No single person or group “invented” slavery; it emerged independently in many early human societies wherever people had enough power, population, and surplus resources to dominate others.

Key idea in one line

Slavery is as old as organized human civilization, not a one-time invention by a particular race, empire, or religion.

What historians actually say

  • The earliest clear records of slavery show up in the first civilizations of Mesopotamia (Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia), over 4,000 years ago, where legal codes like the Code of Hammurabi already described slaves as an established part of society.
  • Evidence suggests some form of slavery or captive labor goes back even before writing , linked to the rise of agriculture and permanent settlements more than 10,000 years ago.
  • Slavery existed in ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, Africa, the Middle East, India, China, and the Americas long before the Atlantic slave trade.
  • That means there was no single “aha moment” or inventor; instead, slavery appeared wherever people could turn war captives, criminals, debtors, or marginalized groups into forced labor.

A useful way to think about it: asking “who invented slavery?” is a bit like asking “who invented war?”—it’s a pattern of behavior that emerged repeatedly as humans formed larger, more hierarchical societies.

Why did slavery start? (motives, not inventors)

Across regions and eras, the reasons tend to repeat:

  1. War and conquest
    • Victorious groups often enslaved defeated enemies instead of killing or releasing them.
    • Captives became a source of labor, status symbols, or bargaining chips.
  1. Economic advantage
    • Once agriculture and cities produced surplus food , elites could live off others’ labor.
    • Enslaved people were used in fields, households, construction, mining, and later on plantations.
  1. Debt and punishment
    • In many early systems, people could be forced into slavery for unpaid debts or crimes , or sell family members under extreme pressure.
  1. Social hierarchy and ideology
    • Philosophers like Aristotle in ancient Greece framed slavery as “natural,” arguing that some people were “slaves by nature.” This kind of thinking helped societies justify an already existing practice.

In short, slavery began wherever powerful groups decided it was acceptable to treat other humans as property because it was profitable, convenient, or seen as “normal.”

How different regions fit into the story

Here’s a concise overview of major regions, in HTML table format since you requested tables as HTML:

[6][3] [1][7][3] [9][5] [1][3] [5][3]
Region / Era How slavery appeared Key points
Ancient Mesopotamia Already present in earliest law codes (e.g., Code of Hammurabi). Shows slavery was institutionalized by the time of the first cities, with rules for buying, selling, and punishing slaves.
Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome Widespread use of enslaved labor in households, agriculture, construction, mines, and war galleys. In Greece and Rome, a significant share of the population could be enslaved; thinkers like Aristotle normalized it as part of social order.
Africa (pre‑Atlantic trade) Enslavement mainly through war, crime, and debt; enslaved people traded across the Sahara and Indian Ocean centuries before Europeans built Atlantic routes. By the 7th century and after, African elites and traders were already supplying large numbers of enslaved people to Islamic markets.
Americas (pre‑Columbus) Various Indigenous societies held captives as slaves, servants, or ritual victims. Captivity and forced labor existed long before European colonization, though systems differed from later plantation slavery.
Atlantic slave trade (15th–19th c.) European powers bought and transported millions of enslaved Africans to the Americas. Europeans plugged into existing African slave systems and turned them into a massive transoceanic business focused on plantation labor.

A quick forum-style perspective

“Who had the idea of slavery and why?” Historically, it wasn’t one person with a bright (or rather, terrible) idea. It was many societies, in many places, discovering that if they were strong enough to conquer or control others, they could extract labor, wealth, and status by turning those people into property.

Over time, people built legal codes, economic systems, and even philosophies to justify something they were already doing.

So if your core question is “who invented slavery?”, the historically accurate answer is:

  • No named individual or single culture invented it.
  • Slavery grew out of repeated human choices to exploit power imbalances, starting in the earliest civilizations and likely even before written records.

TL;DR:
Nobody “invented” slavery in the way someone invents a gadget; it arose independently in many early societies as a way for powerful groups to control the labor and lives of others, and it became embedded in laws, economies, and beliefs across the ancient world long before the Atlantic slave trade.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.