Economic View Of Slavery Essays - Debt Bondage, Apprenticeship

Economic View Of Slavery Essays - Debt Bondage, Apprenticeship Economic View of Slavery Slavery was caused by economic factors of the english settlers in the late 17th century. Colonists continually tried to allure laborers to the colony. The headright system was to give the indentured servant, a method of becoming independent after a number of years of service. Slavery was caused by economic reasons. Colonists chiefly relied on Indentured Servitude, inorder to facilitate their need for labor. The decreasing population combined with a need for a labor force, led colonists to believe that African slaves were the most efficient way to acquire a labor force that would satisfy their needs. Before the 1680's, Indentured Servitude was the primary source of labor in the newly developed colonies. After the 1680's, the population of the Indentured Servants decreased, exponentially. Their were a number of different reasons why the population of Indentured Servents had decreased. The indentured servents were running away from their temporary masters, to find a job where he could become more independent. Indentured servents were also dying of many diseases, which was caused by harsh conditions. The immigration of servents thus declined, becuase of the people in England being informed of the harsh treatment in the colonies. The society was where the land was easy to find, while the labor was most scarce. Indentured servitude, was a form of labor which was declining, and the need for labor increased rapidly. In the 1600's, when tobacco was founded by John Rolfe, tobacco became the main source of income for most of the colonists. The economic prosperity of the colonies was primarily dependent on the amount of tobacco produced. The growing of tobacco, needed a large amount of land, with a large stable work force. The increased demand for a large, stable work force combined with the availability of African slaves, led to the use of slavery in the colonies. During the late 17th century, the indentured servants were running away from their masters farms, if a slave had run away from their master's farms, then the slave would be easier to discern because of the color of his skin. To the planter, slavery was the ideal form of labor that would be most beneficial to productivity of his crop. Planters had an abundance of land and a shortage of labor. This relationship, made the amount of tobacco directly proportional to the number of slaves that the planter owned. Slavery was the backbone of the prosperity of the colonies. A major factor in the consideration of slaves on plantation, is the flux of the land. Tobacco was the major crop of the 17th century, and tobacco is a plant that exhausts nutrients from the soil, which led to the rotation of crops, inorder to replenish the crops. The planter needed to educate his workers on certain agricultural techniques inorder to know how to make the land most productive. With a permanent work force, such as slaves, the slaves would only require to be educated once, instead of the planters having to re-educate indentured servants every X number of years. The African slaves also had other characteristics that enticed colonists to use them as a labor force. The African slaves were immune to malaria, which resisted them from disease. The africans also were subsistence farmers in africa, thus, they had a tradition of farming, and essential agricultural skills. Slavery was a course in history, where it was opportune for the colonists to use slavery as a labor force. The decline in population of indentured servants exacerbated the situation, as time progressed, slavery became more and more imminent. Morality was not taken into consideration, because of the settlers were only viewing slavery from a economic view, rather than a humanitarian point of view. The introduction of slavery into the colonies can be summarize with a cliche of the settlers being "at the right place at the right time".

The Feathered Dinosaurs of the Mesozoic Era

The Feathered Dinosaurs of the Mesozoic Era Part of the reason so many ordinary people doubt the evolutionary link between feathered dinosaurs and birds is because when they think of the word dinosaur, they picture enormous beasts like Brachiosaurus and Tyrannosaurus Rex, and when they think of the word bird, they picture harmless, rodent-sized pigeons and hummingbirds, or perhaps the occasional eagle or penguin. (See a gallery of feathered dinosaur pictures and profiles and an article explaining why birds arent dinosaur-sized.) Closer to the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, though, the visual referents are a lot different. For decades, paleontologists have been digging up small, birdlike theropods (the same family of two-legged, meat-eating dinosaurs that includes tyrannosaurs and raptors) bearing unmistakable evidence of feathers, wishbones, and other bits of avian anatomy. Unlike larger dinosaurs, these smaller theropods tend to be unusually well-preserved, and many such fossils have been discovered completely intact (which is more than can be said for the average sauropod). Types of Feathered Dinosaurs So many dinosaurs of the later Mesozoic Era sported feathers that its virtually impossible to pin down the exact definition of a true dino-bird. These include: Raptors. Despite what you saw in Jurassic Park, Velociraptor was almost certainly covered with feathers, as was the dinosaur it was modeled on, Deinonychus. At this point, the discovery of a provably non-feathered raptor would be major news! Ornithomimids. Bird mimic dinosaurs like Ornithomimus and Struthiomimus probably looked like giant ostriches, complete with feathersif not all over their bodies, at least on certain regions. Therizinosaurs. All of the dozen or so genera of this small family of bizarre, long-clawed, plant-eating theropods likely had feathers, though this has yet to be conclusively proven. Troodonts and oviraptorosaurs. Typified by, you guessed it, the North American Troodon and the central Asian Oviraptor, virtually all of the members of this theropod family seem to have been covered with feathers. Tyrannosaurs. Believe it or not, we have conclusive evidence that least some tyrannosaurs (like the recently discovered Yutyrannus) were featheredand the same may hold for the juveniles of Tyrannosaurus Rex. Avialan dinosaurs. Heres where paleontologists classify the feathered dinosaurs that dont fit in the above categories; the most famous avialan is Archaeopteryx. Further complicating matters, we now have evidence that at least some genera of ornithopods, plant-eating dinosaurs unrelated to modern birds, had primitive feathers as well! (For more on this subject, see Why Did Dinosaurs Have Feathers?) Which Feathered Dinosaurs Evolved Into Birds? What do all of these genera tell us about the evolution of prehistoric birds from dinosaurs? Well, for starters, its impossible to pin down a single missing link between these two types of animals. For a while, scientists believed the 150-million-year-old Archaeopteryx was the indisputable transitional form, but its still not clear if this was a true bird (as some experts claim) or a very small, and not very aerodynamic, theropod dinosaur. (In fact, a new study claims that the feathers of Archaeopteryx werent strong enough to sustain extended bursts of flight.) For more, see Was Archaeopteryx a Bird or a Dinosaur? The problem is, the subsequent discovery of other small, feathered dinosaurs that lived around the same time as Archaeopteryxsuch as Epidendrosaurus, Pedopenna and Xiaotingiahas muddied the picture considerably, and theres no ruling out the possibility that future paleontologists will unearth dino-birds dating to as far back as the Triassic period. In addition, its far from clear that all of these feathered theropods were closely related: evolution has a way of repeating its jokes, and feathers (and wishbones) may well have evolved multiple times. (For more on this subject, see How Did Feathered Dinosaurs Learn to Fly?) The Feathered Dinosaurs of Liaoning Every now and then, a treasure trove of fossils forever changes the publics perception of dinosaurs. Such was the case in the early 1990s, when researchers uncovered the rich deposits in Liaoning, a northeastern province of China. All of the fossils discovered hereincluding exceptionally well-preserved feathered theropods, accounting for over a dozen separate generadate from about 130 million years ago, making Liaoning a spectacular window into the early Cretaceous period. (You can recognize a Liaoning dino-bird from its name; witness the sino, meaning Chinese, in Sinornithosaurus, Sinosauropteryx and Sinovenator.) Since Liaonings fossil deposits represent a mere snapshot in the 165-million-year-old rule of the dinosaurs, their discovery raises the possibility that more dinosaurs were feathered than scientists have ever dreamedand that the evolution of dinosaurs into birds was not a one-time, non-repeatable, linear process. In fact, its very possible that dinosaurs evolved into what we would recognize as birds numerous times over the course of the Mesozoic Erawith only one branch surviving into the modern age and producing those pigeons, sparrows, penguins and eagles we all know and love.