[fromthestart]

Great contribution. Allow me to expand.

The known world to you consists of various tribes of humans who all share rather similar physical phenotypes (white skin, soft, slightly curly to straight hair, similar facial features), with reasonably similar technology (metalworking, beasts of burden, farming, government of some sort, written language, the wheel) and suddenly you discover a group of beings with none of these things - no written language, no cultivated land, no domesticated animals, no wheel, no metalworking, and on top of all this, they look totally different from anyone you've ever seen.

It did not take evilness or malice of any kind on the part of medieval Europeans to reason that these beings, if they were human, were less human than they were. Morality is cultural and relative, you cannot demonize historic cultures through your enlightened lense.

So no, these are more than just "my words," this is a rational sentiment for a medieval European in the historic context. Globalization is a modern phenomenon. Why do you think there was incentive to put these people in zoos?

[astine]

Sub-Saharan Africans absolutely had agriculture, wheels, and domesticated animals. This was especially true in the kingdoms of western Africa which had the most contact with Europeans. It's a myth that the bulk of Sub-Saharan African lived purely hunter-gatherer lifestyles before the arrival Europeans. Some did, but most did not.

[novacole]

> Great contribution. Allow me to expand. The known world to you consists of various tribes of humans who all share rather similar physical phenotypes (white skin, soft, slightly curly to straight hair, similar facial features), with reasonably similar technology (metalworking, beasts of burden, farming, government of some sort, written language, the wheel) and suddenly you discover a group of beings with none of these things - no written language, no cultivated land, no domesticated animals, no wheel, no metalworking, and on top of all this, they look totally different from anyone you've ever seen.

The problem with this is that it is 100% incorrect. After 1492 (and to a lesser extent before then), Western Europeans were fully aware of African Civilization, particularly those in West Africa.. They traded with them. They wrote correspondences to them, see: "Letters to the King of Portugal" [0]. Africans obviously farmed, starting between the years 8000 and 6000 BCE [1], the metalworking of West Africans is and was well known [1]. During the Iron Age "A profitable trade had developed by which West Africans exported gold, cotton cloth, metal ornaments, and leather goods north across the trans-Saharan trade routes, in exchange for copper, horses, salt, textiles, and beads. Later, ivory, slaves, and kola nuts were also traded" [2]. They had governments obviously (see reference [0]). They had the wheel "Nubians from after about 400 BCE used wheels for spinning pottery and as water wheels. It is thought that Nubian waterwheels may have been ox-driven" [3]. Heck, even the largest university of the middle ages (12th century) was located in Mali, in West Africa, and it wasn't even something that was unknown to Europeans [4] & [5]. I could go on and on.

So all of what you are saying is based totally off of what _you_ think and not any facts, or even what Europeans that encountered Africans thought. What you are saying is entirely based off of your lack of knowledge of African and apparently even European history.

The inferiority idea developed later, specifically in America as a rationalization of the slave trade. It was literally something that was made up to justify what they were doing.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afonso_I_of_Kongo [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_West_Africa#Prehist... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_West_Africa#Iron_Ag... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel#History [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu#Education [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Timbuktu

--edited for clarity