The building is two stories high, rectangular in plan, and divided into three areas.University of Cologne
Posted on 08/22/2023 10:55:03 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
&midddot;The ruins of a sugar mill and estate found in Africa are the earliest plantation
&midddot;The site was operating in the 1530s - about 100 years before slavery in the US
Archaeologists have uncovered the earliest evidence of plantation slavery - the ruins of a 16th-century sugar mill and estate on a tiny West African island.
The island, named São Tomé, was the largest sugar producer globally in the 1530s, creating the blueprint for plantation economies across the Atlantic Ocean.
The ruins of the mill and estate were uncovered by researchers from the University of Cologne, who said the structure's scale reflects the large enslaved labor force who worked in the main room where sugar was boiled.
The Portuguese settled São Tomé in 1470 and became the largest sugar producer by the 1530s due to enslaved Africans from the Slave Coast of West Africa, the Niger Delta, the island of Fernando Po, and later from the Kongo and Angola...
Unlike other Portuguese sugar mills in Europe that had only used enslaved people for manual labor, the West African site tasked slaves with everything from harvesting sugar cane to the carpentry and stone masonry needed to build and run the mills, Live Science reports...
The first documentation of sugarcane fields on the island was in 1506, and production took off by 1517...
The mill operated for about 400 years, but when slavery traveled across the Atlantic, it took the sugar business with it.
The island's prominence faded before the beginning of the seventeenth century due to the poor quality of its sugar, the rise of Brazilian production, and extensive slave insurrections.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
The building is two stories high, rectangular in plan, and divided into three areas.University of Cologne
Pardon my typos.
It would seem the African-Americans seeking reparations need to look Into Africa.
Can anyone else hear Ross Perot warning about the giant sucking sound of jobs leaving the country?
do these idiots think slavery came into being in the 1500s?!
are you kidding?
have they forgotten who Moses was or his stroll out of Egypt?
even that wasn’t the start of slavery...
“We Wuz Kangz, N Sheeeit!”
Agreed. Slavery was mentioned in Genesis in the Noah story (Genesis 9).
As well as five hundred year old birth certificates for themselves.
From Wiki...
São Tomé and Príncipe (English: "Saint Thomas and Prince"), officially the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe,, is a Portuguese-speaking island country in the Gulf of Guinea, off the western equatorial coast of Central Africa. It consists of two archipelagos around the two main islands of São Tomé and Príncipe, 93 miles apart and 140 mi) off the northwestern coast of Gabon. With a population of 201,800, São Tomé and Príncipe is the second-smallest and second-least populous African sovereign state after Seychelles.It's always amazing following the linkages throughout history. The Portuguese sent Sephardic CHILDREN to be slaves in the sugar plantation around 1493 (which was no doubt a death sentence for them).Cycles of social unrest and economic instability throughout the 19th and 20th centuries culminated in peaceful independence in 1975. São Tomé and Príncipe has since remained one of Africa's most stable and democratic countries. São Tomé and Príncipe is a developing economy with a medium Human Development Index.
The islands of São Tomé and Príncipe were uninhabited when the Portuguese arrived sometime around 1470. The first Europeans to put ashore were João de Santarém and Pêro Escobar. Portuguese navigators explored the islands and decided that they would be good locations for bases to trade with the mainland.
The first successful settlement of São Tomé was established in 1493 by Álvaro Caminha, who received the land as a grant from the crown. Príncipe was settled in 1500 under a similar arrangement. Attracting settlers proved difficult, however, and most of the earliest inhabitants were "undesirables" sent from Portugal, mostly Sephardic Jews. 2,000 Jewish children, eight years old and under, were taken from the Iberian peninsula for work on the sugar plantations. In time, these settlers found the volcanic soil of the region suitable for agriculture, especially the growing of sugar.
Spain instituted the Spanish Inquisition in 1478 before decreeing the expulsion of all Jews from Spain in 1492. Tens of thousands of Spanish Jews fled Spain, including to Portugal, where King John II granted them asylum in return for payment. However, the asylum was withdrawn after eight months, with the Portuguese government decreeing the enslavement of all Jews who had not left Portugal. In 1493, King John deported several hundred Jewish children to the newly formed colony of São Tomé, where many of them perished.The growth of demand for cheap sugar in Europe and North America shaped so much of the Western Hemisphere's history.
And they know this because...
Did they grow slavery on the slavery plantation, like they grew cotton on cotton plantations and sugar cane on sugar cane plantations?
São Tomé was at the core of the Islamic-African-European Slave trade.
This has been known for years. Well, *I* have been aware of it since the 70s.
It is just the 1st one they’ve found, but I’m sure they will find even older ones-slavery has been around for at least as long as humans have been recording events by drawing/carving on rocks. There are plenty of drawings of slaves in shackles/ropes being led around/working, as well as talking about it in the Torah, Bible, and numerous other accounts. I’d bet that our Neanderthal ancestors made slaves out of captured enemies, they just hadn’t found a way to write down a bill of sale/trade yet. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of evidence showing people in ancient times being gentle or kind outside their own small group/tribe when it came to trade goods/wealth/property, etc...
0/0 island?
do these idiots think slavery came into being in the 1500s?!
are you kidding?
have they forgotten who Moses was or his stroll out of Egypt?
even that wasn’t the start of slavery...
***************
Slavery is a wrong headed economic system that denies labor a proper cut of profit & productivity.
It has been around since the stone age and isn’t going anywhere......the global elitist like it, fund it, and make sure it’s a profitability financial venture moving forward.
Anyone with an enterprising or bullying older sibling or a lazy parent knows about unpaid labor under threat.
THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE!!
The angry, evil white men of America who invented slavery weren’t even born at that time!!
Anyone with an enterprising or bullying older sibling or a lazy parent knows about unpaid labor under threat.
*********
Albion,
Lol
True comment.
I guess it needed to be two stories for the necessary height. In the 1500’s they must have dropped rocks on a pile of cane stalks to squeeze the juice out. The hardest work was hauling the sticky rocks back up to the drop floor. Early rock crushers worked the same way.
DING! DING! DING!
My older sister could take a butt-whooping like it was nothing! My younger sister (who is older than me, but younger than the rest of my siblings) could not handle the slightest whooping.
So, when they were tasked to do things together, like clean the kitchen, clean their room, wash/fold clothes, my older sister would sit on her butt and do absolutely NOTHING...all the while reminding my younger sister that when it is done, they are BOTH getting a whooping, and my older sister doesn’t mind it! Needless to say, my younger sister did most of the work on most days!! LOL!
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