All great empires eventually collapse and disappear into oblivion. For example:

The Ancient Egyptian
The Hittite
The Minoan
The Trojan
The Ancient Greek
The Roman
The Viking
The Dane
The Saxon
The British
The French (under Napoleon - brief)
The Nazi (which never quite made it, thank God)
and so on...

The last of these is the American (which is somewhat different in that it does not have an Emperor per se - though don't tell that to the Bush family)

However, each of these Empires did bring some serious social advances and developments on all scores: political, philosophical, religious, economical, technological, etc.

I think the best way of summing up the developments in the Human Race is to consider the message from 'The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Universe' - Man is merely an infestation of Planet Earth with ideas above its station

Interesting post, R. Thanks for that

Follow That Dream

Sam
Karaoke King

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Turning that corner again - I have to keep following that dream, no matter what