Before modern nation-states took over as the most prevalent state form, humanity went through different kinds of states, including city-states and empires to manage the population and provide security. The coexistence of the nation and the state is a recent phenomenon, with nationalism serving to support the authority of the state in areas with rather homogeneous populations. The American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, and later the decolonization process are considered important points in history that led to the conscious creation of nation-states in the modern age. The outcome of the rise of the nation-state, however, has not been the same for all communities. The emergence of nation-states, particularly those that replaced the fallen empires or were a fraction of a fallen empire came with huge consequences for many ethnic and religious groups around the world as the transition from empire to nation-state led to the homogenization of the population in fragments of the collapsed empires, which in some cases included religion and sometimes ethnicity and language as elements of national identity and a force of power legitimation.