It never ceases to impress me that we have the ability to do this sort of stuff. A couple thousand years ago, the height of technology was shooting something from a few hundred metres away with a bow and arrow, now we are landing machines on another planet and transmitting data back and forth through the solar system. Incredible.
A couple of thousand years ago is the peak of the Romans, so you're way off on your 'height' of technology at that time.
Using bows and arrows as an example when you've got wonders of pretty advanced engineering like the Parthenon, plus they also had ballistae, chariots and catapults, so not the peak at all.
Not only that, but even the bows were more advanced, composite bows much more powerful than simple ones made of wood.
The most complex machine of the Roman era was perhaps a water organ. (I would guess that for long historical periods the most complex machines were keyboard-controlled musical instruments.)
But according to Ancient Aliens, the large stone Pyramids were built by aliens, but the TV cameras recording the show's hosts, with CCDs, and likely 10nm chips inside, were built by humans.
In all seriousness, it's impressive what knowledge sharing and cooperation achieves.
[Ancient Aliens] Ah but the cameras and chips are only possible -because- the aliens built the pyramids and inspired humans technologically and a mere 4450 years later, voila! CCDs and computer chips!
Well, given the fact that we still know relatively little about most of the observable universe (dark matter & energy), I don't think you can completely rule out the several unlikely hypotheses. For example, that earlier civilizations instead of electricity used a completely different form of energy - and that basically directed their development into a completely different direction, not leaving many material artefacts. I don't believe this actually happened, but a part of me knows that I can't be 100% sure it didn't.
It is highly unlikely that the cameras being used to produce Ancient Aliens are CCDs unless they are also using ancient camera tech. Most likely, the camera's image sensors are CMOS. 3 chip CCDs reached their pinnacle as 90s/early 00s tech. CCDs can only sense one color, so they put three of them behind an RGB splitter.
A couple of thousand years ago, humans built massive engineering projects, including the Pyramids, massive irrigation and earthwork systems, and tunnels, and bridges, domesticated wild animals, produced metals - including steel - out nothing but wood, water, and low grade ore, etc, etc.
They did not have internal combustion engines, or electricity, or the ability to machine parts to high tolerances, but ancient engineers cared deeply about efficiently transforming mechanical energy from one form to another.
