Final answer:
About 12-13 percent of enslaved individuals did not survive the Middle Passage, accounting for nearly 4 million lives lost out of 16 million taken. This mortality rate exemplifies the extreme conditions faced during the transatlantic journey of the slave trade.
Step-by-step explanation:
Approximately 12-13 percent of enslaved people did not survive the Middle Passage, the harrowing transatlantic journey part of the Atlantic Triangle Trade network. During the Middle Passage, mortality rates were extremely high due to the brutal conditions aboard the slave ships, where individuals were tightly packed into small spaces and suffered from malnourishment and disease. Historical records indicate that out of 16 million Africans captured for slavery, 12 million arrived alive in the Americas, suggesting that about 4 million people succumbed on this voyage. The true cost of these journeys was not just in lives lost, but also in the potential contributions these people could have made to African societies had they not been forcefully taken.In context, if we examine the entire period of Atlantic slavery, about a quarter of all slaves taken died during the voyage across the Atlantic, highlighting the dire conditions aboard the slave ships and the inhumanity of the slave trade. Despite this, the populations in Africa continued to grow due to the introduction of American staples such as corn and manioc which created a population boom, overshadowing the losses to slave trade to some extent.The impact of the Middle Passage and the transatlantic slave trade cannot be overstated. The loss of life and the social and cultural progress that could have been achieved had these millions of individuals remained in Africa, contribute to the profound consequences of this dark chapter in human history.