I think simply as society becomes more complex there's more ways to engage in "profiteering" not the pursuit of profit as such, there's nothing wrong with setting out to make money, but the pursuit of profit in a way that doesn't create any real value towards society.

In a very small community you can't do this, you need to be engaged in a business that helps your survival be that what it may. In a very large civilization there's any number of pursuits that can support you and give you a lot of money but don't necessarily produce anything of value for society.

DEI programs are a good example of that sort of thing now, grifting in essence is this, a parasitic business that seeks to get into the process of production and skim off it's share of the profits while providing nothing of value itself.

Landlords are the classical Marxist example of profiteering but it's a bit more complex then simply collecting rent. There's nothing wrong with renting out rooms and collecting rent on them. The issue comes when people are otherwise unable to purchase their own land for habitation due to high prices and the land ownership end up consolidated in the control of a small few who simply collect rent by virtue of owning the land but don't necessarily need to provide any service that is equivalent to the price they are receiving, if they form a kind of oligarchy or cartel they can collude amongst themselves and raise the prices artificial of any real market forces which trends towards inflationary pressures.

Thing is complex societies can produce far more wealth and are better for even the poorest residents of them, but they're also susceptible to corruption. And the bigger the society and the more complex the more avenues of corruption form and the harder it is for any one person to understand what is going on, identify, and stop the corruption.

Look at the art world for a fairly obvious example. We laugh and jeer and the rediculous nonsense people spend obscene amounts of money on. Digital tokens of poorly drawn monkey's? And overripe banana glued to a wall. A bunch of used tampons? Million dollar works of art. Or not, art is purely subjective, we like to jeer at this and use it as a claim that society has declined, and that's true in a way, but the joke is that we accept these things as "art" in the first place, and not the obvious money laundering that it is, because society has essentially given us this complex ideal that "art, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder" true to some extent, but obviously not applicable to spending millions on a pile of trash.

[–]Gaslov 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

One problem with the theory of climate and discomfort driving industry and advanced society is that the Americas had similar climates but those people didn't develop much further than the Africas. China, on the other hand, has a lot of tropics, yet developed comparably, if not better, than Europeans for most of history, such as reaching the crossbow and gunpowder use long ahead of Europeans.

[–]Alienhunter 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

China is a very huge country and has any number of different climates. But it also has the geography and climate for large scale agriculture which is what drove civilization there. Most of China is subtropical and has fairly strong seasonal changes and doesn't really classify as a tropical climate. The main difference between China and Europe I think is that in China they largely developed inland due to their trading routes being primarily overland and never developed the naval traditions of Europe due to the lack of a Mediterranean equivalent which caused their society to begin to lag behind the west when mercantilism was adopted.

The Americans had several well developed civilizations including the development of writing with the Maya which is a very significant step in the formation of an advanced civilization. But they didn't develop technologically equivalent to Europe for a number of reasons. One is simply time. American civilization was far younger because it took far longer for people to get there, and then since it was a relatively few people who crossed the land bridge before it sank, it took a considerable amount of time to build a population necessary for the creation of large complex civilizations.

They were well on their way at the time of European colonization however. There were some truly impressive architectural feats as well as irrigation and land reclamation projects. But they had several disadvantages compared to Europe as well. One being the total lack of large domestic animals for labor. There was the Llama in south America but they aren't very strong. And I believe dogs were domesticated, but that's it. No oxen or horses. Buffalo were never domesticated.

Then there was also the lack of the wheel which is a truly bizzare case of technological divergence. And there was the lack of genetic diversity that made the American aboriginals somewhat susceptible to plagues which further hindered societal development. It's theorized that even before the smallpox epidemic a different plague had decimated the North American population.

It's interesting to think about how North American society would have developed if there had never been European contact. I suspect they'd have a largely medieval level of technology at the present day and you'd see the Maya be the dominant cultural force likely colonizing and subduing the planes indians.

Though it's worth noting that there were some relatively sophisticated cultures in North America as well. Whomever built the Mesa Verde and other indian "castles" in the south west for example. Though these people had vanished by the time Europeans arrived and they left nothing of their culture behind since they never developed writing besides their domiciles and pottery. I suspect plague or climate shift making their agriculture fail.

[–]jet199 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

I think hard conditions make farming tech more necessary not less.

When you can just go pick a ripe fruit off a tree which will give you all the calories you need for that day you don't invest asc much energy in getting food.

[–]Canbot 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

An industrious people who lived in africa would develop anyway.

[–]weavilsatemyface 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Africa is also relatively undeveloped despite having the best farming conditions anywhere.

Yes indeed, here is some of that prime African farmland you speak of. Almost all of north African is like that. And about half of southern Africa is like this.

Europe has some of the richest soil in the world. Africa, not so much.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (13 children)

I don't buy the premis that the land determines how the people there live.

It doesn't necessarily, but the earliest agricultural societies always sprang up around large rivers for obvious reasons.

Africa is also relatively undeveloped despite having the best farming conditions anywhere.

And the Nile region was farmed quite early by the Egyptians, despite most of the rest of the area being desert completely unsuitable for farming

[–]Alphix 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (12 children)

But the ancient Egyptians, at least the nobility, were white.

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

The ancient Egyptians were light-brown skinned north Africans, not Caucasians. Just as their descendants are now.

It was much later when the Greek general Ptolemy conquored Egypt from the ruling Persians and started the Ptolemaic Kingdom that Egypt got relatively pale ruling class, from the Greeks. That was nearly three thousand years after the first Egyptian civilizations, longer than Christianity has existed. But even they were hardly "white" -- many Greeks are typically olive skinned, like most Mediterranean peoples.

