The progressive view was very Western-centric and tried to fit in much of the past as an upwards trajectory towards Western civilisation, often trying to 'explain away' periods of perceived decline as transitional, most clearly of course in the case of the 'Middle Ages'.

To just kind of copy my short answer to /u/fact_hunk in that other thread:

Figures like Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) and Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) were historians who were known for providing models for how civilisations work and decline and tried to explain some of these things.

Spengler believed all civilisations had a limited lifespan and that Western civilisation was in fact in decline at the time he was writing (early twentieth century), his most famous work is Der Untergang des Abendlandes or Decline of the West. He basically believed civilisations rose to a certain height after which they stagnated and declined.

Toynbee had a slightly more optimistic vision that said civilisations survived as long as a core of creativity in them was able to respond to the challenges of civilisation, the so-called 'challenge and response' model. He believed nearly all civilisations died unnatural deaths, i.e. were 'murdered' or committed 'suicide', with suicide being by far the most common cause of death for a civilisation.

Perhaps an interesting comment to make here is that these models were challenged and eventually mostly dismissed in the academic community, whereas their all-encompassing and explanatory views proved popular for a long time outside of the academic sphere. These models are often very attractive and provide an exciting or interesting explanation as opposed to the academic's complex view of the past and so they live on far longer outside of the academic community.

I find that very often historian's efforts ( to educate) are marred by the work of their forebears and that basically we're often cleaning up the mess our predecessors made.