I would argue that resilience came from innovation and creative thinking. When we encountered a problem that threatened the species, we came up with solutions to fix it.

There are very few times in human history where we took any steps backwards on that progress. The collapse of the Roman Empire was one of those moments, and it took hundreds of years for civilization to recover from that.

I'm not saying we're getting close to a catastrophic event like that any time soon... but we should definitely not shrug off unnecessary world hardships with a glib "we've survived worse". Because if the worst should happen and Western Civilization takes a step backwards... the consequences aren't going to be pretty. Especially now that we have nuclear weapons.