Far before that, although it may be the first work to introduce those themes into the pop culture of Japan. See in Christianity with the parable of the garden

Far before that, although it may be the first work to introduce those themes into the pop culture of Japan. See in Christianity with the parable of the garden of eden and it's destruction, in Islamic literature with the catastrophe of the sack of Baghdad causing a several hundred year cultural dark ages, in republican Chinese literature with the ideal classical civilization being replaced with mindless roving warlords, albeit with superior Western technology, etc... Though perhaps anime has become less unusually ambitious in rendering elite thought into lower brow entertainment, a sort of regression to the mean of the world cultural millieu.