It's fair to imagine the challenges a building team would face 2k plus years ago.

Like in this example, building levers that are strong enough to lift the load. I bet they broke a bunch of stuff.

But eventually they figured it out, via trial and error. Levers, ramps, etc. They probably couldn't describe why those things were inherently the best way, but more approached from the "we tried 9 other ways and they suck. This is the best way."

Next, the phrase "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" is relevant here, but in a backwards way.

Since we struggle to imagine what it would take for an ancient society to master the techniques to build these things, we therefore begin to grasp for unrealistic conclusions (magic...read...aliens).

Same goes for Europeans building cathedrals and stuff, the trick is the history, the methods and the results were more documented and understood.

There are some racism concerns that I think go beyond and around what I've discussed, which is more abstract. I'm not discounting the other topics, just not covering them here.