well, this whole thing about civilization goes to prove how a whole set of tradition, culture, lifestyle, phylosophy... things that were treasured and valued at that time, could just all of a sudden disintegrate. Or most of the time, destroy itself.
It's sort of like what happens in the world of music too... Well, atleast we have a fairly well kept history of notations and scores so things don't just explode and "disappear", but its phylosophy and values are very easily lost with time. It's simply because music is written within a context, and without it, the piece won't work. Of course, we can try to understand what it was like, by studying it's historical/sociological (or whatever) importance, but that's only a form of academic understanding. The true essence is lost forever.
So it must be a human thing... building something, believing in something, working towards a goal. And something happens, they start destroying it. Next moment there's a whole new something to build, whole new set of beliefs to build by, and a new goal. The more creative you are, the more destructive potential you have.
These civilizations must have been pretty creative to have been able to totally wipe themselves out.

The ones mensioned are all quite unique if you think about it.
With music? Shewww! I don't even want to think about how many cycle there were!

It's just the same. Things become saturated, and that's the destruction. That form (or let's say, "civilization" for metaphoric means) becomes history. Zzzip, a new cycle begins. But with music it's cool, you can switch civilizations even if it's an already dead one.
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: kensuguro on 2002-09-05 19:43 ]</font>