“as primitive as we would like to consider them they were able to accomplish something our economy would struggle to replicate today”
One of the reasons we struggle to replicate it is because we aren’t primitive. We have been using technology like concrete so long (since the Roman era), that we hardly ever have any need to move huge stones. Instead we just make them in place.
The ancients that did move these stones regularly doubtless had a lot of simple tricks we have simply forgotten about because they weren’t needed for anything other than moving huge stones.
I hear you but OTOH even when taking into account that they may have spread the effort to quarry, move, and finish huge stones over centuries consider the size of the economy that would be required to provide all that labor and cost. Yet that civilization left no other trace than those stones. So the Ancient Aliens (as far out as they are) do make a pretty good point. It is not likely that the effort to produce these huge structures were as costly or protracted as we assume. And they are everywhere. The Temple Mount has 100 ton stones. The place in Syria where Alexander’s guys built a Greek Temple on top of it has such massive stones. Even Stonehenge is an example.
The reason putting 'institutional knowledge' down on paper is a good idea...