Why does that matter? If you go sufficiently far back in time, there was no such thing as humans, either. Statements about humans, and about Frenchmen, are still valid within the right historical time frame.
This is actually really relevant to the point—it used to be that a person from Paris and a person from Marseille would have enough difficulty understanding each other that they are functionally speaking different languages. The government of France put a tremendous amount of effort into convincing everyone living in their borders that “being French” was a thing and that it described them, in large part by enforcing homogenization. In order to make the cluster of “Frenchmen” more distinct, outlying members had to be moved closer to the center (and foreign members moved further away from the center).
Why does that matter? If you go sufficiently far back in time, there was no such thing as humans, either. Statements about humans, and about Frenchmen, are still valid within the right historical time frame.
This is actually really relevant to the point—it used to be that a person from Paris and a person from Marseille would have enough difficulty understanding each other that they are functionally speaking different languages. The government of France put a tremendous amount of effort into convincing everyone living in their borders that “being French” was a thing and that it described them, in large part by enforcing homogenization. In order to make the cluster of “Frenchmen” more distinct, outlying members had to be moved closer to the center (and foreign members moved further away from the center).
Yes, that is a very good point. It was a bad example.