A few archeologists ask themselves what made it possible to sustain certain societies for thousands of years and what made others crumble in a few generations? Mostly they end up saying, "there must have been something".
Here is something: 
The Hettites/Hyksos expanded ca.1700 b.c. in a sudden break out of fierce power, attacked the Egyptians and vanished away, while the Egyptians were born again and again.
In the northeast a Scythic expansion was initiated in a domino effect wave of war propagated across the Asian step, across the mountains into the vast Caucasian graze lands where the rich and mighty Scytes lived. The Scytic horse mounted warriors in a few years after 820 b.c.raided western regions along a front from Northern Scandinavia to Egypt. In the north they disturbed a people called Same and in the south the more well known Egyptians who still lived along their eternal Nile.
                                    
The Same people were perfectly adapted to their polar environments and the Egyptians to the changing conditions of their Nile. And when the Scyts (or the Hittites) arrived there were certainly shake ups but the stable societies survived
The invaders soon perished, only leaving after them the symbols and designs of their Power and their destructive knowledge of horseriding on fast horses.
When the white man, and his Christian God, came to America things were different - the old societies of the Indians perished.
When the white man subsequently came to the land of Same, the same happened. Something made the white man more powerful than the red man.
When Allah came to Egypt, Aton and all other Gods died and became just icons and hieroglyphs. Something made TheOneAndOnly stronger than all the old Egyptian Gods. Bast herself were helpless.
Soner or later the end comes to every civilization, I think both Popper and the Pope would admit that, but that´s not the interesting thing here, the interesting thing is if it´s possible to find out why a few stable societies remain stable and seemingly "happy" for many generations and are able to resist brutal invaders.
My personal point of view is that the only thing that make a society to work in a long time scale is true knowledge and an impeccable confidence in the will of the leaders to really do what´s best for their people.
When the tribe suspected their shaman to work more on pursuing his personal wealth then theirs, especially when he seized values and assets for the offering to the gods, he soon suffered an accident.
In the complicated industrilized society the shaman has to watch the Super State, the State, the University, the Church, the Business and the Military having great difficulties to unite in a common language and common goals (other than short term political salvation's and fast economical profits), understandable for the people
The shamans of our times are thus mostly marginalized artists who doesn´t even know if they are citizens in the Coca Cola Empire or the Ford one.
Are they Swedes or citizens of the European Union?
Olympic greed and corruption are obvious signs of the time and the shamans
are silently working on trying to explain the importance of making offerings - to take from oneself and give away, to fellow humans and to the Gods.
The shamans are seriously trying to have fun and laugh in midst of their heavy knowledge.
Offerings need to be done - and the most precious Offering is knowledge itself - are we able the ultimate Offering of Knowledge to "feel good"?



Tomas Brusell

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