>>53291980it's mostly since people kinda instinctually make the association of "people knew less in the past = people were dumber in the past"
the general capabilities of human brain are about the same from prehistory till now, so while they didn't have the ability to fabricate modern-level technology, they had the mental capacity to make the same logical chains regarding how things work when it comes to stuff like leverage, heat treatment, fluid behavior, tension, friction etc. which are all relevant for large-scale architecture
unironically what did most damage to human scientific cognition is philosophy, since you had tards like Aristotle making claims debunked by simple observation based on their assumptions alone
