AHC/PC: Classic empires survive to present?

In OTL, from the founding of China under the Qin Dynasty from 221 BC to the present, China has existed. It's expanded over time and it's had many non-native dynasties (Khitans, Jurchens, Mongols, Manchu), but it has always been China.

How plausible is it that the world could be dominated by classic, unitary cultures? That is, let's say the Romans successfully Romanize the entirety of the Empire at least linguistically, much as the Han people did to the people they absorbed south of the Yangtze.

Is it possible that the Roman Empire, the Persian Empire and some sort of Hindi/Aryan dominated Indian equivalent could be maintained throughout history, much as with China? That is, even if the ruling ethnicity changed with different dynasties and conquerors, they always adopt the culture, language etc.

To an extent this is true with Persia anyway - but I'm more interested in having a Persia that's reminiscent of the old Persian Empires as well.

TL;DR: Create the most plausible scenario in which Persia, India, Rome and China are superpowers/regional superpowers throughout history, as China has been OTL.

Bonus points if a minimal number of independent entities exist between them.

What other nations are potential candidates? Mali/Ghana? Incas?
 
I'd argue that there's continuity between ancient Persia and modern Iran - The only big difference is the adoption of Islam, but in the same way, China went through Confucianism, Buddhism, and state atheism in the time since Qin Shi Huang. Don't forget Ethiopia, which can be traced back to the D'mt and Aksum kingdoms.

Another possibility is an ethnic Tamil-based state in southern India and/or Sri Lanka that continually avoids conquest by neighboring empires and European colonials. It would be seen as the descendant of one of the ancient Tamil kingdoms, the Cholas, the Pandyas, or the Cheras, each of which survived for over one thousand years. If you can avoid the conquests and divisions of Korea and Vietnam in their histories, they might qualify as well.

The problem with "empire" is that most empires, being large political entities, are multi-ethnic in nature and it's difficult to hold them together for very long, let along over one thousand years. States based on unitary cultures are more plausible, but they'll be smaller. A surviving Roman empire in Western Europe is very unlikely in my opinion, but a Greek-speaking state descended from the Byzantines in Greece and Anatolia might be possible if you can butterfly the Turks away.
 
I'd argue that there's continuity between ancient Persia and modern Iran - The only big difference is the adoption of Islam, but in the same way, China went through Confucianism, Buddhism, and state atheism in the time since Qin Shi Huang. Don't forget Ethiopia, which can be traced back to the D'mt and Aksum kingdoms.

Another possibility is an ethnic Tamil-based state in southern India and/or Sri Lanka that continually avoids conquest by neighboring empires and European colonials. It would be seen as the descendant of one of the ancient Tamil kingdoms, the Cholas, the Pandyas, or the Cheras, each of which survived for over one thousand years. If you can avoid the conquests and divisions of Korea and Vietnam in their histories, they might qualify as well.

For Iran, though I'd agree that many aspects of our nation are continuous from Persia, there's also an awful lot different, more so than China. I'm thinking of a Persia that is, much as with China, never conquered by an empire that puts its capital somewhere else - any time China was conquered, its rulers adopted Chinese culture very quickly and built their capitals in China.

I'd like a Persian Empire that may have rulers from different places (like the real one did, with the Parthians not being Persian) but still being Persian culturally and linguistically (that's an important one), still being called Persia by other nations and still preferably having the Zoroastrian faith.

Thanks for the other suggestions though, Chola, Pandyas etc.

It'd be interesting if the religions these empires were founded with could survive, too. A world where religion is more closely tied to the empire it is associated with, in other words.
 
It's certainly possible to preserve a Roman culture WITHIN a Roman state - without a Roman state, with many feudal dezentralized states and territories, Roman culture is doomed and will start to evolve very differently e.g. in Romania and Portugal.

You'll particulary need to protect the Roman empire from beeing destroyed by the "barbarians" - I'm not saying that they can't invade the Empire, but they should only exchange one Roman dynasty by another "barbarian" one instead of dooming the whole administration and infrastructure.
 
Butterfly away Islam and you get serving Byzies

This is the point - the Byzantines can be a starting point for preserving old greek culture, just without the polytheims and the latin language predominating in the empire before.

A Byzantine empire taking back Italy and Gaul would be even more helpful.
 
The preservation of Rome is always possible, there are dozens upon dozens of POD's that can keep the Empire not only alive but prospering and even dominating. The inability for the Empire to persist into the modern age is a consequence of weak rule and stupid men.

Now Persia, Persia is something I want to see. Not islamic Persia though, Islamic Persia has an enormous continuity with the old state. Everything that's changed in Persia is mostly just a consequence of changing times, things that would have occurred despite a maintained independence. I want to see a surviving Zoroastrian Persia, or a natural conversion to another religion.
 
