Precisely. In both cases, everything collapsed because, ultimately, their gods were too small. How could they not be? After all they were created in the image of man, not the other way around.
What we see playing out now in America is much the same, as we have abandoned the real Creator of the universe for one that is made in our image. It is the almost inevitable result of late southern Renaissance and Enlightenment philosophy, where "man is the measure of all things."
We never learn. We think we have become the smartest generation to grace the earth with our presence and soon all problems will be resolved, yet we fail to understand the most basic principles. As it says in Ecclesiastes, "There is nothing new under the sun."
I heard Tom Wolfe (Bonfire of the Vanities) say years ago that we lost this country when the Ten Commandments were removed from the Town Square. Then the rules were made by man and there was no longer a reminder that there were things greater than man.