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. In many cases, these migrations or contacts are neutral or do not lead to any major confrontation. However, what is clear in many of these regions there is often one main culture that prevails We do see cultures mixing their ideas 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. 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 a de-emphasis on cultural expressions form of introducing new gods to a minority cultural group. In other words, societies may have been multicultural but multiculturalism was relatively limitedregion. Some cases where some level of multiculturalism may have been evident include societies that adopted foreign gods as a new cultural group emerged. For instance, from their neighbors or other nearby cultures include the Hittites, at around 1800 1600 BC, who adopt gods from Mesopotamia and Anatolia.

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 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. 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 a 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 within one society was rare.  Nevertheless, many cases of denigrating or undermining populations do exist in the past. In particular, during times of conflict we see official art showing foreigners in a negative light or showing their inferiority to the ruling state (Figure 1). 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.