Has mankind become more barbaric?

Everyday we hear around us, someone saying "The world has become sooo bad. People are not good anymore. Voilence, murder, wars have increased. The world is about to end..." or something like that. We hear this all round the world. I don't want to say anything about the 'doomsday' forecast of the world coming to an end. But whenever I hear something like this, I start thinking - Has mankind really become more barbarian? Have our moral values deteroirated?

Looking at the history of Mankind (yes, I know I'm again talking about history), I don't really think so. Right from the time we evolved into modern day homo sapiens, barbarism, violence and cruelty has been a part of our genetic imprints. Whenever a group of Humans moved into a new land, it was common for them to clash with the original inhabitants of the area. Either one would survive the clash.

Right from the ancient times, we can find several instances of barbarism:

1. The cruel pharos of Egypt who proclaimed themselves to be gods and just obliterated anyone who opposed them.
2. The cruel roman emperors who just mass murdered their own subjects. One classic example is the emperor Nero, who was a psycho path and just went about killing his own people and family.
3. The barbaric Germaninc tribes of northern Europe who went on a rampage across Europe and challenged Rome.
4. The cruel and Barbaric Vikings who for more than a century spread terror across large parts of British Isles and Ireland. By 1000 A.D they even reached North America and establish some settlements there.
5. The harsh regimes of Aztecs and Mayas, who were busy Killing each other in the New world, while others were busy doing the same in the old world.
6. By the time the Viking invasions ended, there were huge number of soldiers across Europe who had taken up arms to repel the Vikings. Suddenly they were left jobless and could not stay put. So they resorted to terrorozing the local population.
7. Now it was the turn of the Roman catholic church to take up the reigns of terror. They launched the Crusade wars again the middle east and the orthodox christians of Eastern Europe. They plundered and ravaged the cities that were in their way. No one cared about the value of human life. A total of 9 crusades were launched resulting in a loss of thousands of lives.
8. Asia saw the barbaric acts of the Mongols under Chengiz khan, huns and many others.
9. Then came the Renaissance in Europe. The new worlds were discovered and thus began an age of exploration and discovery(also colonisation and exploitation). Wherever they went the Europeans brought a reign of terror and destruction. The spaniards literally obliterated the indegenious poulation of the americas. The french, british, germans, portugese and others took up the same task in Asia and Africa. Their atrocities in Africa has made a huge impact on the African continent from which it is yet to emerge.
10. The period also saw some atrocities by the Muslim rules of the Indian sub-continent like some rulers of the slave dynasty, mughal emperor Aurangazeb and other invaders like Nadir shah who plundered Indian cities following the decline of the Mughal empire.
11. The period also saw mass plundering and exploitation of the people of europe themselves by the rules of France, the Czars of Russia and others.
12. Then finally came the world wars, the marked the height of barbarism. Millions perished.
13. The period after the world wars saw a number of proxy wars.
14. A new form of violence has emerged - terrorism. That is going to see another round of barbarism.

So as we can see, no where in the history was there a period of relative peace and never did man exhibit any high sense of morality and respect for his fellow being. Every one and then, a great person came along and tried to harness the good side of mankind. Though they seemed to bring mankind to its senses for some short periods of time, we invariably slid back to our violent ways.It has always been a period of violence followed by a period of calm and peace brought on by some benevolent ruler, religious head or someone like that.

But what makes the current age more deadly is the technological advancement that we've made in our methods of warfare. We now possess bombs and weapons capable of destroying the entire planet. But if Nero or the vikings or the huns had these technologies they would have definetely caused the same damage.
So it is technology that has made the current age seem more deadly. Man himself is always the same, seeking to prevail over others, subdue his fellow beings and consolidate 'power'. Maybe mankind will merge into one unified race, only in the wake of an all-out attack by some alien race - Remember the movie 'Independence day'. Yeah -something like that.