Changes

Social mobility in the religious orders now occurred across ethnic lines, allowing states and empires to depend on people with the same faith rather than same ruling ethnic groups. As ethnic groups shared the same god or religious ideas, then some of the ancient cultural groups disappeared. Gradually, cultural identity in places disappeared.<ref>For more on the impact of universal philosophies, see: Paterson, A. C. (2009). <i>Three monotheistic faiths--Judaism, Christianity, Islam: an analysis and brief history.</i> Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse.</ref>

Common universal religions did create conflict in places where large non-universal groups persisted. For instance, Egypt still had a substantial polytheistic population until the Byzantine Emperor Justinian closed the temples in the 6th century CE (Figure 2). Even sometimes within the same universal religion, such as the schism in Christianity over the nature of Christ, this created new forms of conflict that led to disputes between the Church and ultimately the establishment of church leaders in cities such as Ctesiphon, Constantinople, and Roman. Ultimately, universal faiths helped to unite disparate people groups, but they also created conflicts within religions and states. Conflict, in general, began to shift toward religious-based reasons, whereas wars in the past were not seen as divine battles of good versus evil but rather conflicts where the gods may or may not support their worshipers.