Cain and Abel

Published on 26th December, 2019, in The Times of India Two hundred years ago, in America, many white people justified the slavery of Africans arguing that their black skin was the ‘mark of Cain’. That they descended from the first murderer in recorded history. Before that, many Christians in Europe argued that Jews bore the ‘mark of Cain’ which is why they had peculiar features like hooked nose, and they circumcised themselves, and kept wandering like exiles, unable to settle anywhere. Thus the ‘mark of Cain’ – a mythological idea – was used to justify the slavery trade and antisemitism. Mythological ideas do impact in ..