> For example, early in ancient empires, many rose in status via winning military battles, or perhaps by building new trading regimes. But later in such empires

> For example, early in ancient empires, many rose in status via winning military battles, or perhaps by building new trading regimes. But later in such empires, status was counted more in terms of your connections to other statusful people. Which led to neglect of military success, and thus empire collapse. Is this being said seriously? As someone that once aspired to be a historian this sounds like a massive oversimplification. But maybe this is a hyperbolic rethorical resource. It does sound Toynbeesque though, so maybe the author is taking this from Toynbee's work? I feel like these examples/arguments/proofs need to be developed a lot more to be consistent, specially for an article hosted in a domain called "overcomingbias.com".