Like Empires,

when civilisations insist on being formed, they take a long time to build.
When they are founded both come to rest over-and unintentionally bury
-'uncivilised' origins. A civilisation has to decline to catch the hindsight
that what it is built on was actually far richer, more durable, intelligent
and creative than it appeared to be when it became the foundation for an unkown future.
Perhaps the trait that most defines humanity is that to build
we have to be blind to what we have, blind to the remains of what we once had,
and have since destroyed by building over it, to make way something else.
All progress is short term, a temporary change in how relatively near
or far and near sighted we are at the time we look at a present,
where our focus is never truly centred and fixed.