ng, however both these people call them self. A culture so far as someone can say “I am (x nationality)” even if they have very different customs in practice. Kind of like Bavaria in Germany, Bavarians are catholic vs prot and a very distinct people but still are considered Germans
[–]Lord_Malgus 7 points 18 hours ago
Jokes aside, "Spain" was actually a bunch of feudal states up until the 15th century when it unified between the three major regions; Leon (Galician/Castilian), Castile and Aragon (Catalan), it was a really volatile "empire" that would only really solidify in the 1700s. Today there's the "autonomous system", but we've seen what happens when one of the regions tries to gain actual autonomy.
[–]readinreadin 4 points 19 hours ago
When did people in the Chinese empire first start calling themselves ‘Han’? I suspect if you can find out when that happened it will go a long way toward answering the question of why so many people of different but related cultures use the term but similarly inclusive terms like ‘European’ are less commonly used for culture.
[–]Hellebras 5 points 17 hours ago
During or after the Han dynasty. The Han were a long-lasting dynasty that controlled pretty much all of China to some extent or another, along with some territory outside of it. The Han also presided over one of the golden ages of Chinese civilization. So this contributed to the conditions that allowed for the development of a central identity.
[–]Swole_Prole 7 points 14 hours ago
Do you think their very advanced city infrastructure, including by far the oldest and most advanced pre-modern sewage system, arose without any political organization at all? That seems very naive. They were the first civilization to standardize measurements too. Obviously this was a very organized society at every level.
[–]sbzp -3 points 14 hours ago
Then why is there no direct evidence of political organization? There should've been some obvious evidence of that. It's highly possible they weren't a civilization but something completely decentralized, which on its own is very impressive but again creates an apples to oranges comparison.
[–]Swole_Prole 7 points 13 hours ago
They were by far the most expansive and populous civilization for most of ancient history. How could that be achieved with no political organization? What would evidence look like, considering we have not deciphered the Indus Script, and are not even sure it is a script? Why would they all have such similar city organization? Obviously there is a lot we don’t know, but it simply makes no sense to imply they were just villages doing their own thing. Where else on Earth have poorly organized societies ever produced such an advanced civilization?
[–]sachinabilliondreams 0 points 17 hours ago
India for a long part of history had city state like the Greeks but on a very large scale. The Mauryas brought it under the control of an Empire. I am seeing that people are calling Mauryas as just titular heads who were content to let local kings rule in there stead. This is incorrect as the Mauryas had a unified army, administration which was centralised. They had a common currency and regional governors. Why India didn't develop into a homogeneous society is mainly because non was powerful enough to overthrow the other and each region maintained its uniqueness simply because everyone had huge numbers which couldn't be completely suppressed. Also China had a lot of diversity and the totalitarian state destroyed it .
[–]Demiansky 5 points 12 hours ago*
I would say that the main reason is the same reason Latin isn't the dominant culture in Europe (but nearly was). Maintaining imperial hegemony over India or the Mediterranean for an extended period of time was harder than it was for China due to geography and the relative locations of high population carrying capacity. India's Ganges and and Ganges delta has huge carrying capacity, but is wedged up in the corner of the subcontinent. In other words, dominating all of India long enough to enforce one culture over all of India meant projecting power f