About 1177 BCE, Western Civilization collapsed. We don't talk about it.
The locals had invented writing, which made it easier to accumulate knowledge. They had invented the wheel, along with bronze. Things were looking up. Then came climate change and many other events, and Egypt, Crete, Greece, the Hittites, the Assyrians and Babylonians collapsed, some worse than others. Literacy was severely reduced. The governments and cities fragmented. International trade stopped. People began to move from village to village, country to country, going where the food was. Groups got violent. Immense suffering followed. (Historians call this the Bronze Age collapse.)
Eventually Western Civilization was rebuilt, and it prospered until the second collapse, in 477 AD, roughly, starting the Dark Ages. After prolonged suffering, civilization got built a third time, and here we are, again looking away from global warming.
We face climate change, a population of 7 billion hungry people and an economic system built on unslakable greed. The good news is that if we implode, the survivors among our descendants may eventually succeed in building Western Civilization a fourth time. (The Chinese have not had this problem, but recently they adopted some western practices and theories.)
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