It’s cliche at this point that history is cyclical- but understanding why can help us break these cycles.
Simply put, technology changes, culture changes, maps and names and languages change. Self interest remains remarkably constant, largely because it is rooted in natural processes and factors that change on scales of vast amounts of time. Humans need water, need food. While the precise balance of tastes can differ culturally etc- there are certain relative constants as far as the flavors and thusly types of foods humans tend to enjoy most. Regardless of culture or history there are certain smells or sensations that humans will commonly find pleasant or unpleasant. As a general rule while what “our way” means, most humans want to “have our way.” Mating drives vary but the overall desires ate fairly constant and certain preferences tend to be present in a majority of the species.
So each individual generally seeks their self interest, and generally the attainment of what they believe to be their self interest is the priority. From this form groups dedicated to the same or mutually compatible self interests. From the actions of these individuals and groups comes large spanning change and actions of “historical significance” in scale or scope. So regardless of the time or place and various specifics- largely, little changes in the overall pursuit of self interest and within individual lifetimes or generations there generally aren’t significant changes to fundamental realities which would create a great difference in causality between the seeking of these interests and the effects of those actions. The major change over time is mostly that as population increases and technology advances, our ability to cause drastic and potentially destructive changes increases as well as the ability for information and ideas- thus cycles of action- to propagate more quickly.
Simply put, technology changes, culture changes, maps and names and languages change. Self interest remains remarkably constant, largely because it is rooted in natural processes and factors that change on scales of vast amounts of time. Humans need water, need food. While the precise balance of tastes can differ culturally etc- there are certain relative constants as far as the flavors and thusly types of foods humans tend to enjoy most. Regardless of culture or history there are certain smells or sensations that humans will commonly find pleasant or unpleasant. As a general rule while what “our way” means, most humans want to “have our way.” Mating drives vary but the overall desires ate fairly constant and certain preferences tend to be present in a majority of the species.