Well that's just it, we don't know exactly how far people developed tech, or how far around people were able to communicate. We have some concept of more recent cultures like Greeks, Romans and Egyptians but we have more intact records for them. There were cultures farther back that did some pretty amazing stuff and too much is lost for us to know how they did it. There is even a chance that they weren't as isolated from each other as people later were. Before the batteries and the mechanism there was no reason to believe that any of those cultures had advanced that far and finding those things doesn't mean we found the most advanced technology they had. If someone finds a telegraph machine a million years from now, that doesn't mean cell phones never existed.
But even in more recent times people often don't know how far people of other cultures got. I imagine most people have no idea who Zheng He is and the fact that he almost blew Christopher Columbus out the water for making it to the Americas... Petty emperor squashed that expedition though. :/ But he did make it as far as Africa on another expedition. What people know about the advances and achievements of people they have no connection to is typically very spotty.
But, yes, we have fabulous technology; yet, in many ways it is not allowed to affect society nearly as dramatically as it should. Yes we have the internet and can communicate around the world, but most people just use that to post cat pictures or argue with people in the comments section. That's not going to prove intelligence in the future if it even survives. Yes, we have advances in medical technology, but cures got blocked in favor of letting people stay sick so they have to pay for treatment. So when they examine the bones they are going to find a lot of people who could have been healthy but instead were diseased. True we can travel around the world, but that doesn't necessarily make people embrace and adopt elements other cultures any better. Which for all intents and purposes will make cultures look far more isolated than they were. A million years from now, the fact that you could Skype around the world could easily be lost with no trace of the infrastructure supporting it or the videos. Records and evidence can get lost at any point and the same thing could have already happened many times.
But I just have a hard time believing we invented being inquisitive and solving problems through advancements in knowledge within the last several centuries. If it occurred to us, chances are someone before us probably say something similar and had a similar idea whether they fully pulled it off or not.
I was bored, so I decided to restore this photo of my old doggie. How'd I do?
Original
Restored
Looks good.
