The older way of living was hunting and gathering in small nuclear families connected as clans and tribes.
As land disappeared under sea and as more land desertified (the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies can point you to earlier causes to which recent ones we hear about have been added) people had to fall back on more deliberate growing & herding. Temporarily there was a glut of bronze.
Throw in the steam age, mutant forms of capitalism . . .
Now we're here, God has sent the church to intercede maturely about all needs. There is potential for enough food, still.
Some of the Mongols turned half of Iran and Afghanistan into deserts in about 1240. The Ma'rib dam burst of about 550 (amidst manoeuvrings of failing empires) turned Yemen into a desert. Some benificent sheikhs would surely like to help, and people of good will would surely join in.
Inept means of irrigating salinated then desertified Mesopotamia.
I agree with brother D because where civilisation went wrong a few thousand years ago was the monopolising, centralisation, homogenising and tyrannising.
We understand relatively little about the spiritual atmosphere of some of the earlier times.