I will stand by my theory that the ancients knew a whole lot more about a whole lot more than we currently give them credit for. I'd wager given the lack of understanding we have about things like Stonehenge, how the pyramids were actually built, megalithic structures found under the sea, the Easter Island statues etc. that they knew a whole lot more than we think.
We don't have that much mystery about Stone Henge. An old physics teacher of mine was an expert on Stone Henge, back in the 80s and did a lot of original research. It's pretty clear what Stone Henge does, why it does it and how it was built. Mystery is for pop science papers.
Totally. Every time I see tall, beautiful churches I wonder how they built those, without cranes and such. Bhaskara supposedly calculated length of year etc, fairly accurately (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhaskaracharya). Then there is the wonder of pyramids, non rusting tower in Delhi etc. They were a knowledgeable bunch.
A lot of impressive feats from way back when were accomplished more by experienced extrapolation than by deep understanding. In the case of those churches, they built a lot of churches, with a lot of different designs. Each new architect would try to build something a little bit taller, a little bit thinner and more ambitious than his predecessors, without really understanding the mechanics of the structures. Sometimes they pushed too far, and buildings collapsed and people died. Sometimes they were too cautious -- I've heard the Brooklyn Bridge is hilariously over-engineered, because of the lack of computer modeling. What we see today are the best of the best, the most ambitious ones that didn't fall down. The ones that were too unambitious or which were too ambitious to succeed have been forgotten.
I do think great thinkers in previous eras had probably profound ideas about "nature".[1] But for buildings, it's probably a good trick + hundreds of human lives dedicated at implementing the process.
[1] Even the average person had a different interaction with the world than we do, most things were first hand diy, and often very critical to your life, and thus induce focused brain perception. We're a lot more passive at many levels, even though we're "educated", I'd bet it has a smaller effect on critical part of your brain.
Actually, while they can be, the latest theories are that they weren't built using slave labour at all... though, everything we think we know about these subjects from all the TV shows and literature I've come across appears to be based almost entirely on speculation... it would be nice if someone could actually base some of them on hard facts... except all the hard facts are lost, so we're pretty much left with our own imaginations.
What lack of understanding? We know how those things were built or have a very good idea. Although most of the techniques are clever, they're not particularly advanced.
It's all about documentation. Documents destroyed in a "dark age" of some sort? Start from scratch, hope the branches of discovery lead to the same conclusion at some point.
