Changes

If we look at examples of early societies in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China, we often see examples of migrations or contacts between different ethnic groups. <ref> For information about historical migrations and multi-ethnic societies, see: Lucassen, Jan, Leo Lucassen, and Patrick Manning, eds. 2010. Migration History in World History: Multidisciplinary Approaches. Studies in Global Social History, v. 3. Leiden ; Boston: Brill.</ref> In many cases, these migrations or contacts are neutral or do not lead to any major confrontation. We do see cultures mixing their ideas in the form of introducing new gods to a regionor even architecture. Some cases where some level of multiculturalism may have been evident include societies that adopted foreign gods from their neighbors or other nearby cultures include the Hittites and Kassites, both Indo-Aryan speaking populations, who by around 1600 BC adopt gods from Anatolia and Mesopotamia. <ref> For information migrations and the adoption of local gods, see: Moret, Alexandre, and Georges Davy. 1970. From Tribe to Empire, Social Organization among Primitives and in the Ancient East. New York: Cooper Square, pg. 236. </ref>

However, what is clear in many of these regions is that one main culture prevailed in any given period, as seen in artistic and intellectual expression. This does not mean cultures were suppressed. On the contrary, integration and assimilation were common, where local customs, languages, and social norms were generally adopted by the population merging into a given urban society. Interestingly, even if that minority culture took power, often they retained the previous prevailing culture or even went out of their way to emphasize that culture through revitalizing older traditions and languages. We see this in Kassite Babylonia in Mesopotamia, for instance, where the ruling population was Kassite and from Iran or India, while most of the native population presumably was from southern Mesopotamia. <ref> For information about how new, migrating cultures retained older cultures in given regions and the example of the Kassites, see: Ellerker, Sean. 2014. The Dawn of Civilization: 4,000-500 BC. Padstow: Matador, pg. 61.</ref> This is likely unsurprising, as migrants presumably would have encountered a majority population and integrating into these majority populations meant that some level of assimilation was needed or at least to de-emphasize cultural expressions of a minority cultural group. In other words, societies may have been multicultural but multiculturalism was relatively limited, where expression of multiple cultures , such as multiple languages and clearly outward cultural expressions in the arts, within one society was rare.

Nevertheless, many cases of denigrating or undermining populations do exist in the past. While this does not mean cultures were racist or hated other individuals, it is does mean that cultures emphasized their own accomplishments and achievements particularly in war, as it showed the superiority of their gods. In particularother words, during to show the gods are with you then one may put down other people to demonstrate one's gods protects them from others. During times of conflict we see official art showing foreigners in a negative light being killed or showing their inferiority taken captive, often being shown as either as inferior to the ruling state or at least as far smaller than the rulers who are victorious(Figure 1). What The example of Naram-Sin, an Akkadian ruler, conquering his enemies shows them as creatures or even sub-human, perhaps helping to justify why he had to conquer them.<ref>For more information about Naram-Sin and how early conquests displayed adversaries, see: Foster, B. R. (2016). The Age of Agade: Inventing empire in ancient Mesopotamia. London ; New York, NY: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.</ref> Simply put, what this shows is that the level of multiculturalism expression were relatively limited and conflict often led to other cultures depicted in a demeaning way. <ref> For information about how conflict led to intolerance in the past, see: Clarke, Steve, Russell Powell, and Julian Savulescu, eds. 2013. Religion, Intolerance, and Conflict: A Scientific and Conceptual Investigation. First edition. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.</ref>