this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2025
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i think it has more to do with what color skin people think they had and not how advanced they actually were...
When your civilisation is white enough that documentaries don’t credit alien
Even then I'd say "whitewashed" more than actually being white. Many Romans would have had skin dark enough that they wouldn't be considered white by today's standards
In support of that thought, the North African born Emperor Septimius Severus (and his Syrian-born wife) say hi
Their other child doesn't it seems
One brother (Caracalla) eventually killed the other (Geta) and then erased as many references to the dead one as possible, even portraits. Family squabbles!
All our families been there.
Also the slavery.
lol up until very recently in the US, Italians weren’t considered white.
The fact that the OP is talking about a road (some stuff we build every day) instead of a huge pyramid also helps.
We build massive mounds of dirt and rock all the time. We also have a widespread history of building massive stone structures all over the world for thousands of years. The pyramids are impressive, but other than the location and structure they are just another big pile of stones that humans like to make.
Sounds like a normal engineer to me.
Good to know Frontinus also thought humans built the pyramids, not aliens!
In contrast to Frontinus's negative view, the Pyramids were tourist attractions even at the time, and considered by most Romans to be legitimately very impressive works of architecture showing the cleverness of Egyptian builders, rather than derided. Frontinus was just a filthy ancient equivalent of a STEM major XD
They liked the pyramids so much they stole the gold off the tops.
Yeah but the Colosseum tho. That's some extremely advanced architecture and it's HUGE. The fact that most of it is still standing after centuries of earthquakes (and being used as a quarry for other construction!) really says something.
I was about to comment something about "alien" Stonehenge and how people assume the Brythonic Celts were fair-skinned, but then I looked it up and was surprised to learn that Stonehenge predates the arrival of the Celts by roughly 2,000 years