I tend to rankle when people compare the colonialism of the last few centuries with the pre-capitalist expansion and settlement of ancient societies. It seems like there's a lot of daylight between the English founding Jamestown and ancient Ionians founding Massalia or w/e.
But what do Hexbear's historians think? Is it fundamentally the same social phenomenon across time or is capitalist settler-colonialism its own unique thing?
Read Xenophon's Anabasis. It's a great window into the iron age and how all this ancient cultural diversity got crushed by passing armies casually genociding people. The author is basically an ancient greek chud who sacrifices to Zeus like a good boy, but if you read it with a keen eye for ancient military history, early monetary economies, and the extreme cultural diversity of the period it's mind-blowing. It's also fairly entertaining and not too long a read.
Now I want to reread this. I read the Anabasis when I was around 12 and I thought Xenophon was the coolest guy ever. Thankfully I grew out of that eventually, but reading his Socratic dialogues did help to get me interested in philosophy. I think I would find different things interesting about it now lol.