Hi, my name is John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today we're going to talk about slavery. Slavery is not funny. In fact, it's very near the top of the list of things that aren't funny, so today's episode is going to be a little light on the jokes. But I'm going to help you understand what pre-Civil War Americans often euphemistically referred to as the peculiar institution. INTRO Slavery is as old as civilization itself, although it's not as old as humanity, thanks to our hunting and gathering foremothers. But the numbers involved in the Atlantic slave trade are truly staggering. From 1500 to 1880 CE, somewhere between 10 and 12 million African slaves were forcibly moved from Africa to the Americas, and about 15% of those people died during the journey.