Secrets of Slave Cities

What is it with these "facelifts" that tend to uncover the dirty sinews of yesteryear? Back in Cape Town, South Africa, as the "Mother City" attempted to cover up all its dirty divisions in preparation for meeting the requirements of the FIFA overlords, out came slave burial sites. Now, in Rio, as the city begins a massive cleanup leading to the 2016 Olympics, archaeologists have found the remains of one of the busiest slave ports, "a filthy, bustling harbour where hundreds of thousands of Africans were sold into a life of exploitation and abuse," where hundreds of thousands of Africans were sold to plantation owners.

Famished, exhausted and with their heads half-shaved, the slaves were herded off ships, groomed in "fattening houses" and dispatched to sugar and coffee plantations across Brazil.

Now, nearly two centuries after Rio's notorious Valongo wharf began operating, local archaeologists believe they may have located the slave port's ruins during a multibillion-dollar, pre-Olympic renovation of the city's harbour. "As soon as the discovery was made I went there," said Washington Fajardo, Rio's secretary for cultural heritage. "It is a moving experience, seeing an existing city and then another city two metres below. You feel a bit like Indiana Jones."

Read the article here.