Mankind - the product of de-evolution?

It's funny how many of us buy into the ubiquitous notion that mankind is constantly evolving into wiser more civilized beings. If you look our history objectively, it’s a continual process of those populations that make the greatest stides towards arts, knowledge, civilization, wisdom and humanitarianism invaded by and having its populations replaced by more primitive, ruthless and barbaric populations. The ancient Greek, Persian, Mayan, Incan and other highly civilized and evolved indigenous cultures throughout history are examples of populations replaced by more primitive barbaric cultures.

Our "survival of the fittest" evolution towards predatorial dominion, destructive power/technology development, greed and ruthlessness has been quite successful. But this natural selection has been at the expense of a different possible course of evolution - towards the wisdom, civilization and the humanitarianism necessary to survive as a species. And whenever the day is that we commit collective suicide, our "evolution" has propelled us to that point at an ever accelerating pace.

I sometimes wonder whether the Biblical prediction of the end times based on divine/inspired prophesy, or is it possible that the wise folks of biblical times could see the fatal flaws and (de)evolutionary path of our species even back then? Although we’ll never know, I think the seeds of our destruction as a species must have been as visible back then as now. Did they know we were a failed species even back then?