Remember when international trade was centered around spices and herbs and Europe longed for the healing power of these gems but empires like the Ottoman and Islamic warlords blocked the path to Timbuktu, one of the first Medical Universities of the world, to Africa south of the Sahara and to India in the South East Asia where herbalists cured all kinds of diseases; and old wives used spices and herbs and less salt in their dishes to produce sons and daughters that were physically strong and resistant to diseases that would have killed the European within hours of infection. Remember when Christopher Columbus and Vasco Da Gama in rickety ships went in search of alternative routes across strange oceans to Africa South of the Sahara and India which has direct trade with East Africa through the Indian Ocean. This was when Columbus got lost and found himself in the Americas and Da Gama discovered that trading in the strong and healthy people of Africa to work for Europe in the Americas (a land mass most of which the South of the North American continent and the South American continent itself was similar to the climatic conditions of Africa South of the Sahara; was even more lucrative than in the herbs and spices that would cure Europe and make it’s people strong. For it made more economic sense to exploit the indentured labor system of debt repayment that was going on in Africa in those days and spirit away the able bodied and nature wise sons and daughters of Africa to a place far away from their relatives and culture, and forcefully (without compensation) make them produce in the Americas, those crops which they grew in Africa to make them able to withstand natures maladies, than to pay the higher cost of purchasing the products directly from Africa or India, or better yet through the Islamic warlords that blocked the faster route to the medicine chest.
