Interpretations of History.

History is seen as a vast panorama in which world events play out their course.  From ancient times, one particular view of history regarded the world as in a state of decline from a past golden age.  In a prehistoric Eden, mankind had vast powers (including psychical powers) and unlimited freedom.  However, something occurred which caused mankind to fall from grace and to be passed off into a never ending historical cycle.  This cycle was to culminate through successive stages in the destruction of the human race in an apocalypse.  In the late 1980s with the advent of chaos theory, various methods were used to try to understand historical development through cyclical history.  History ebbed and flowed according to chaos theory which explained its underpinnings.  According to chaos theory small perturbations in initial conditions could give rise to large perturbations in final conditions.  Thus, small events in local historical time could lead to large macro-events in later times.  Examples of this were seen from history in which small determinations led to large scale wars or intellectual developments.  These furthered the course of history.  In the book _Hamlet's Mill_ it was explained how the ancients understood the precession of the equinoxes which played a large role in the development of their myth.  These precessions allowed them to understand history in terms of cycle.  In modern times, this view has been largely forgotten.  However, it should be noted that even in ancient times it was well know that the earth was round and not flat.  The modern myth of the flat earth was incorporated later in the nineteenth century when "science" came to be seen as an all-encompassing worldview over the dark ages of superstition and medieval mysticism.