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Today, there are more slaves than ever; yesterday, captives and slaves had more social and cultural impact than many think

To those who think slavery is history, E. Benjamin Skinner has a few rejoinders. First, he notes, there are more slaves now than at any time in history. On four continents, in fact, he has personally observed the sale of human beings.

In Brooklyn, Skinner arranged to “buy” a girl in broad daylight. In Haiti, a man approached him and asked, “Do you want a person?” Skinner asked for a cook whom he would not pay, and he said he’d like a 10-year old girl. “This was not an unusual request,” Skinner notes.

The asking price for the girl was $100. The negotiated price for this human being was $50.

Skinner did not pay for human life then or ever, he emphasizes. A former Newsweek journalist who spoke during this year’s Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado, Skinner does not believe that paying to free slaves will end slavery; buying humans only sustains the demand and nourishes the crime, he contends.

He aims to highlight the extent of slavery today and to help banish it from Earth. While there are more slaves than ever, the proportion of the human race in bondage is smaller than ever. Skinner contends that slavery might be eliminated within a generation.

If that were to happen, it would mark the first time in history that humans had not enslaved their sisters and brothers. As CU experts in anthropology and Greek and Roman history note, slavery is notoriously persistent.

CU professors also emphasize that slavery has taken many forms, reinforced nations and served significant social functions that have often been overlooked or under-reported.

For instance, a CU archaeologist is probing a relatively new line of inquiry: the extent to which enslaved or captive people transmitted physical remnants of their native cultures (such as pottery or weaving techniques) to the captors’ societies. Meanwhile, a scholar in classics cites evidence not only that Greek slaves retained their cultural roots, but also that they were frequently used as soldiers—a practice that flouted cherished Greek notions of soldiers as noble citizens.

For Skinner, meanwhile, any discussion of modern slavery must start with a definition of the term: Slavery exists whenever people are forced to work, under threat of violence, for no pay other than subsistence.

Most modern slaves toil in southern Asia, and most are in some sort of debt bondage, he says. Skinner cited a man he met in an Indian rock quarry who had been forced to work there since childhood. This coerced labor had begun three generations earlier, when his grandfather took a debt equivalent to what today would be 62 cents.

The U.S. State department estimates that 600,0000 to 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders every year and sold into slavery. Most of the victims are sexual slaves, prostitutes by duress. Many are children.

Between 14,000 and 17,000 people a year are trafficked into the United States. They are held in bondage in the sex trade and as laborers.

Skinner recalls a trip to Haiti where he was ushered into a remote and poverty-stricken area. Of 32 families there, only one had not sold a child into bondage. A father told Skinner they had little choice.

The Haitians were starving and dying of disease. Traffickers tell parents they can provide children with food, clothing and safety. The father asked, “What would you have us do?”

Skinner, the author of “A Crime So Monstrous: Face to Face with Modern-Day Slavery,” says, “Today, I hope the fourth and, I hope, final abolitionist movement will help free slaves.”

It’s a tall order. By some estimates, 27 million people are now enslaved. The extent of the problem is not widely known. In fact, Project Censored listed worldwide slavery as one of the 25 “censored”—meaning under-reported—stories of 2009.

Such cultural blindness is, like slavery itself, nothing new.