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Ethnic groups do not die, but identities do.

    Rush Arush
    By Rush Arush
    ,

    Empires, kingdoms, and even nation-states were destroyed throughout human history. But when they do, it is not that the people were also massacred entirely, they just stopped using old identities.

    When the Roman Empire fell, the Roman people did not die or disappear. They lived just as before. It is that the people stopped identifying themselves as the Romans. The Inca Empire was destroyed in 1533, but the descendants still live today. They changed their identity, although gradually, after the Spanish conquered them. 

    The opposite is also true. When a new nation is created, the people start using new identity just as we can observe after the American Revolution. During the colonial time, the African people had mostly tribal identity only. But after the independence, many of them started to have the identity as a citizen of their countries.

    An ethnic group does not die or vanish, but an identity does. The creation of a new state is not physically creating new people, but the creation of a new identity.

    Comments

      • Yang
        By Yang

        I choose to belong to human race.

        • Chris
          By Chris

          Anik, I like they way put it in writing. 

          • Anik Rice
            By Anik Rice
            I think of a different way of putting this in words.
             
            Ethnic groups do not die physically but die psychologically. The human species has been making babies generations after generations and physically reproducing itself millenniums.
             
            Human also forms groups, called ethnic groups defined by identities, and these groups are created and disappear from time to time. This is a psychological birth and death but not physical ones.
            Rush Arush

            Rush Arush