During every pole shift, civilization was devastated, and advances lost. The great cities of China, uncovered now and then under farmer's fields, are a mystery. What caused them to disappear? Illness? War? Likewise, the Myan and Incan ruins, like Egypt after the Jewish Exodus times, a mystery. As Egypt recovered, this is muted, but for centuries these areas had no civilization save that carried by the survivors, carried down from family to family. The extent that a civilization survives is dependent upon location, primarily, as if climate changes are devastating then simple survival supplants attending to the trappings of civilization, and thus the loss. Where one is concerned with eating, a written language or mathematics are the lesser, and are not passed on. Primitive cultures pass forward information in stories, myths, often highly truthful, and these can be told in the evening, by the fire, to sleepy children by exhausted parents or oldsters, as they can scarce do otherwise with their time. But the written language, and technological skills, requires spare time, and this is what disappears during such times.
As we have stated, the issue of mankind returning to the technology of today is not simply the capability of man, as in the past mankind would recoup and build again. Circumstances are different this time, not simply dependent upon spare time, or the ability to return to manufacturing of parts, and holding schools to educate survivors. With the exception of knowledge, the technological society is unlike to recoup, as parts and manufacturing support are required, and simply will not take precedence over starvation. Complex technology require complex manufacturing, and specialized skills increase the stockholder and owner return on investment, but bode ill for recouping the process in the Aftertime. A specialist, dead, can defeat the entire process. What will doom mankind, in his ambitions to restore is current perch on the mountain tops, his technological tools and toys, is not the simple process by which mankind rebuilds after a pole shift, but the changes that will be effected this time. Integration with alien cultures, high tech cultures, not mankinds technology but alien, will occur. Those individuals uncomfortable with this interaction will be removed from Earth, to setup their kingdoms in Service-to-Self worlds, or continue their orientation deliberations on a new planet, as water creatures. Those left will be the sorts who do not want to punish the others in the group, so will welcome alien help, as these Service-to-Other souls will be those reincarnating here on Earth. Thus, because mankinds technology will be preempted by alien technology, mankinds technology will be put aside as the lesser, and discarded.