[tathougies]

Rome didn't collapse, it just diversified into several other smaller states. The Aztec empire wasn't overthrown by the Spanish, but just fractured. The empire of Genghis Khan didn't collapse, it just got successfully split until what remained resembled nothing of what it once was.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but rather pointing out that -- in the grand scheme of history -- every collapse can be recast as a 'diversifying' of the original society, even if the end state of the society has little in resemblance to the original.

For example, the Roman empire lasted -- in the form of the byzantines -- until 1453, only a few decades before Columbus discovered America, but the Byzantines were not really Roman in the way we think of ancient Rome, despite having every claim to being one and the same with the Roman empire.

[StanislavPetrov]

>every collapse can be recast as a 'diversifying' of the original society, even if the end state of the society has little in resemblance to the original.

The folks from Easter Island would beg to differ if they were still around!

[tathougies]

I can't tell if you're joking or not. Easter Island is yet another example of my general premise. The people who colonized it originally -- the rapa nui -- are still around, even if their current culture is very different from the civilization that erected the moai?