Archeologists today are regularly finding evidence of technologies of the ancient world that match or exceed those of today. Wonders remain that have not yet been explained by today's crop of scientists, archeologists, and historians. Legends of old are being proven to be less myth and more history, that civilizations of 2,000 and 4,000 years ago weren't as primitive as modern man often thinks, that battles of old did occur, along with the fact that Heroes that fought them did exist.
Many of these new discoveries of old lack the details to understand the mechanics. And often, things that can't be explained are chalked up as extra-terrestrial interference. Yet, we know that even modern technological results can be achieved by various means. Flight today can be achieved by propeller, rotary, blimps, or glider aircraft. Physics may allow for other means of flight as yet undiscovered, or even lost in history.
The motivations and machinations of modern man are not much changed from those of ancient man. Why did Egyptians and Mayans strive to build bigger and better pyramids? Why do modern Asians and Americans strive to produce ever taller buildings and longer bridges? To put their mark on the world around them. To be the -est; the biggest, the brightest, the tallest, even if only for a moment in time.
We know that science and education has been learned and lost. We know for example that the current cycle of learning produced indoor plumbing in the 16th and 18th Centuries, but that the Romans also had it in 1st Century, and the Minoans had hot and cold running water, as well as sewage systems in 1700 BC. We know therefore that simple plumbing has been learned and lost at least twice in Western Civilization alone. Where would we be today if the technology of the Romans had not been lost to the invasions of the Muslim Caliphate in the 7th Century, had we not been plunged into the Dark Ages by "mini-Ice Age" and invading marauders?
Today's science and knowledge is expanding and advancing at paces unknown in human history, in large part due to concentrations and sharing of the same, in places like libraries and universities. In times past, there were parallels, and others there were perpendiculars, where inventors more closely horded their knowledge, but no man can maintain the whole world's body of knowledge in his own brain.
Today, archeologists are finding evidence that ancient man moved or formed buildings of stones greater than modern man can move or make, that ancient man may have understood aerodynamics and flight to some extent, that he knew astronomy as well as 21st Century scientists. The Mayan calendar, for example, takes into account astronomical events that occur only once in 5000 years.
We even know that we already losing the ability to read from technologies that were new in the 1980's, such as the 5 1/4" floppy disks and VHS tapes. We don't know how soon the internet or USB ports will be lost to history, or that the CD will go the way of the 8 track tape. How would future archeologists and scientists interpret the discovery of a collection of CD's, particularly if electricity and CD players were to be lost technologies, and unrediscovered?
Instead of admitting the most likely possibility, that invading Armies destroyed the records of how the feats of ancient man were accomplished, as were the technologies of the Romans and Greeks, many look to the stars, to say that aliens helped, or ordered the construction.
That is not to say that life does not exist in other places of the universe. It most likely does, and while some of the religious world might call that blasphemy, the Bible and other texts don't claim that life exists only on this world. In fact Genesis refers to many things it does not say were created or done. It does not tell us how Cain's wife came to be for example. It elaborates only of generations of a single son, for the most part, through Noah, yet tells of many wives and cities of people. A lack of detail in the Bible does not imply that anything did not exist or did not occur. A lack of understanding of how something occurs in the modern world does not mean that there isn't an underlying law of physics.
And in the possibility of extraterrestrial life, both scientists and clerics can be blinded by what they know. Scientists look for oxygen breathing, water drinking, carbon based life forms, instead of considering that life elsewhere might breath carbon dioxide (or some other gas) and drink oil (or not at all). Some clerics look to their texts and see that it only mentions life on Earth, and hence must exclude other worlds. What we do not know we don't know can be as limiting as the things we know we can't yet explain.
Ancient Incan miniature sculptures in gold present us with what could be a model of an airplane. Ancient Greek texts tell us of a chariot that flew inside a building for the entertainment of visitors. Biblical and other texts of the Middle East speak of other means of flight. And let us not forget the "Flight of Icarius" and the drawings of Michelangelo, which predate modern flight by hundreds or thousands of years. Not only is it possible that ancient man figured out the principles of lift, it is also possible that he knew other means of defying gravity. It is not impossible that Egyptians studied the flight of birds and built their own versions of planes, or it could be they simply carved out a miniature sculpture of what they saw in flight.
And while Science at one time insisted on the "fact" that the Earth was flat and the Universe revolved around it, modern Scientists may be insisting, and likely are, that "facts" and theories today are just as wrong. Since the first child ask his father, "Why is the sky blue?" man has attempted to speak in absolutes of knowledge he may or may not have. And just as many of those fathers gave an absolute reason of utter nonsense, so too do some today tell tales of absolutes they do not know, some of which may even make sense. Too often humans do not wish to admit to those that believe them smart, that they don't have an answer.
Science is not sacrireligious, nor does modernly known laws of science preclude intervention of a Supreme Being; the existence of God. While we have Theories of how the Universe and Life on Earth was formed, even if someday they are proven, it does not mean that it wasn't the machinations of a Supreme Being. Confined to Earth, man and Scientists cannot prove that anything does not exist. While we have only recently learned to send probes to other rocks in the Solar System, as far as we currently know, we've only sent life to the moon.
