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Empires come and go; wars, disease and natural disaster decimate communities. Technological changes cause fear and anxiety. But quite honestly people are people, moved by the same old stuff. As much as we think we perceive enormous changes, even day-to-day, history shows us that things don’t really change all that much. Try this for example; its a poem written by Persian poet Abdullah Ibn Al-Mu’tazz, who lived in the then-Persian, now-infamously-Iraqi city of Baghdad, 861-908:

Thank God, the new moon,
    Ramadan has gone.
Quick, lash out the wine;
    The moon’s a silver dhow
Laden with chunks of amber.

Just to be clear, that’s Baghdad over 1,000 years ago. Muslims of that day obviously not wholly dissimilar to almost any young westerner out on a Friday night today.