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(Civilization as defined as a certain culture of civilization, not necessarily a specific nation, and a well-settled civilization at that)

I've been thinking about this for a long time.

It's comparatively easy to build a civilization in one's TL, even from 'scratch'. Another thing is to do the reverse. In this sense, abandon civilized infrastructure and revert to a lifestyle of limited politics and an agricultural or even hunter-gathering lifestyle if possible. It would seem to be really hard to do.

This is somewhat easy to do early on in a civilization's life, e.g making Sumeria fail early or the real-life examples of all the other stillborn civilizations like the Kuk Swamp in Papua New Guinea, Cahokia or Chaco Canyon in North America or perhaps Great Zimbabwe in southern Africa. The people there still had an idea of life before, either through physical memory or cultural, and reverting in a crisis would be simple.

But as a culture becomes more accustomed to civilization (due to its age), it seems all the more difficult to reverse and said civilization starts a runaway snowball effect of increasing complexity. Take the Roman Empire for example. It collapsed pretty well, yet civilization persisted and began increasing in even more complexity than last time after a short regrowth period. Very few secrets were well and truly lost and even more were created.

Is a Renaissance-era civilization truly unstoppable in this regard? Up to a certain point in civilization, is forward truly the only way to go? If so, where exactly is this point of no return where technology, culture and politics can only increase in complexity?

If not, how on Earth can you send a civilization on a downward trend of slowly returning to simpler ways? The only way I can think of would be a serious Act of God, possibly only in ASB levels.
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