Most premodern military and commercial interactions occurred within civilizations
Evidence
“Greek traditions place the installation of Egyptian colonies in Greece at approximately [the middle of the second millennium, B.C.]: Cecrops settled in Attica; Danaus, brother of Aegyptus, in Argolis; he taught the Greeks agriculture as well as metallurgy (iron).” Diop, op. cit., p. 110. See also Plato’s Timaeus for the suggestion that Greek and African relations were already merely vague memories by the fourth century B.C. George James notes: “One of the military policies adopted by the Greek military authorities at Alexandria was the issue of commands to the leading Egyptian Priests for information concerning the Egyptian history, philosophy and religion… . Accordingly, we are told that Ptolemy I Soter, in order to elicit the secrets of Egyptian wisdom or mystery system, ordered Manetho, the High Priest of the temple of Isis at Sebennytus in Lower Egypt, to write the philosophy, and the history of the religion of the Egyptians.
— Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1743 (#complicates, via linked claim)
Categorization
XREF: connects to: Egyptian and Greek military contact and colonization predate classical antiquity. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 436; Civilization in the singular coexisted historically with many civilizations — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 155; European military models form a chain of borrowings back to antiquity (+3 more)