“Did they all of a sudden “forget how” to create the previous much finer works? They decided to go backwards in skills and pride of craftsmanship rather than advance?”
The world is doing that now.
The world is doing that now.
I watched a fascinating interview of Elon Musk at a TED conference. Among his many achievements is his quest to build SpaceX in order to go to Mars. The interviewer asked him why rush, why not fix problems here on Earth and leave the space quest for a future time by others.
Musk pointed out that if he gives up the quest, others might not continue it. That the ancient Egyptians forgot how to build pyramids and other great monuments, and the Romans who built aqueducts soon forgot their technologies. He says it could happen to our modern civilization, that we could forget how to build and then revert to primitive states. He said after we went to the Moon we just sort of gave up for half a century. If he doesn't help push us along, we may never go to Mars. It doesn't take much for a civilization to decline and forget how to build.