I feel so too, but note that there is a survivorship bias. Consider you have 5 thousand years of societies trying out various forms of living together. Which fo

I feel so too, but note that there is a survivorship bias. Consider you have 5 thousand years of societies trying out various forms of living together. Which forms will survive today in the stories? The ones someone felt interesting enough to preserve. Same goes for buildings. There used to be pretty of ugly buildings in the old times as well, they just got demolished and replaced by other buildings, while the beautiful buildings were not demolished.