Borders have existed as long as humans have claimed territory. Borders are only meaningful to the extent they are enforced, so border control has existed in some form or another for all that time.
Borders have been a bit fuzzy at many times and places. The farther one travels from a seat of power, the harder it is for that power to patrol and control the area. Thus we get borderlands, places at the fringes of a government’s authority.
In addition to borders, documents analogous to passports have existed for millennia. If you wanted to travel from your kingdom to another kingdom, your monarch might send you off with an official letter requesting your safe passage through whatever kingdoms you need to cross. Without papers you might be deemed a vagrant or worse, and wind up in a cell.
alls that really mattered before a certain point was taxation. I would not be surprised if some contested areas had tax collectors from two different countries collecting from the peasants. The fuedal system was essentally a way to organize tax collection. Local lords collected form the territory they were given dominion over and they had to kick it up the chain.
Reminds me of a scene in The Chosen where people are camping outside of a small settlement to see Jesus, so the Romans claim a bit more land for that settlement to collect taxes from them
Borders have existed as long as humans have claimed territory. Borders are only meaningful to the extent they are enforced, so border control has existed in some form or another for all that time.
Borders have been a bit fuzzy at many times and places. The farther one travels from a seat of power, the harder it is for that power to patrol and control the area. Thus we get borderlands, places at the fringes of a government’s authority.
In addition to borders, documents analogous to passports have existed for millennia. If you wanted to travel from your kingdom to another kingdom, your monarch might send you off with an official letter requesting your safe passage through whatever kingdoms you need to cross. Without papers you might be deemed a vagrant or worse, and wind up in a cell.
alls that really mattered before a certain point was taxation. I would not be surprised if some contested areas had tax collectors from two different countries collecting from the peasants. The fuedal system was essentally a way to organize tax collection. Local lords collected form the territory they were given dominion over and they had to kick it up the chain.
Reminds me of a scene in The Chosen where people are camping outside of a small settlement to see Jesus, so the Romans claim a bit more land for that settlement to collect taxes from them