Well, in the ancient world you would often do that to a defeated people. If Rome defeated Carthage, say, they could kill everybody (maybe) or enslave them. Or maybe you leave them there and demand they pay tribute.
Problem with tribute is if you keep them on their own land, they might regroup and rebel.
So a trick they did was.... say you beat city A and City B and they're in separate parts of the world. You relocate the people from City A to City B, and city B to A. That way they are dealing with a new place, a new language, new weather systems and they're so busy dealing with the unfamiliar that they can't organize and rebel.
And over the years, the people of A lose their culture and become more like the Empire. and people B lose their cultural identity and join the empire.
That's why you don't find people walking around today claiming to be Babylonians or Carthaginians or Assyrians. Maybe there's a descendent of Babylon today, but he calls himself an Iraqi and has no real connection to the ancient culture of Babylon.
There's a few peoples that have been around for an extraordinary long time. One is the Chinese, mostly because they have a large piece of land that they've never been displaced from. They still had political turmoil. with multiple dynasties that came to the scene, grew, became corrupt, fell, and were replaced by the next dynasty.
The other is the Jews, that somehow kept their cultural identity intact inspire centuries of exile in foreign lands. That's unusual. Even more unusual, the Bible predicted this before it happened.
An addendum, though, is that with all the deliberate relocation today by the globohomos (useful enough term) they're trying the same damn thing. Dilute American culture by bringing in Latin America and Afghani culture. Dilute European culture by bringing in Arab culture. And I imagine its the same reason: dilute the possibility of rebellion.
Well, in the ancient world you would often do that to a defeated people. If Rome defeated Carthage, say, they could kill everybody (maybe) or enslave them. Or maybe you leave them there and demand they pay tribute.
Problem with tribute is if you keep them on their own land, they might regroup and rebel.
So a trick they did was.... say you beat city A and City B and they're in separate parts of the world. You relocate the people from City A to City B, and city B to A. That way they are dealing with a new place, a new language, new weather systems and they're so busy dealing with the unfamiliar that they can't organize and rebel.
And over the years, the people of A lose their culture and become more like the Empire. and people B lose their cultural identity and join the empire.
That's why you don't find people walking around today claiming to be Babylonians or Carthaginians or Assyrians. Maybe there's a descendent of Babylon today, but he calls himself an Iraqi and has no real connection to the ancient culture of Babylon.
There's a few peoples that have been around for an extraordinary long time. One is the Chinese, mostly because they have a large piece of land that they've never been displaced from. They still had political turmoil. with multiple dynasties that came to the scene, grew, became corrupt, fell, and were replaced by the next dynasty.
The other is the Jews, that somehow kept their cultural identity intact inspire centuries of exile in foreign lands. That's unusual. Even more unusual, the Bible predicted this before it happened.
An addendum, though, is that with all the deliberate relocation today by the globohomos (useful enough term) they're trying the same damn thing. Dilute American culture by bringing in Latin America and Afghani culture. Dilute European culture by bringing in Arab culture. And I imagine its the same reason: dilute the possibility of rebellion.