I would somewhat agree.
They "transform" into oblivion, relatively speaking. That is relative to their previous power and presence.
In somewhat modern times, think of:
- Britain (sun never set on)
- Spanish (second most spoken language in the world)
- Portuguese (largest maritime empire in the world at the time)
- Dutch (another maritime empire)
All once greater world powers. Where are they today? The trash heap, used-to-be's mostly.
Go further back, and you see....
- Sumer
- Indus Valley
- Hittites
- Persian
- Greeks
- And, of course, the big one -- Rome
All relegated to the dustbin of history. Gone.
Keep another point in mind. When Rome (western Rome) collapsed, the modern world at the time was set back to the Stone Age, and it took almost a thousand years to get the mojo back. Roughly until the Renaissance. The same is roughly true for the Bronze Age Collapse around 1200 BC.
The so-called modern world at the time was stopped dead in their tracks, and it took almost a millennium to recover.
And here we are again today at the cusp!
Saying Rome (western Rome) did not collapse is like saying the Titanic just took on a little water.
The Sumerian civilization didn’t collapse - the Sumerians merged with the Amorites to form the Akkadian-Sumerian and then just the Akkadian civilization which divided into Assyrian and Babylonian. Yet in both the “holy language” was Sumerian. The Sumerian gods were worshipped, the Sumerian script was followed, the Sumerian culture, technology was used.
After the Babylonians this was taken over by the Achaemenid - even though they were Persian, the capital and heart was in Mesopotamia. Culturally it remained mainly Sumerian-Akkadian but merged again with the Persian and Median.
The Persian civilization remained - it was a continuation of the Sumerian-Akkadian. This was through the Achaemenid period and the Greek-Seleucid period. Note that the Persians took Greek culture but merged it with their own, older culture.
Even more so - the Arabs conquered the Persians but were transformed by the Persians — the “Arab” higher culture was heavily Persian-Greek.
The collapse of the western Roman empire did not “set the modern world back to the Stone age” — that’s massive hyperbole.
In 500 AD the Western Europeans had not only Bronze but also Iron working, so definitely not “stone age”.
Western Europeans moved away from CENTRALIZED states - with massive bureaucracies directed from the centre.