My irl friend theorized that these advanced civilizations self destruct. Humans always be fighting each other, and when they weapons are too strong, they end up self destructing.
I agree with this theory. But opened to any other theories.
I wholeheartedly believe an insane war sometime in the future will occur, nuclear or something stronger, and the Earth will be wiped clean, and we're going to have to build civilisation from scratch again,
y'all are forgetting that the ancient civilizations could be something else other than humans. plant live > forest burn > new plants at burned area > adaptation > better plants if we keep repeating this cycle we might actually get smart enough to not blow ourselves up at some point cause to me it seems like we are too stupid for peace
or it could just lead to endless wars with different species and their evolved versions each time cause dna is pretty random and experiences everyone go through are not the same thus always resulting in some people being better than others which means one side will mostly be oppressed cause why wouldn't they oppress them when they're obviously stronger
the term stronger doesn't have to be just about IQ,technology or etc. its all of those combined like numbers aswell