an anecdote about how not everything about history is as dire as it may seem at first glance:

when the Minoan palace of Knossos was dug up in the early 1900s, archaeologist Arthur Evans looked at tablets that showed man, woman, and child symbols with accounting symbols, and came to the conclusion that they represented a bustling slave trade - whole families being pawned off on the regular. (Scripta Minoa, volume 2).

Eventually, Linear B was fully deciphered, and it turned out these tablets were accounting for how much food was needed for each household – based on standard portions for men, women and children.