Thanks for your response RattleHead.
I'm very interested in archaeology and did some at uni, though did not major in it. I did major in anthropology/sociology so I'm good with the basics.
Have a look at Von Danikin's Chariots of the Gods which was fascinating and the TV show was incredible but it was all fraudulent. Von Daniken raised the idea that the pyramids were so advanced that the ancient Egyptians could never have built them. However, theoretical studies have shown that the areas upon which the pyramids sit could have easily been made level by hammering in stakes of equal length in a flooded area to the waters level and then draining and digging down to the ends of them and thus a perfectly level platform to build on.
Von Daniken came up with Alien help as the only possible reason.
Only homo sapien sapien and neanderthal were 'modern hominids' who cohabitated, although the neanderthal had been around for between 350 and 800 000 years, homo sapien sapien for 200 to 250000 years. Neandethals died out 40 000 years ago due to learning difficulties compared with us.
Some interbreeding took place as many European people have neanderthal DNA.
But the further back you go in time the less sophisticated and intelligent the hominids are. So 800 000 years ago we are looking at neanderthals as the most intelligent animals on earth. And evidence suggests that they had just enough smarts to make fire, to have an inkling of an after life (grave goods and flowers used in burials) but were not smart or adaptable enough to survive into modernity. And certainly no metallurgy, spear throwing levers, bows and arrows or any other modern technology.
For incredibly claims incredible evidence is needed, which appears lacking in this example.
I'd love to be proved wrong on this but this aint doing it.
And I said about hunter-gatherers that we remained thus for hundreds of thousands of years. It's only in the past 10 000 years that we began to get our shit together. First city 5000 years BC, first use of metal 5000 years ago. First use of iron 1200 BC. First use of engines 1700 AD. Agrarian revolution 1600 AD, industrial revolution 200 years ago, first photo 1832, and so on...
For humans, hunting and gathering has been the norm for 99.9% of existence. We can't handle cities and did not evolve to handle them. Look at the problems...
en.wikipedia.org