If there was already a topic about this then just tell me, havent been here in two months due to school and what not. Pretty much what I want to find out is what the topic states. Are civilizations cyclical meaning do civilizations repeat after a certain time. Me and my friend were talking about Atlantis (if you believe in it), and ancient Greece, Rome and other ancient civilizations and found out a pattern. They seem to reach a point of "glory" or climax in power and then they seem to die out, due to not seeking knowledge or exploring or other things. Correct me if Im wrong but what I see is that Greece fell and when the Romans took over they kinda had to start at ground zero. Then the Roman empire fell we went into the "Dark Ages" and didnt start to advance until the Renaissance came about. Also note when the Europe powers fell the Asian countries started to advance into power. You could use this theory or whatever you want to call it but it is almost tue to all ancient civilizations. If you want to take it to the extreme then just bare with me. Say Atlantis from Edgar Cayce's point. He says it was a utopia and of course advanced but then corruption and natural disasters happened during three periods and they died out. He said they died out around 10,500 BCE. The ones that lived move to Egypt and what do you know around 10,000 BCE Egypt started to flourish and Egypt started to form a civilization. This is a little out of the box but just try to imagine it. As far as I know no-one else thought of this and if somone else already did then well their idea not mine. I want your opinions about this "theory".

Unfortunately, because of the inherent weaknesses of all humans, this is a cycle that will repeat itself again and again. Until we get it in our heads that we have to change.
Where we live may change. How we live has certainly changed.
But how we operate as a people? I'm sorry, but I do not feel we have changed much in those thousands of years.

My point exactly. The only reason we repeat ourselves is because we as a race we are incompetent and we never lear. Like many people say if we could learn what we did wrong in the past then we could avoid those situations for the future. Just wish I could get more feedback from people.

I have always felt that the real root to these downfalls, is our emotions.
Now, I am not advocating we all turn into emotionless people.
I do believe that if we were less motivated by them, we would have had a history of much less violence and failure.
We are animals.. biologically speaking and are driven by instinct...as yet.
Jealousy instinct, in a love triangle.
Greed instinct, when there is an opportunity to have more.
Hatred instinct when someone has a different opinion, attitude or appearance.
And so on....
If one could remove 1/2 to 3/4 of our tendencies toward feeling emotions, we would be reducing them to a managable level and thus greatly to totally be removing those downfalls that are emotionally driven.

I agree totally, the only thing is we have a better chance of jumping off a building and trying to fly then to do that.

All civilization falls, and the lessons that could help the next fall with it, because if we learned to be different, we would not be human. Me? I'm happy with how we live. We've been advancing as seperate civilizations working together for sometime longer than any single one has by itself.

I think that one single civilization can only advance so far before other ideas for it's culture and government and all those things come and it falls. That is why multiple civilizations, like today, working together instead of trying to be one civilization (I define civilization as a group that share beliefs on government and culture) is working better. The huge Empires fell because the bigger of space you want to control the harder it is. It's easier to control what happens in your house than in three houses, correct?

That is true.
The world is getting to be a smaller place due to our advancements.
These advancements has helped to keep us going..so far.
But as our technology grows our moral behavior and responsibility seems not to.
How long can a trend like this continue?

We are on the verge of fantastic technologies.
Such things as teleportation or true invisibility may become a reality in our lifetime.
What would these do to commerce, crime or the politics between countries.

Lets say aliens are for real and they someday very soon reveal themselves.
What would that do to everything, knowing our human frailties?

I say we must change as a people or we will someday, be no more.

Mr. E when you say if we learn to be different then we arent humans thats not true. Being different is what makes us humans. Im not saying we have to be different Im saying we need to adapt to what we are doing to the world or we wont survive much longer.

The eternal battle of Chaos vs Order.

No, I mean as civilization. All civilizations go through stages really, and are very similiar, up to now. Up to now, we didn't have treaties preventing conquest of other countries. Although it'd be easier to just conquer everyone and reteach humanity in general to be better. Again, every generation is pretty much the same. Just like every civilization.

Our parents' parents though "Good Lord, kids are crazy these days". It's just kids get away with alot more these days.

Yes they are. Even to the point that they can confuse you. People are just like that. Fads ALWAYS come back a little different. At this point it is like a broken record.

Yes! Everything in the Universe functions in the orderly pattern of cyclic regeneration.