What if? What next?

History is a repeating pattern of flourishing success and dismal failure, and the first state always contains the elements that will bring the second condition into being.
Individuals and nation states will come and go, and both will leave something behind by which they will be remembered. It could be good or bad, or it could contribute something tangible that the future will use to its advantage.
Can we say the Greeks gave the Western World philosophic premise and logical thinking based on argued theoretical ideas? And the Romans, perhaps it was, for them, the application of power as conquest and the use of an elitist language, Latin, by scholars and the Church.
It seems that whatever is remembered of a civilisation takes a long time to be evaluated and then integrated by the successor. Once this happens, however, the New Imperium, recognising that worth, applies the discoveries with vigour.
The British Imperialists were holier-than-thou militaristic explorers; they gave shape to the world, created the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution and put a benign constitutional face on Imperial Law.
Subsequent historical events, moving at speed, didn’t allow for a decent period of evaluation and integration following the British downturn, and that which should have been recognised as past its best and dumped, was allowed to move on, to contaminate much of future potential, and greatly lessen the value of creative new thinking and ideas.
Crumbling bricks and sand have much in common; neither offers a solid foundation that can be relied upon. This makes it difficult for those who inherit the trappings of past glory to know what is truly good and durable.
Still things go on; there’s always something that sticks out as new and amazing, and at the present time this is speed of light communication systems that have wrapped themselves around the globe, and the scientific ability to fully study the smallest and the largest of everything around us.
Perhaps we will all really learn from these contributions.