Firstly, the characterization of our ancestors 'chilling in the seas and trees' is problematic. My worldview is that human civilization was always built from slavery or forced labor, tribal warfare, land and resource disputes and exploitation. It's not like the world was a peaceful place before European colonialism. Skin color and physical attributes like facial features were used as a basis in distinguishing social hierarchies and slavery/exploitation thousands of years before Christ was born.

There's undoubtedly many people on this board who've studied this in-depth so I'm just as keen to hear some perspectives as you. My impression is that the Trans-atlantic slave trade is differentiated from previous forms of slavery mostly for it's scale and sophistication. It was big enterprise commerce with legal and economic infrastructure. Before this time...indentured servitude was woven into cultural fabrics. The Europeans turned it into big business on a macro level that was highly organized. Also...European slavery took on a new form commonly called 'chattel slavery' which meant that a slave was a piece of property that could be bought, sold, inherited and it was a LIFETIME designation. The traditional forms of slavery before that time were less rigid. They weren't necessarily life-long sentences and they were often employed for debts or the spoils of a successful war or punishments for crime.

The question of How they did it? That's what I'd like to hear more about. Like all forms of imperialism....the Europeans exploited pre-existing conflicts between different ethnicities. I'd be interested in hearing from someone who's studied this at length...but I would guess we have to remember that there was not a unifying 'black' identity amongst African people. So from our current perspective we say 'How did only a few Europeans get away with doing this while being so outnumbered?' That presumes a shared identity amongst different African ethnicities which wasn't applicable back then. My impression is that this is much bigger factor than advanced weaponry.