Assam, a state in Northeast India, is a meeting ground of diverse cultures with a strong potential in tourism. The people of Assam are a mixture of various racial and ethnic groups who came from different places such as Mongoloid, Indo-Burmese, Indo-Iranian and Aryan. The culture of Assam is a rich and exotic cocktail of all these races evolved through a long assimilative process through generations.

The culture of Assam is traditionally a hybrid one which has been developed due to the cultural assimilation of different ethno-cultural groups coming together from different places under various political-economic systems in different periods of history. 

The roots of the culture in Assam, which is a big selling point in the tourism industry, go back to almost five thousand years ago, when the first cultural assimilation took place between the Austro-asiatic and the Bodo-Kachari groups. Overall, there were three waves of cultural assimilation in Assam. Firstly, it was the Tibeto-Burman ethnic groups which had arrived from places like Tibet, Yunnan and Sinchuan provinces of China who mixed with the scarcely present aboriginal Austric people like the Khasi and Jaintia. Next, there was a wave of Indo-Aryans from places in Northern India, which was responsible for bringing the Vedic culture into Assam. They mixed with the Tantric culture of the Bodo-Kachari people. The last wave of migration was that of the Tai-Ahoms(Tai/Shan) who added another big chapter to the history and culture of Assam. The Ahoms later on brought some more Indo-Aryans like the Assamese Brahmins, Ganaks and Kayasthas to Assam.

According to the Hindu epic Mahabharata and on the basis of local folklore, people of Assam (Kiratas) lived as part of a strong kingdom in the Himalayas in the era before Jesus Christ, which is what led to an early assimilation of various Tibeto-Burman and Autro-asiatic ethnic groups on a much larger scale. The typical naming of the rivers and the spatial distribution of related ethno-cultural groups also support this theory. Thereafter, western migrations of Indo-Aryans such as those of various branches of Irano-Scythians and Nordics along with mixed northern Indians (the ancient cultural mix that had already been present in the northern Indian states in places such as Magadha) enriched the aboriginal culture and under certain stronger politico-economic systems, Sanskritisation and Hinduisation intensified and became prominent in the culture of Assam. Such an assimilated culture therefore carries many elements of various source cultures, of which the exact roots are difficult to trace and are a matter for research in exploring tourism in Assam. However, in each of the elements of Assamese culture, i.e. language, traditional crafts, performing arts, festivities and beliefs, either indigenous local elements or the indigenous local elements in a Sanskritised forms are always present.

It is believed that the culture of Assam developed its roots over 750 years as the country of Kamarupa during the first millennium AD of the assimilation of the Bodo-Kachari people with the Aryans. The first 300 years of Kamarupa was under the reign of the great Varman dynasty, 250 years under the Mlechchha dynasty and 200 years under the Pala dynasty. The records of many aspects of the language, traditional crafts (silk, lac, gold, bronze, etc.) are available in different forms. When the Tai-Shans entered the region in 1228 under the leadership of Sukaphaa to establish the Ahom kingdom in places of Assam for the next 600 years, a new chapter of cultural assimilation was written once again, and thus the modern form of culture in Assam developed. The original Tai-Shans assimilated with the local culture, adopted the language on one hand and on the other hand, they also influenced the culture of Assam with the elements from their own. Similarly, the Chutiya kingdom in eastern Assam, the Koch Kingdom in western Assam and the medieval Kachari and Jaintia kingdoms in southern Assam provided stages for assimilation at different intensities and with different cultural-mixes.

The Vaishanav Movement, a 15th-century religio-cultural movement under the leadership of Srimanta Sankardeva and his disciples, helped in providing another dimension to the culture of Assam. A renewed Hinduisation took place in local forms, which was initially greatly supported by the Koch and later by the Ahom Kingdoms. The resultant social institutions such as namghar and sattra - the Vaishnav Hermitage have today become a big part of the Assamese way of life. It plays a big part in the promotion of local tourism. The movement contributed greatly towards language, literature and performing and fine arts. On many occasions, the Vaishnav Movement attempted to introduce alien cultural attributes and modify the way of life of the common people. Brajavali, a language specially created by introducing words from other Indian languages, failed as a language but left its traces on the Assamese language. Moreover, new alien rules were also introduced which included changing people's eating habits and other aspects of cultural life. This had a greater impact on the alienation of many ethno-cultural and political groups in the later periods.

During periods in history when Assam had strong politico-economic systems that emerged under powerful dynasties, greater cultural assimilation created common attributes of Assamese culture, while on the other hand, under less powerful politico-economic systems or during political disintegration, more localized attributes were created with spatial differentiation. Time-factors for such integrations and differentiations have also played an important role along with the position of individual events in the entire series of events.