We haven't even planted a seed on Mars, or figured out how to get a camera to the next Solar System in our lifetimes. And we have only theories of what is actually in the center of the Earth or below the Marianna Trench. We know that magnetism works, and have harnessed its energies in many ways, but we do not know necessarily how or why, or all of its uses.
In every theory of the Universe, something was always there, timeless. While timeless is a concept we cannot fathom, Scientists and Clerics alike admit there must be something immune from time, from the cycle of life and death. Proponents of the Big Bang Theory believe the Universe was once compressed and exploded, while Christians believe it was God that caused the creation of Heaven (space) and Earth. While atheists point to the laws of physics as precluding the notion that God exists, there is nothing to say that God didn't author those laws as Congress authors the tax code.
Even today, technologies are being lost as other technologies are being invented. When I grew up, my father and I often worked on the cars we owned, adjusting the timing, changing spark plugs & alternators, occasionally even attempting to rebuild carburetors and transmissions. He wasn't a mechanic nor am I. Then, paying someone else to change an air filter or the oil was unheard of, except for "the rich" who also paid others to clean their house and pool. Today, many couldn't even find the oil plug bolt on their car, and don't consider that they could change the oil in less time than it takes to drive to the shop to have someone else do it.
Today, people will wait hours on the side of the road, waiting for someone else to come and to take off 5 lug nuts, and change their flat tire, while others can change 4 tires in 14 seconds. Ask a modern carpenter to build a shed without electricity, and you'll get an interesting look of puzzlement, but only a hundred years ago, there was no other way. He knows it can be done, but he likely has no idea of how to turn trees into a house. It doesn't necessarily take a laser to create precise structures and a modern crane is not the only way to lift a multi-ton stone. Even in the last few hundred years, a single man of small stature was able to build a multi-ton structure, without cranes, by himself. The means by which he built the structures, in Florida, remain unknown and bewildering to modern engineers.
What we think we know can be as limiting as what we don't know we don't know. We know that diamond can cut just about anything, but it is not the only thing that can cut rock, and just because we don't know how the Mayans built such precisely cut stone structures high in the mountains doesn't mean there's not a better way to cut and move rock than we know today. And just because we no longer have that technology doesn't mean that only aliens could have done so. In the 11th Century, hot water wasn't available to a king in his castle, though it was 28 centuries earlier.
Just because light travels faster than anything I know, does not mean there isn't something faster. Just because it is accepted that diamond is the hardest substance on Earth, doesn't mean there isn't something harder, or more brilliant. Just because we haven't found a reason to disprove the Theories of the Big Bang, or Evolution, does not mean they are fact. Just because modern flight was invented by the Wright Brothers does not mean the Mayans had not figured out the same or better ways thousands of years ago.
Just because we don't understand how the Egyptians or the Mayans came to the knowledge they had, or the technology to build the things they did, does not mean they had extraterrestrial help. They could have easily discovered the same laws of physics and aerodynamics, as have modern scientists, just as the English invented modern plumbing, despite the Roman systems of plumbing being lost to Invasion of the Caliphate. It's possible and even likely that they knew other sciences and had other technologies that we haven't re-discovered. It's possible that those technologies are even simpler than today's, like the abacus to the calculator, like magnetism to aerodynamic flight.
Just because we cannot explain something, does not mean it's unexplainable.
Still, in a world where Scientists note that the Earth has gone through numerous cycles of worldwide tropical environments and Ice Ages, that they can only theorize about causes, it is surprising that they alternately predict a man-made Ice Age (1970's) and Global Warming (1990's) based on so little empirical data (100 to 200 years), while simultaneously ignoring their own research of a 1000 year warming since the last "mini-Ice Age."
There is nothing wrong with developing theories in attempt to explain and discover the Truth, or in the belief in Aliens, God, or Atheism, but there is something profoundly wrong with teaching that theory as Fact, as we should have learned from the history of Science in proclaiming the Earth as Flat. There are things which can be believed only by Faith, including many tenets of Science.
As we approach the Christmas Holidays, the most dogmatic of Atheists seem ever more intent in preaching a religion of no God, though they cannot disprove God, and simultaneously must confess that something (matter) has eternally existed. The human need to convert others to one's own belief propel them to attempt to convert others to "non-belief," while some hubristically believe that only supreme beings of other planets could have helped ancient man in his feats, while others believe themselves the supreme beings of the Universe. While Science proves ever vastness of the Universe or Multiverse, and ever more microscopic elements, few seem to consider that the Universe itself may be a part of a being greater than our own comprehension, as incomprehensible to us, as we would be to a living being on a photon.
Just as man is the world upon which microorganisms live, and can transport knowing or unknowingly across vast distances in its lifetimes, which would take the equivalent of billions of lightyears to us, for the species to move, so too might we be the microorganisms as yet undiscovered by beings so vast that a solar system is an atom.
There are some things we each believe to be true, but we cannot prove as fact. Every belief you hold is probably contradicted by the belief of someone else, who holds its truth to be just as indisputable. Hence, it is important that we be honest with ourselves in what is fact, and what is belief, what is proven, and what must be accepted on Faith.