However what is certainly true is that there was a long period in between where we couldn’t. From at least 1000 BC to sometime in the 1900s AD it would’ve been physically impossible to recreate Baalbek. Yet somehow thousands of years before that ancient people did it.
My pet theory is they used compound reed boats, canals, and locks to do it. But in the end we don’t know.
What’s clear is there were people more similar to us than we are to the Elizabethans in terms of technological capability, and they were totally wiped out. No stories, other than myths, no pottery, no metals, nothing left of them except the most durable giant stone remnants.
In other words: the up and to the right trajectory of history is wrong. There are bigger cycles in civilization than all of history combined can illuminate.