“When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves. All of our humanity is dependent upon recognising the humanity in others.”Desmond TutuIsn’t it sooo pretty… Also not built by slaves got ya!Civilized Slavery in Ancient times.In this episode of History Uncensored, I wanted to go back to the very dawn of civilization on our planet.That means staying in Africa and the Fertile Crescent, that means exploring some of the most interesting times in human history. At least briefly, each of these episodes is designed to be a primer for your education and learning. I feel strongly that each person if they want to know more should do the research themselves because that is often our greatest tutor. If you lived In ancient Mesopotamia (I use Wikipedia to share the general knowledge. For a deeper look please look into JSTOR or Scholar.google)perhaps you had a slave tutor?In ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, slavery was considered a part of life, if you were conquered that is. Especially in Egypt most of their slaves came from black Africa and Asiatic sources. Though when conquered they led a relatively simple life. Some of them even married Egyptian women and became legitimized citizens.In good Ole Mesopotamia if you were conquered generally you were enslaved. Well yeah, I said that, what makes Meso different. The freaking frequency man. Kings had a duty to expand their borders so they went all willy nilly rapey and slavery on people who you know weren’t part of that city-state.In Mesopotamia, they had an insane amount of laws regarding slavery, including but not limited to the sale of slaves and the punishment of slaves. Why is that interesting because they were the very first law codes that still survive to this day. The if this happened then we should punish them like this…What does that mean though?It means slavery had been around for centuries or perhaps millennia becoming ever increasingly more complex as the society grew and their knowledge and usage of laws expanded.In Egypt you might be surprised to know that slave were not really “Slaves” the term was hardly ever used. Slaves weren’t part of the distinct social structure of their society. That means slaves often after being enslaved kind of just blended into society.PyramidsSlaves DID NOT BUILD THE PYRAMIDS! their I said it, they just didn’t do it. To accomplish the task, the pharaohs needed skilled workers and although most slaves did inevitably have skills that translated to workings stones that weren’t their main task.People dedicated their entire lives to the building of those tombs and monuments, they were paid and they were drunk. Probably so they could be paid less. Who knows, but I do know that a normal slave would not have been conducive to the task of building the eternal monuments that survive in our minds today.Slavery in generalI need to say this because it was recently brought to my attention that I am a white guy talking about slavery. Frankly, I know I am white and thankfully I have never owned a slave nor do I intend to.The concept of this podcast is to talk about stuff that may not be easy to communicate. Things like Slavery, Religion, Sexuality and how those things affect society today.If we can’t get over the fact that I am a white guy with to my knowledge no family history of slave ownership we are further gone than I thought.RACE DOESN’T EXISTIt is a figment of our understanding of biology. We as a population today since around 250,000 years ago have been called Homo Sapiens. No Homo Sapiens Black, Not Homo Sapiens Caucasian, not Homo Sapien Asiatic. Nope we’re all humans so get over it.As humans, we all originated in Africa. We were all probably “black” at one point. I don’t have anything else to say about it. I will continue to talk about the topic Objectively knowing that there are still slaves today. More than you realize but that my friends is a podcast for another day.Please just be good to each other, next time someone is mean --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/seth-michels66/support
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