Brown skinned Egyptians were building pyramids while white skinned Europeans were still hunter-gatherers.

[–]Alphix 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh3y4FydRNU

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Did I say that north Africans were sub-Saharan Africans from the south? I don't think so.

[–]Alphix 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I didn't say you said that, did I? ANCIENT Egyptian nobility had blue eyes and blonde or red hair. They were nothing like arabs or what we think of as being "middle eastern" ethnicities.

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Despite the many invasions over the centuries, Egypt has never seen the sort of mass migrations which can change the ethnic demographics of a land. Ancient Egyptians were most closely related to modern Egyptians, and have never been racially homogeneous. Skin colour varied between Upper and Lower Egypt, and Nubia, and still does. If you want to know what ancient Egyptians looked like, your best bet is to look at modern Egyptians and northern Sudanese.

The video you linked to starts off talking about the Egyptian nobleman Yuya, from the 18th Dynasty around 1390 BCE. The 18th Dynasty is more than 1700 years from the First Dynasty, which began around 3100 BCE. Think about how the genetic make-up of Britain has changed from the pre-Roman Celts, the Germanic Saxons and Danes, the French Normans, and more. If you did a genetic analysis of King Charles III today, that would tell you nothing about the genetics of the English in 300 CE. (In fact, since "England" derives from the Angles who first invaded around 450 CE, there were no English in Britain in 300 CE.)

(By the way, the yellow hair in the video is because the hair has been discoloured from the embalming process, not because they were blonde.)

The oldest population of ancient Egypt included North African people from the upper and lower Nile, from the Mediterranean, modern Libya, the Middle East and the Arabian peninsula. In modern terms, we call them "People of Colour" (bleagh), a stupid term, but they weren't Caucasian, they weren't "white", nor were they sub-Saharan black (although they do have some sub-Saharan DNA). They certainly weren't European. They were, and still are, Egyptians.

What few royal Egyptian mummies have been DNA tested show that they were most closely related to the modern Berbers, with some sub-Saharan DNA (probably from the Nubians, with whom the royalty frequently intermarried). In other words, North African. The pharaohs of the 25th Dynasty, the so-called "Black Pharoahs" or "Nubian Pharoahs", were originally from the Kingdom of Kush in what today would be northern Sudan, and were probably black. Cleopatra was Greek Macedonian. Egypt has been conquered many times and you cannot generalise from one pharaoh to others a thousand years earlier.

For what little it is worth, in ancient Egyptian paintings, stylised pictures of individuals from many countries are drawn in consistent colours: Libyans are yellow, Nubians are black or dark brown, and Egyptians are red. Men are painted darker than women.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

But the ancient Egyptians, at least the nobility, were white.

They weren't black no, but they certainly weren't white europeans, they seem to have had Levant middle eastern genetics

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15694

[–]Alphix 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Nope. They were blue eyed and blonde or red haired. WHITE. Nature is just narrative pseudo anthropology.

Here are facts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh3y4FydRNU

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Nope. They were blue eyed and blonde or red haired. WHITE.

Yes to the blue-eyes and blond hair, but even your sources say these are Levantine Middle Easterners, they may have the mutations for blond hair and blue eyes, but these people are genetically distinct from white Europeans with the genetic distance closest to brown Middle Easterners, not white Europeans. I guess this depends on how we are defining 'whiteness', how are you defining this quality? As possessing light skin/hair/eye mutations, European ancestry, traceability to the Steppe herders, or some other classification methodology? The whole idea of whiteness seems slightly ambiguous when people are using many definitions for what this means, I usually assume people are referring to genetic 'Europeaness', hence my assertion of non-whiteness, but I'm willing to accept a different definition

Nature is just narrative pseudo anthropology.

Your video of facts cited this paper as well to cite the Egyptians having Levantine DNA, in addition to one showing Levantine Israelis had blond hair/blue eye mutations. Its sort of central to the argument you are making, idk how you can dismiss this paper as pseudo-anything when your argument depends on this paper as well.

This "whitifying" of Levantine Israelis would also make Jews 'white', are you comfortable with this? I'd find it surprising if you were, given your fondness for whites and dislike of Jews

[–]Alphix 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

The 12 (or 13) tribes of Israel include the Aryan nordic genes, as well as the black africans. That doesn't make them "jews" who co-opted the word "Israel" in order to appropriate all these lineages. There is a lot of confusion about these terms, making definitions very muddled.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

There is a lot of confusion about these terms, making definitions very muddled.

Lol, can agree with you on this

The 12 (or 13) tribes of Israel include the Aryan nordic genes,

Do you have any studies handy on this? I'm curious as to the origin. Are we talking Steppe herders, Scandinavian Hunter Gatherer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_Hunter-Gatherer) or some different group containing similar genes? From what I can gather the modern Jews appear to all share ancient light-skinned Iranian DNA (Persians can also be quite light, not sure if this is related), with the Ashkenazi's, Sephardic, and Mizrahi differing by which populations they mixed with

I do find genealogy to be quite fascinating, if you have any relevant info on the topic to refer me to i'd happily read it

[–]Alphix 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

The Old Testament itself defines the tribes of Israel in such terms. The Jews appropriated that too, pretending that this book is about them, whereas barely 5% of the people mentioned in there can by any stretch of the imagination be considered to be Jews.

[–]weavilsatemyface 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Though I do believe the mongols also ruled China at some point.

You don't say.

[–]Alienhunter 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

Wow that's that famous guy from bill and Ted's excellent adventure.