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Comment by BurningFrog | Hacker News Reader

You have be able to communicate with your slaves.

It’s highly unlikely that a small nomadic hunter-gatherer band would have had the food surplus and hierarchical organization needed to control and keep slaves.

It’s as likely that ancient humans outcompeted Neanderthals for resources as killed them off directly.

This is not true, as evidenced by the slave taking exhibited by nomadic peoples in North America. It was a pretty routine practice, well documented in history. Losers in battles would often be assimilated by the winner as slaves.

I think you are talking about a far more modern period, in a much more complex, socially stratified society. The Neanderthal period was 50k-100k years ago.

AFAIK, we know pretty much nothing about human or neanderthal societies 50k-100k years ago.

The Uralic word for slave is very archaic and dates to well before they became sedentary. The Uralic tribes came into contact with the Aryas people on the steppes, and won battles with them enough to take captives as slaves, calling them orjat.

Surplus? The captives are there for labor and exploitation. They’re not house pets

Do we have to be able to communicate--in the sense of language--with our pets?

Farmers directing Border Collies to herd sheep use a whistling "language" that is able to accomplish - to an outsider - astonishing things.

Watch some some videos if you haven't seen it. It's baffling.

How much depends on the "language" vs training and breeding, I can't say.

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