PROGRESS

Even if we buy official version of History with multi-thousand year ancient civilizations and dynasties, we hear a tale of constant conquests, invasions, riots and wars. How "smart" do you have to be in such a hostile world to ignore fortifications, weapon manufacturing and army training? Even if somebody was "smart" - they had smarter neighbours. The arms race was inevitable in any Age. Better bow, arrowhead, axe, spear, poison, trap, shield, armor, were as important for hunter-gatherer as better rockets and drones are today. This would create craftsmanship, upscaled to engineering with the first city state. The most primitive communal fortification projects, e.g. city walls, would create demand for planning and management.

Once you have people specializing in engineering, R & D will never stop. Multitude of city-states make competition and peer pressure inevitable. Inventions and science never happened because somebody was in a garden and an apple felt on his head. It's always a result of hard work, brainstorms, experiments, etc. Stories of Church or any other government punishing such activity are made up to explain lack of progress during thousands of years of "elongated" ancient History. Even if we trust those stories and government hated somebody else doing science, they would have to do it themselves. Millenia without a noticeable progress are the best argument against the official historical mythology.

Native Americans had armor made of wood. The Stone Age Siberian warrior armor you see on the right is made of bone pieces. This is probably what Alexander the Great is wearing on the famous Alexander Mosaic. He's lucky, if so: everybody else on that mosaic has no armor and no helmets too. You might think that's a helmet in top-left corner, but it's a hat. When you look at the whole picture you see that Persians wear hats, they are soft and wrinkled. And Persia was the Advanced Empire at that moment, Greeks were the savages. The mosaic is from the times much closer to Alexander's Legend than we are, and I trust that artist more than I trust all modern reconstructors and archeologists. Plus we do know that light cavalry was successful as late as medieval:

When you gather an army the first priority is numbers. Weapons are the second priority, armor is the third. If metal is precious and you have a choice of one armored warrior vs 3 with just swords/axes/spears, you choose the latter. Not because you don't care, but because 3 will beat 1, even if 2 will die in the process. That's why "Tiger" tanks, that were clearly ahead of their time, were regularly beaten by multiple weaker machines on both Eastern and Western front in WWII. Numbers matter. Even just seeing large number of enemies demoralizes, while being a part of a huge army makes you feel safer and stronger.

Note Alexander's sword on the mosaic above, - that is a Progress. On the famous relief of Persian elite Immortals we do not see swords and shields, the thing on their back is a quiver:

The fact that it's a quiver is better seen on this relief on the left. Here we also make sure that "Immortals" had no sword on the right side. Historians may say whatever they want, the pictures show reality. Nevermind the warrior behind the immortal in a strange hat, that one is Median, he does have a (very short) sword and a shield on his other side. There isn't any armor, even leather/bone/wood one. It shouldn't surprise you: if armor was as popular as claimed, bow and arrow wouldn't be considered an army weapon in 1500+ England. There were 10,000 "Immortals", but they probably weren't the elite part, they were the regular trained/paid army in uniform, everybody else were drafted militias. Armor for 10,000 people was probably too expensive, even for Persian empire. At the bottom of their spears you see a ball, a counterweight. The legend says it was a golden/silver apple. If it's true that says how cheap gold/silver was in those times compared to a sword or a labour needed to make even a bone-armor.

We assume the armor and helmets on "antique" and medieval pictures are metal yet there is no proof and, logically, there is no chance, given the numbers-first policy of any commander. It may have been lacquered leather helmets or bone scale-armor, etc. Even today different types of fiber, e.g. kevlar, are used as armor, why would dirt-poor medieval armies use steel instead? The metal armor/helmet findings that archeologists claim (though it's very hard to believe into any metal leftovers from those times) is of late medieval and it is just what survived, while leather/bone didn't. It's also important to remember that distance between late medieval and "First Crusade" is like us vs "The Three Musketeers". Full body metal scale/plate armored knights is 1400-1500, older than that means less armor, than just helmets, at some point it goes down to spear/sword/bow.

On the contrary we do have a proof that it was not metal. This proof is well known yet completely ignored. Look at many examples of Greeks wearing a helmet "half off" in non-combat circumstances. "Archeological findings" of these weight at least 2+ pounds (1 kg). Now imagine a heavy bronze thing like that staying in this "half off" position with your head moving - it's physically impossible. All the sources telling us about bronze helmets either describe a different type of helmets or are a fantasy literature:

ART

The mosaic below is dated as 500+, it's from Byzantium. Let's accept the miracle of somebody tolerating this (plus some more) bad quality art in a palace up until 1453 when Turks captured it:

Note disproportionally small horse heads and legs/fingers of the left guy. Alexander's one above is dated 600+ years earlier and is way better quality. This is an Emperor's palace. It's Byzantium, a Roman Empire, not Dark/Middle Ages Europe. Greeks were known as best artists. It's a mosaic, it was first drawn, reviewed, later laid, so there is no oversight/mistake. This quality is approximately Italian art of 1300, e.g. comparable 1305 Giotto's Nativity:

In 1305 it's still about 150+ years until they finally start drawing realistic pictures in Italy. Something comparable to Alexander's mosaic are paintings of Battle of San Romano by Paolo Uccello and even he's still not always there with proportions in 1438:

Follow a link and see all 3 paintings of Battle of San Romano to discover 0 gunpowder use in that Italian battle of 1432. Just like military and scientific progress, Art has nothing to do with geniuses, there were no good painters anywhere until 1400+. There was a steady progress since the earliest pieces we have (church icons and manuscript illustrations from around 900+). Here is the 1200+ quality:

There are couple more painters of 1100+ and nothing beyond that. The myth of Great Antique Art is destroyed by those disproportional mosaics from Byzantium. It's palace mosaics, definitely "antique" and from Byzantium. That's the actual Roman Empire quality, the best of it, made for the Emperor. And it's not 500+, of course, but that's not my point. My point is that the perfect "antique" 1500+ year old stuff in Turkish museums is definitely not "antique", it's either very late Byzantine of 1400+ (and even later, since who said Turks hated Art?). And there is no Italian Art older than 1100. Isn't that a surprise?

MUSIC

With all the "antique" art and nymphs and muses and Apollo, flutes and lyres, theatres and poets, wouldn't you expect some music from the Ancients? Unfortunately they never wrote it down until 9th century ... notation ... chant. Music for musical instruments is written in 1200+, very primitive one. Folia (author unknown, 1400+ Spain/Portugal) is the oldest decent melody we have. Cannons were invented before first good music was written. You'd expect something from Persians, Assyrians, Egyptians, India ... Nope. The secret is simple: no good musical instruments. Music appears when people discover new sounds and there are no physiological constraints of voice. Why no good instruments until late medieval? Same reason trans-oceanic sailing and book printing appear happen in 1400+: fine wood-work is required, which requires fine metal tools and experience. Only with a precisely carved musical instrument you can produce stable standard quality sounds, matching notes. Thus harpsichord is invented only around 1400. Do you still believe in Great Ancient Civilizations with Art, Religions and Astronomy?