as an offshoot of your comment, its too big a topic to discard
destruction of cultures by invading forces has altered history more than any factor
i think we need to list great destructions due to invasions
MONGOL INVASION OF BAGHDAD
At the time Baghdad was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, an Islamic state whose heart was the modern state of Iraq. it had a population of approximately one million residents and was defended by an army 60,000 soldiers death toll have ranged from 200,000 to half a million. the winners had to move his camp upwind of the city, due to the stench of decay from the ruined city. Baghdad was a depopulated, ruined city for several centuries and only gradually recovered some of its former glory. The Grand Library of Baghdad, containing countless precious historical documents and books on subjects ranging from medicine to astronomy, was destroyed. Survivors said that the waters of the Tigris ran black with ink from the enormous quantities of books flung into the river.
Agreed, every invasion does that, but when the west came in, they ensured that we thought bad about ourselves, which was not accomplished by the mughals themselves.
No other than the EU cultures have successfully killed the core beliefs of any civilization.
Taimur to Attila did their job, but the Brits / Spaniards were the nuclear war for cultures.