If our descendants our truly more enlightened than we are, I doubt that they would condemn us for our comparatively barbaric behavior in the same way that we d

If our descendants our truly more enlightened than we are, I doubt that they would condemn us for our comparatively barbaric behavior in the same way that we dont judge predators for playing with their prey. Just as playing with the prey improves their hunting ability, so to do we learn from our mistakes, eventually. The Romans are not universally condemned for causing the extinction of the Tencteri, Usipetes, Carthaginians. Similarly, we do not condemn our ancestors for the likely genocide of the Neanderthals, Denosivans, and all the other hominids. Judging people from the pass through the scanner of modern morality is counter-productive ti understanding history. The historian, Herbert Butterfield, put it best when he said "real historical understanding is not achieved by the subordination of the past to the present but rather by making the past our present and it's tempting to see life with the eyes of another Century than our own" In the end, society is what makes us civilized. We are still the same species we were 70,000 years ago. If society fell and we somehow experienced the same material conditions as they did, we would behave more or less the same. When we have wars and conflicts that are so intense that civil society breaks down, every one of us is more than capable of committing the most horrific atrocities. The 20th century is littered with examples of that. If you need any more evidence, I'll leave you with this description of what happened to a 13 yr old peaceful protestor in Syria Video posted online shows his battered, purple face. His skin is scrawled with cuts, gashes, deep burns and bullet wounds that would probably have injured but not killed. His jaw and kneecaps are shattered, according to an unidentified narrator, and his penis chopped off.