For a long time we believed that sophisticated civic organization was kickstarted by Ancient Egyptian, Minoan, Sumerian, Indus Valley, and Ancient Chinese civilizations around 4000-5000 years back.
However, the discovery of Göbekli Tepe in the mid-1990s pushed the origin of social complexity as far back as 12,000 years, possibly further. Göbekli Tepe features carved T-shaped megalith constructions, flanked by a surrounding village.
The assumption was that such constructions were put together by nomadic hunter gatherer peoples, who would meet at the site every so often for a 'prehistoric Burning Man'. People were not permanently settled there.
Recent excavations nearby cast doubt on this perspective. Another contemporaneous site features an ingenious sewer system, something strongly suggestive of settled life, and by extension agriculture.
Who were these people? What did their language sound like? What did they value? We will very likely never know.
We are discovering that the history of humanity is a great deal longer and deeper than we imagined. A great many collapses and resets have occurred in our distant past, with rich cultures and sophisticated knowledge washed away in the river of time with barely a trace.
This should be a sobering example for ourselves. One must constantly add energy to maintain the momentum of civilized life, and to maintain the social cohesion required for trust and low-cost transactions.
We have drifted away from this mindset in recent decades. There are growing trends towards eating our seedcorn, living for today, instead of investing in the future.
Collapse within a generation or two looms ahead of us. It is imminent on our present path, yet it is not inevitable. We have an opportunity to avoid it, to surf inside a tube wave, an island separate from the entropy crashing about us.
Our actions in these coming years, individual and collective, will orient the direction of our fate.