The Ancients, IMHO, were a heck of a lot more advanced than what we give them credit for. I've got a book by Time & Life called: Feats and Wisdom of the Ancients." It is really quite incredible to read about all the things that different societies invented thousands of years ago. Alot of the time, we think of things, like electricity, to be a modern invention. But as the Bagdad Battery shows, it was probably just re-invented in the 19th century.
The book also tells us other amazing things like:
Hero of Alexandria, in the first century CE was a mathemetician and an inventor. One of his books describes a steam engine. He also wrote the first book on robots. Eratosthenes (3rd century BC) was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer and philosopher. Using only reasoning and his powers of observation, he accurately calculated the sizes of the earth, sun and moon. In the 1st century CE an obscure craftsman brought a gift to the emperor Tiberius. It was a drinking cup that looked like silver but was much lighter and it did not break as silver might have done. It simply dented when hurled through the air and crashed. The story was recorded by the historian Pliny in 37 CE. Based on the description of this cup, modern experts have speculated that it might have been fashioned from aluminum. When questioned by Tiberius, the craftsman said it was extracted from clay, just as aluminum is. Today, aluminum can be obtained only through sophisticated chemical and electrical processes. If it were made of aluminum, the ancient metalsmith was centuries ahead of his time. There are also tales of flight found in ancients texts in Egypt, India, Babylon and the Americas. And we still don't know how the Egyptians made the pyramids.