Evidence of slavery predates written records, and has existed in many cultures. Slavery is rare among hunter–gatherer populations, as slavery is a system of social stratification. Mass slavery also requires economic surpluses and a high population density to be viable. Due to these factors, the practice of slavery would have only proliferated after the invention of agriculture during the Neolithic revolution about 11,000 years ago. The earliest records of slavery can be traced to the...
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Slavery in the United States was a form of unfree labor which existed as a legal institution in North America for more than a century before the founding of the United States in 1776, and continued mostly in the South until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. The first English colony in North America, Virginia, first imported Africans in 1619, a practice established in the Spanish colonies as early as the 1560s. Most slaves were black and w...
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