India. Mohenjo-daro, a flourishing city in the Indus Valley, is destroyed. It had flourished for centuries in the previous millennium. It would be forgotten for millennia, only to be (re)discovered by a British archaeological mission in 1922. No previous Indian civilization had ever noticed this evidence. Or more likely, it had never looked for it. The difference, according to evolutionist Yuval Noah Harari, is one of approach: Western civilization (an approach later adopted worldwide at the end of the 20th century) is premised on ignorance, and therefore on the drive for exploration and discovery, while most previous civilizations were premised on knowledge.
