One question I know of that the "old world" failed
I'm quoting from Nietzsche here (The genealogy of Morals), but essentially the greatest problem was the inequality of status, and thus meaning
Early man had very easily fueled meanings. Grok gets food and is big, he is thus successful and is the leader of us all.
Of course this is a problem when societies became more complex, and people realised that "hit big stick and getting food" wasn't a be all and end all, especially considering that many of these Polynesian big-men seem to lead pretty meaningless lives despite being on top. Thus, came the inventions of more meanings, much like Maslow's hierarchy. You must have friends, have self-drive, and assert one's will onto the world, and so on.
This of course was good and all, but it didn't tackle another important problem: Well, what if you are lesser in the hierachy? Well, Nietzsche (referencing Hegel), proposed these people thus became "slaves" (not the exact word), people that stated that the rich and successful, brash, willing to put themselves out there and get killed by falling rocks, arrogant men, aren't good people at all, because they have abandoned the "higher" goals of culture. They are quite content to be self-aggrandising and living in their positions. Nietzsche also identified a certain subset of people that originated as society became more stratified and advanced. The "priests", or people that were born into a rich and successful family, and through no meaning-makings of their own, came to just BE able to assert themselves in the world because of daddy's money. These people, however, Nietzshce didn't put it very nicely, are not exactly the kind that would survive on their own as a peasant in the wild.
However, having skipped past the whole struggle of starving and grinding up the ladder, they need to find justifications on why they deserve to continue being there, for their own self-meaning. Nietzsche calls these people the "priests", people who try to impose and counsel various peoples of the lower social strata to continue with their roles in society, to not try and become the "masters" in the hierachy, in a way, of self-preservation. The ones at the top of the pyramid, of course, love these people. Thus, they indirectly support them. However, Nietzsche had a problem with this. He viewed this, as though an understandable arrangement, a way to drain the vitality of any peoples.
Nietzsche of course never meant this as actual history, but rather as a rough explanation for how peoples would organise themselves in any society.
Later, Nietzsche uses this to argue that culture, no matter the society, must be exclusionary and only made by the "great men" as part of assertions of their will, bringing all society closer to-but of course that is another thing altogether, connected to his ideal of the "Uberman" (which he believed eventually all peoples will become).
The greatest problem of the old world is essentially just that, it didn't allow most men to feel status, thus meaning at all. It was slightly defused when men decided on a rationalistic structure of society, and eventually universal suffrage. But of course this was temporary, because status is FINITE, and man's want for meaning is INFINITE
