I think you may be right, in a way. I haven’t read the book you reference, but maybe we’re just doing everything over and over again, in an ever upward, ever widening spiral.
-JT
It’s neat. In the book, the planet has two suns and every, say, 5000 years both suns line up with the single moon in a total eclipse. And this happens to a race that has never known dark. They go mad each time and destroy their civilization and it takes 5000 years to rebuild until the next eclipse.