Expansive Nature of Humanity

If there is one cycle of human development that keeps repeating itself on and on and on, it is a development to the extinction of all available resources. This is always followed with relocation to yet untouched areas with lesser but still sufficient enough resources. 

Be that Ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians, who once had the flourishing civilization, but now live in a desert. Areas of modern Egypt and Iraq were not always deserts. Back in the days they were the only civilizations surrounded by wilderness all around them.

However eventually they exhausted almost all of their numerous resources and went into decline. Areas around them however began their development and grows when the ancients began to decline.

This repeated itself in much better documented modern era as well. When Columbus just discovered the Americas. Spain and Portugal went on to explore, settle and exploit the richest and most prosperous parts of the continent: some islands of the Caribbean, Spanish Main and Brasil. They did not want to settle the mainland US or Canada, as these areas were not as lucrative as those further south.

However eventually Spanish and Portuguese exploited all the resources in the south in what is now known as Latin America. The area reached its peak and began to decline. Only then areas of modern US and Canada begun to be settled.

Nowadays we see US and Canada as high-income prosperous modern economy while at the same time consider Latin America backward and undeveloped 3rd world area. However, this is misunderstanding of the reality.

Latin America is not backward, it simply outlived its prime and now slowly, but steadily declining. Just like Egypt and Mesopotamia too eventually went into a slow but steady decline.

Roman Empire was like that too. It was in its zenith during the Augustus around 0AD, then it begun its decline and basically died of natural causes by 476AD.

That is also the same with other ancient civilizations such as Chinese, Indian or may be even African. It affects more modern politics as well, for example Byzantine, Ottoman, Polish-Lithuanian, Russian or Spanish Colonial. They are struggling to survive their old age rather than lagging behind in development.

There might have been once a civilization even more fancy and glorious where nowadays lies unlivable Sahara Desert. However, it died completely without living even a trace of its existence.

However what humanity needs new frontiers with new and fresh resources to colonize and exploit. Without it the humanity will implode.

Without new frontiers humanity will need to invent a new technology that will allow as to maintain the increasing population.

If such technology cannot be found, we need to drastically cut the population growth.