[Fargren]

Technology has regressed seriously at least two times that I can think of. After the Sea People invaded Mesopotamia, and after the fall of the Roman Empire. Arguably in some ways after the colonization of America too, a lost of technological knowledge was lost. It took several centuries to recover from each of those, and technology right now depends on resources that are not renewable and that we are making more difficult to get. If we regressed again, it could take a very long time to recover, because of the exponential growth you mention.

[masklinn]

> After the Sea People invaded Mesopotamia

The eastern mediterranean basin. AFAIK Assyria wasn't directly affected, the polities directly affected were Mycenaean Greece (collapsed), the Hittite empire of Anatolia (collapsed) and the Kingdom of Egypt (which repelled the Sea People but likely at high cost).

The Assyrian Empire contracted at a later date, possibly as an indirect consequence of the collapse.

> If we regressed again, it could take a very long time to recover, because of the exponential growth you mention.

An other issue is the ability to access resources. As a civilisation progresses it consumes easily accessible non-renewable resources, the more it progresses the more difficult to access the resources it consumes entirely.

A civilisation following the collapse of the current globalist one would have a very, very hard time accessing non-renewable resources to fuel its growth.

[domevent]

This book discusses that time period I’m fine detail, and ultimately presents a very compelling series of perspectives. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1177_B.C.:_The_Year_Civiliza...

If you’re familiar with the LBA collapse, you’ll enjoy the read.

[mobilefriendly]

North American pre-Columbian societies were all Stone Age and most were pre-literate. One of the most advanced, the Mayans, collapsed hundreds of years before Columbus. The most advanced Aztecs worked with metals but hadn't discovered the wheel (beyond toys) or bronze. No doubt the collapse from European contact resulted in tragic loss of life, loss of culture and loss of local knowledge of medicine and agriculture, but on net it actually ushered a wave of dramatic technological advancement among indigenous tribes-- particularly adoption of the horse and horse-riding, which the Spanish tried to make illegal. The tribes in North America that adopted the horse (and later, firearms) rapidly conquered the tribes that did not, until they were ultimately displaced in turn by European settlers.