Any time China was conquered, its rulers adopted Chinese culture very quickly and built their capitals in China.

Actually both the Mongol Yuan and the Manchu Qing took pains to keep their distance from 'China'. The Mongols actively discriminated against 'Han' by putting them in the lowest rung of their 'caste system', which partly explains their relatively short duration of 79 years.

The Qing ruled with a defter hand by 'adopting' native culture to suit their subjects' needs. So when in the presence of Chinese the Qing would quote Confucius and carry out the rituals to Heaven; in the presence of Mongols the Qing would go on hunts and practice the rituals of Lama Buddhism. Even in Turkestan the Qing would claim themselves to be representatives of Allah.

So it's a bit too much to claim that the Qing were 'assimilated' into China during their rule - for the duration of their dynasty, the Manchus actively kept their distance from China while simultaneously pretending to be a part of it - same with all the other regions. Manchu assimilation really occurred during the end of the Qing, especially with the opening of the 'Willow Wall' in the 1860s in response to Russian pressure on Manchuria.

Chinese assimilation of foreign rulers generally occurred after their dynasties had collapsed and traditional ethnic barriers were torn down by the (generally-Han) new dynasty. One of the few times in which a ruling people actively tried to become Chinese was the Tuoba Xianbei of the Northern Wei, and even that quickly led to the secession of the northern Xianbei.

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That said, I think the real way classic empires/civilizations can survive to the present is really through size of ethnic group. Ethnic groups with massive population like Han China can, in the long-run, overwhelm foreign invaders as well as assimilate smaller ethnicities into their group. The reason that southern China is now Han has less to do with the Han 'Sinicizing' the original natives as it has to do with the Han displacing them through sheer weight of numbers during mass-migration periods in the 3rd, 8th and 13th centuries.

So really Roman civilization could only have survived beyond the collapse of the Roman state if Romans had ethnically replaced all the previous peoples living in their empire - not just in terms of citizenship, but also in terms of ethnicity.
 
Interestingly an analysis of the genes of the current people of southern China (particularly Guangdong) reveals that their Y chromosomes highly match the Y chromosomes of the northern Chinese. The mitochondrial DNA show a stronger match with those of the Thai people. This does seem to confirm tales of male soldiers and criminals being sent south and intermarrying with indigenous women.

The Cantonese language (spoken) retains significant influence from the pre-Han languages. Many classical Chinese poems rhyme when spoken in Cantonese, and even Korean or Japanese. They don't rhyme when spoken in modern-day Mandarin, though.
 
The cultural change between Rome of Augustus and that of Justinian strikes me as as great as that between the Persia of the Sassanids and that of the Safavids, so even if the empire survives in some form I'm not sure it really has a strong claim on cultural continuity.
 
The Cantonese language (spoken) retains significant influence from the pre-Han languages. Many classical Chinese poems rhyme when spoken in Cantonese, and even Korean or Japanese. They don't rhyme when spoken in modern-day Mandarin, though.

Yes, to my understanding, though they are usually used very different today, the character 越 (yue) as in 越南 (yue nan), the modern Chinese name for Vietnam, and the character 粤 (yue) as in 粤语 (yue yu), the modern Chinese name for all of the Cantonese dialects, were once interchangeable in ancient Chinese texts. Both were used to describe the ancient Yue "barbarians" who lived in and beyond the southern frontiers, in what is now southern China and also Southeast Asia.

The Baiyue people (hundred Yue) were written both as 百越 or 百粤 in ancient Chinese texts. Even today, the same "yue" character used for Vietnam and Vietnamese people is used for a well-known form of opera from Zhejiang Province that is popular throughout southeastern China today - 越剧 (yue ju). Usually, however, there's a distinction between 越, related to modern Vietnam, and 粤, related to China's Guangdong Province.

Interestingly, the pronouncing of the characters in Cantonese and in Vietnamese (back when Vietnam still used Chinese characters) seem to resemble each other more than Cantonese resembles Mandarin - Viet in Vietnamese and Jyut in Cantonese respectively. A third link is the pronunciation of the characters in Zhuang language, the language of China's largest minority concentrated in the southern province of Guangxi - They say "Vyot". All three languages come from different families - Cantonese from Sino-Tibetan, Vietnamese from Austroasiatic, and Zhuang from Tai, but there's a lot of influences between them, suggesting heavy cultural exchange and probably genetic ties as well.
 
To a certain extent assimilation of foreign ruling classes did happen in the mediterranean as well, especially in Gaul, Italy and Spain. The ruling germanic elites all became catholic, they all abandoned their germanic tongues and started speaking the romance dialects of the region they ruled and with Charlemagne even resurrected the title of Roman Emperor.
 
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