Someone on Twitter made the point that these previous civilizations were more advanced than what we first observe from the visible artifacts, which would be the most primitive structures made out of the least valuable materials.
(copper, bronze, brass etc would be looted. Kind of like Detroit...)
A point often missed when considering the destruction being wrought on western civilization NOW.
What city is it that just recently had FIRE HYDRANTS looted for scrap metal value? Chitcago? Dee-troit? Yeah, Detroit, 75 fire hydrants taken for selling on the “black” (brown?) market.
Baltimore’s neighborhoods (places I once drove through in the 1990’s to-from work) became “darker” as lamp posts were looted for scrap aluminum value; the darker the city became, the darker it got.
Does anyone remember seeing videos of the feckless “palestinian” hordes rushing into Gaza after the territory was ceded to the PA terrorist organization under the watchful eyes of then-resident Clinton and the Butcher of Bosnia Madwoman Albright? They destroyed millions (billions?) of dollars of greenhouses, tearing out plumbing, framing, solar panels and anything else of possible value - they are a scavenger, parasitic consumer class dependent on world food aid, primarily useful to the coming global caliphate to destroy Israel and her allies, not a farmer, agrarian producer group capable of creating a self-sustaining and ascendant civilization.
The great pyramids of Giza were once covered with a polished layer of white limestone. Scavenged, processed, probably all turned to dust by now for mortar to build structures which will fall apart in a few hundredths (at most) of the time the pyramids have loomed over a once verdant, productive region.
There WERE great antediluvian civilizations on this planet, of this I have zero doubts. A couple millennia on, our children’s children’s children will be arguing this as myth once again.
It only took one volcano and the wretched excesses of Cesarean political corruption and global overreach to bring down and bury the fruits of Roman technology and society like this boiler for 2,000 years.
I think islam will do this to the entire planet if we let it.
It has been said if the library of Alexandria hadn’t been burnt down we would have been on the moon around the time Christopher Columbus was discovering America.