Changes

The impact was more than the disappearance of the old religions (Figure 2). Many traditions that were associated with worship began to diminish or cease all together. For instance, observations of the planets and stars became less relevant as the positioning of the starts and planets were not important in the worship of universal faiths. Old languages such as ancient Egyptian and Akkadian finally disappeared, which led to possible loss of knowledge these ancient languages possessed. Other changes though were more related to what universal religions achieved, which is a lessening of ethnic and cultural differences prevalent before and greater cohesion between multiple social groups. 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, lead this created new forms of conflict that led to conflict 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. With universal religions, however, it was easier to inspire larger groups and create larger armiesto support given factions. Such larger armies, such as in the 7th and 8th centuries during the Islamic conquest of the Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa, and parts of Western Europe demonstrated that universal religions could now forge new, powerful armiesthat could more rapidly conquer much larger territory than in earlier periods. This was evident again during the period of the Crusades in the 11th and 12th centuries, as large armies, made up of a variety of Europeans, invaded the Levant to establish new kingdoms in that region.<ref>For more on conflict and universal faiths, see: Tehranian, M. (2007). <i>Rethinking civilization: resolving conflict in the human family.</i> Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. </ref>