It's important that we learn about this so we don't repeat it. Sadly, we are repeating it. Perhaps it's impossible to prevent the cycle because it can only be prevented by those who benefit from it.

I'm reading Proto which is about the Proto-Indo-European language family and it discusses exactly this, where the hunter gatherer nomads of PIE moved from the Caucuses to more farming oriented areas like plains they settled down and also interbred with the local farmers. But, when droughts happened and food got more scarce from farming, many of the farmers in turn became nomads again. The DNA shows this change apparently.

> "Oh yeah here's a 1,500 year-old city, but it was 7,000 years ago and then disappeared so you've never heard of it."

pull it in a bit and you have Ugarit :)

i am convinced if / when AI leads to the collapse of civilization it will be akin to the Late Bronze Age collapse; i.e., not with a bang but a whimper. it was a very delicate economic ecosystem complete with circular dealing; but 3500 years ago people were fighting over Cypriot copper and today we're doing the same only in Lobito (along with Cobalt and Lanthanides) in praise of the almighty god Compute

just to flog the analogy like a Mycenean slave, Compute runs out (with a humorous sidebar where someone tries to put a modern equivalent of arsenic into the chips to perpetuate the self-dealing; hilarity ensues). society collapses (but Musk makes it because like Egypt he has all the gold) and like the Iron Age a Quantum Age comes along out of desperation and the will to survive after yet another Dark Age. if we're lucky.

i'll see myself out